Ratcliffe felt the sting, and it started him from his
studied calmness of manner.
Rising from his chair he stood on the hearthrug before Mrs. Lee,
and broke out upon her with an oration in that old senatorial voice
and style which was least calculated to enlist her sympathies:
"Mrs. Lee," said he, with harsh emphasis and dogmatic tone, "there
are conflicting duties in all the transactions of life, except the
simplest.
However we may act, do what we may, we must violate some
moral obligation.
All that can be asked of us is that we should guide ourselves by
what we think the highest. At the time this affair occurred, I was a
Senator of the United States. I was also a trusted member of a
great political party which I looked upon as identical with the
nation. In both capacities I owed duties to my constituents, to the
government, to the people. I might interpret these duties narrowly
or broadly. I might say: Perish the government, perish the Union,
perish this people, rather than that I should soil my hands! Or I
might say, as I did, and as I would say again: Be my fate what it
may, this glorious Union, the last hope of suffering humanity, shall
be preserved."
Here he paused, and seeing that Mrs. Lee, after looking for a time
at him, was now regarding the fire, lost in meditation over the
strange vagaries of the senatorial mind, he resumed, in another line
of argument. He rightly judged that there must be some moral
defect in his last remarks, although he could not see it, which
made persistence in that direction useless.
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