X.--INTERLUDE. INTRODUCING A FEW MEMBERS OF THE UPPER HOUSE BOOBOISIE AND SOME OTHERS 173 XI.--A PEAK OF REALITY THRUSTS UP ON THE LEVEL PLAIN OF SHAMS 204 XII.--THE HAPPY ENDING 226 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE PRESIDENT WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING _FRONTISPIECE_ UNCLE SAM'S CONFERENCE 26 REPRESENTATIVE FRANK W. MONDELL OF WYOMING 44 LORD RIDDELL 96 ANDREW W. MELLON, SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY 112 ARTHUR BALFOUR 130 ATTORNEY-GENERAL H. M. DAUGHERTY 138 SENATOR JAMES E. WATSON OF INDIANA 160 REPRESENTATIVE FREDERICK H. GILLETT OF MASSACHUSETTS 166 SENATOR JOSEPH S. FRELINGHUYSEN OF NEW JERSEY 180 SENATOR HARRY S. NEW OF INDIANA 188 SENATOR JAMES W. WADSWORTH OF NEW YORK 190 SENATOR WILLIAM M. CALDER OF NEW YORK 192 SENATOR ARTHUR I. CAPPER OF KANSAS 216 GRAY SILVER, THE MAN BEHIND THE FARM BLOC 222 BEHIND THE MIRRORS CHAPTER I PRESIDENT HARDING AND THE CLOCK. GOD'S TIME AS IT WAS IN THE AMERICAN POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS President Harding had recently to decide the momentous question whether we should have daylight saving in Washington. He decided it in a perfectly characteristic way, perfectly characteristic of himself and of our present political division and unsureness. He ruled that the city should go to work and quit work an hour earlier, but that it should not turn back the hands of the clock, should not lay an impious finger upon God's Time. That this straddle is typical of our President needs no argument--he "has to be so careful," as he once pathetically said--but that it is symptomatic of the present American political consciousness perhaps needs elucidation. The clock is one of the problems left to us by the Great War, one of the innumerable problems thus left to us; it involves our whole attitude toward men and things.