For ten years Abner was satisfied to devote himself to the husbanding and increasing of his resources. At the end of that time, his wife having died, he discovered to Gibeon an ambition to rule and a predilection for county politics. It was made apparent how he realized himself a figure in the world, and tried to live up to the best traditions of such personages as his narrow vision had enabled him to catch glimpses of. He seemed, of a sudden, to cease taking satisfaction in his moderate possessions and to desire to become a man of commanding wealth. He bought himself garments and caused himself to become impressive. He never allowed himself an unimpressive moment. Always he was before the public and conducting himself as he judged the public desired to see a personage conduct himself. By word and act he asserted himself to be a personage, and as the years went by the mere force of reiterated assertion caused Gibeon to accept him at his own valuation.... He was patient. The fact that fifty of every hundred male inhabitants were on his payroll gave him a definite power to start with. He used this power to its limit. It is true that Gibeon laughed up its sleeve and said that smarter men than Abner used him as an implement in the political workshop; but if this were true, Abner seemed unconscious of it. What he seemed to desire was the appearance rather than the substance. It seemed to matter little to him who actually made decisions so long as he was publicly credited with making them. Yet, with all this, with all Gibeon’s sure knowledge of his inner workings, it was a little afraid of him because--well, because he _might_ possess some of the power he claimed. So, gradually, patiently, year by year, he had reached out farther and farther for money and for political power until he was credited with being a millionaire, and had at least the outward seeming of a not inconsiderable Pooh-Bah in the councils of his party. The word “fatuous” did not occur in the vocabulary of Gibeon. If it had seen the word in print it could not have guessed its meaning, but it owned colloquial equivalents for the adjective, and with these it summed up Abner. He possessed other attributes of the fatuous man; he was vindictive where his vanity was touched; he was stubborn; he followed little quarrels as if they had been blood feuds. In all the ramifications of his life there was nothing large, nothing daring, nothing worthy of the comment of an intelligent mind. He was simply a commonplace, pompous, inflated little man who seemed to have found exactly what he wanted and to be determined to squeeze the last drop of the juice of personal satisfaction out of the realization of his ambitions.