Meet the "glad-hand," ubiquitous charlatan: Janus-faced, side-stepping straddler; monkey-on-a-stick to the last touch; echo of the last voice; hand behind his back for "cash"--no paper, no witnesses, since he is clever as the foraging fox is clever; plausible peddler of light promises with which to ease the going to his goal; insinuating distributer of tainted largesse; any man's man so he be the highest bidder; no man's man who despises disloyal duplicity; mixer with mixers of noxious social broth, this man-mongrel of varied type and intensity of crass cunning, is the most craven of moral cowards, in that he cannot be brought to an accounting with conscience. Were he "hitched to a star," he'd just naturally fix his gaze on the abyss. Everywhere he interposes the oblique act to queer the big thing. In reform endeavor, he plays to hands that land him within the big money, and let intrinsic reformative processes go hang. The so-called "good mixer" will measure to any length of tape. At his best, he will stretch to the size of a Warren G. Harding, motivated by impulse to reduce friction engendered by clashing convictions. He seldom does less than well, because he is guided by a genuine desire to help ease the heart of contention, through striking a working balance and thus leaving the contenders with hands clasped. Such serve God in serving man. At his worst, he will shrink to the stature of the political man-of-all-work. His part it is to veer votes to suit his paymasters. What his instruments to hand? Ask him, since the print of a paragraph can encompass but a modicum of his machinations. From ward heeler to worshipful woman, this subterranean trickster is charged with selection of _the_ tool that will turn the trick. The "instrument" may take the form of a crass bid in coin of the realm for such as marshalling of thugs to intimidate units of the opposition at the polls, and to line up "floaters"; or to dig up detached matter written or spoken by an opponent, and so garnish and garble it as to rob it of the meaning the original spokesman, or writer, intended it should convey; or to shout from the house tops the minute details of a natural fault, buried for long years under the statute of limitations, and through the offender having taken on nobility of soul after having squared the account, in so far as it could be squared; or to persist in a campaign of slander concerning allegations that had time and again been discredited through due processes of unquestionable research; or to stir up antagonisms of class and creed that persist beyond the polls, and further close the eyes of single-seeing partisans and bigots. In short, to deal dirt-daubed deuces from the bottom of the political deck, e'en though by so doing he outrages decency, and reverses the Great Pleader, Who cautioned so often for charity in human judgments.