“It’s the strong debater who is likely to become formidable. There’s Thorndyke now--Crane has made the speech--largely Thorndyke’s--but he is totally unequal to the running fire of debate. Thorndyke could do him up inside of ten minutes. Luckily for him, the debate will not be fierce, and Thorndyke will really conduct it.” “Mr. Thorndyke is a very able man,” said Senator Bicknell, as if thinking aloud. “Yes, but totally without ambition,” replied Senator Standiford, gravely, and Thorndyke, within the car, laughed silently. It was, however, no laughing matter, but Thorndyke, having chosen his rôle for better or for worse, could only cleave to it, forsaking all others. However, he would see Constance Maitland the next day at five o’clock. There was balm in Gilead, or hasheesh in the pipe, he knew not exactly which. _Chapter Four_ GOVERNMENT WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED Life is a battle and a march--especially public life. Thorndyke waked the next morning prepared for both a battle and a march. A glance at the morning newspapers showed that the country was entirely with the Congress, and the people, having given their orders, would see to it that these orders were promptly obeyed. The Continental press of Europe with few exceptions barked furiously. The French newspapers alone retained dignity and good sense, pointing out the inevitable trend of events, and advised that, instead of abusing the United States, they should be copied in that system which had made them great, not by war, but by peace. The English newspapers were fair, but in some of them bitterness was expressed at England being shouldered out of her place as the greatest of the world-powers by the young giant of the West. There was in all of them, however, a note of triumph, that this first place had been lost only to an offshoot of the sturdy parent stock. This sentiment is often ridiculed as a peculiarly absurd form of national self-love, but there is, in reality, nothing ridiculous about it. As long as self-love is a part of nations and individuals, so long will each nation and each individual strive to share in the general stock of glory, achievement, and success. In the American newspapers the man most prominent was Crane. He was compared to Henry Clay, to Stephen A. Douglas, to any and every American public man who had early in life made a meteoric rise in Congress. He was represented as the embodiment of youth with the wisdom of age. One newspaper reckoned him to be a political Chatterton, and called him “the Wondrous Boy.” His beauty was lauded, his voice, his delivery, the fit of his trousers; and one enthusiastic journal in Indianapolis promptly nominated him for the Presidency. Thorndyke searched the newspapers carefully, and did not find his own name once mentioned. He reflected upon Horace Greely’s remark that fame is a vapour.