Nothing more delightful than a campaign tour in company with Newton Baker could be imagined, and I had visions of our little caravan, out on the country roads of Ohio, going from town to town, and of our standing up in the car and speaking to the crowds of farmers who had come into the town to hear us, or having come for their Saturday marketing, would pause while we told them of the needs of cities. I had always believed that if the farmers could only be brought to understand the cities they would not be so obdurate with us, but would enlarge our opportunities of self-expression and self-government. I could fancy myself standing up and leaning over the side of the car and talking to them, while they stood there in their drab garments, their faces drawn in mental concentration, looking at us out of eyes around which were little wrinkles of suspicion, wondering what designs we had upon them; at first they would stand afar off, perhaps on the other side of the street, as they used to do when we went out to speak to them in the judicial campaigns; but then presently they would draw a little closer, until at last they crowded about the car, staying on to the end, and then perhaps even vouchsafing us the conservative approval of scattered applause. Or I would dramatize Baker as speaking, while I sat there utterly charmed with his manner, his clear and polished expression, and envied him his ability to speak with such surprising fluency, such ease and grace, as if the fact of putting words together so that they would form clear, logical and related sentences were nothing at all, and wondering why it was that everyone that heard was not instantly converted to his plan, whatever it was.... And then, between times, Baker would not be talking politics at all; he would not be indulging in politician’s low gossip, slandering every one he knew--the ineradicable and, I suppose, inevitable habit of politicians, because in public they are obliged to be so suave in utterance and so smiling and ingratiating in manner. Baker was not like them at all; he knew a vast deal of literature and could talk about books with comprehension; if you mentioned a passage from John Eglinton, or a scene from Tourgenieff, or a poem of Yeats or Masefield, he would know what you were talking about; he is not one of those who, by the little deceit of a thin, factitious smile of appreciation, pretend an acquaintance they have never enjoyed. Baker has been able to keep the habit of reading, even in politics, a singular achievement. Only he would not read novels that were in the somber or tragic manner; I used to tell him that this was a sign he was growing old, since only the buoyancy of youth can risk its spirit in such darkened paths. For instance, he would never read my novel about prisons, “The Turn of the Balance”; he said he knew it was too terrible. But I did not reproach or blame him. I no longer like to read terrible books myself, since life is....