"My dear Miss Madison, if I attempted to thrill the American people by lofty emotions and an impassioned appeal to their higher selves, I should only bring down a storm of ridicule from seven-eighths of the American press. I could survive that, for I should not read it, but my effort would be thrown away. The people to whom it was directed would feel ashamed of what thrill was left in it after it had reached them through the only possible medium. This is the age--in this country--of hard practical sense without any frills, or thrills. It is true that there is a certain amount of sham oratory surviving in the Senate, but the very fact that it is sham protects it from the press. The real thing would irritate and alarm the spirits of mediocrity and sensationalism which dominate the press to-day. A sensational speech, one in which a man makes a fool of himself, it delights in, and it encourages him by half a column of head-lines. A speech by a great man, granted that we had one, carried away by lofty patriotism and striving to raise his country, if only for a moment, to his own pure altitude, would make the press feel uneasy and resentful, and it would neutralize every word he uttered by the surest of all acids, ridicule. An American statesman of to-day must be content to legislate quietly, to use his intellect and his patriotism in the Committee Room, and to keep a sharp eye on the bills brought forward by other Committees. As for speeches, those look best in the Record which make no appeal to the gallery. There, you cannot say I have not made you a speech!" "Well, make me another, and tell me why you even consider the power of the press. I mean, how you bring yourself even to think about it. You have defied public opinion more than once. You have stood up and told your own State that it was wrong and that you would not legislate as it demanded. I am sure you would defy the whole country, if you felt like it." "Ah, that is another matter. The hard-headed American respects honest convictions, especially when they are maintained in defiance of self-interest. I never shall lose my State by an unwavering policy, however much I may irritate it for the moment. I could a heterogeneous Western State, of course, but not a New England one. We are a conservative, strong-willed race, and we despise the waverer. We are hard because it always has been a hard struggle for survival with us. Therefore we know what we want, and we have no desire to change when we get it. There goes the bell for Executive Session. You and I must go our different ways." XVI "Do you dislike her?" asked Betty anxiously of her mother on the night of Harriet's arrival. "I do not, and yet I feel that I never can love her--could not even if it were not for _that_."