We had not long to wait. The lady, as soon as Junior reached the end of his cash, tried to open negotiations. Failing and becoming convinced that he had been cast off by his parents, she threw aside her mask. One straight look into her real countenance was enough for the boy. He fled shuddering--but not to me as I had expected. Instead, he got a place as a clerk in Chicago. "Why not let him shift for himself a while?" suggested Woodruff, who couldn't have taken more trouble about the affair if the boy had been his own. "A man never knows whether his feet were made to stand on and walk with, unless he's been down to his uppers." "I think the boy's got his grandmother in him," said I. "Let's give him a chance." "He'll make a career for himself yet--like his father's," said Woodruff. That, with the sincerest enthusiasm. But instinctively I looked at him for signs of sarcasm. And then I wondered how many "successful" men would, in the same circumstances, have had the same curiously significant instinct. XXVIII UNDER A CRAYON PORTRAIT It was now less than a month before inauguration. Daily the papers gave probable selections for the high posts under the approaching administration; and, while many of them were attributed to my influence, Roebuck's son as ambassador to Russia was the only one I even approved of. As payments for the services of the plutocracy they were unnecessary and foolishly lavish; as preparations for a renomination and reelection, the two guiding factors in every plan of a President-elect, they were preposterous. They were first steps toward an administration that would make Scarborough's triumph inevitable, in spite of his handicap of idealism. I sent Woodruff west to find out what Burbank was doing about the places I had pledged--all of them less "honorable" but more lucrative offices which party workers covet. He returned in a few days with the news that, according to the best information he could get through his spies in Burbank's _entourage_, all our pledges would be broken; the Sayler-Burbank machine was to be made over into a Goodrich-Burbank. I saw that I could not much longer delay action. But I resolved to put it off until the very last minute, meanwhile trying to force Burbank to send for me. My cannonade upon Goodrich in six thousand newspapers, great and small, throughout the West and South, had been reinforced by the bulk of the opposition press. I could not believe it was to be without influence upon the timid Burbank, even though he knew who was back of the attack, and precisely how I was directing it. I was relying--as I afterward learned, not in vain--upon my faithful De Milt to bring to "Cousin James'" attention the outburst of public sentiment against his guide, philosopher and friend, the Wall Street fetch-and-carry.