"I should not be content to be a mere figure-head, as Roover has been," I warned him. He had come, in his desperation, to try to get the man who combined the advantages of being, as he supposed, Dominick's enemy and a member of one of the state's financially influential families. He had come to cozen me into letting him use me in return for a mockery of an honor. And I was simply tumbling him, or, rather, permitting him to tumble himself, into the pit he had dug for me. Still, I felt that I owed it to my self-respect to give him a chance. "If I take the place, I shall fill it _to the best of my ability_." "Certainly, certainly,--we want your ability." Behind his bland, cordial mask I saw the spider eyes gleaming and the spider claws twitching as he felt his net quiver under hovering wings. "We want you--we need you, Sayler. We expect you to do your best." My best! What would my "best" have been, had I been only what he thought,--dependent upon him for supplies, surrounded by his lieutenants, hearing nothing but what he chose to tell me, and able to execute only such orders as he gave or approved! "I am sure we can count on you," he urged. "I will try it," said I, after a further hesitation that was not altogether show. He did not linger,--he wished to give me no chance to change my mind and fly his net. I was soon alone, staring dazedly at my windfall and wondering if fortune would ever give me anything without attaching to it that which would make me doubt whether my gift had more of bitter or more of sweet in it. Dunkirk announced the selection of a new chairman that very afternoon,--as a forecast, of course, for there was the formality of my "election" by the sixty-three members of the state committee to be gone through. His proposition was well received. The old-line politicians remembered my father; the Reformers recalled my fight against Dominick; the business men liked my connection with the Ramsay Company, assuring stability and regard for "conservatism"; the "boys" were glad because I had a rich wife and a rich brother-in-law. The "boys" always cheer when a man with money develops political aspirations. I did not see Woodruff until I went down to the capital to begin my initiation. I came upon him there, in the lobby of the Capital City Hotel. As we talked for a moment like barely-acquainted strangers, saying nothing that might not have been repeated broadcast, his look was asking: "How did you manage to trap Dunkirk into doing it?" I never told him the secret, and so never tore out the foundation of his belief in me as a political wizard. It is by such judicious use of their few strokes of good luck that successful men get their glamour of the superhuman. In the eyes of the average man, who is lazy or intermittent, the result of plain, incessant, unintermittent work is amazing enough. All that is needed to make him cry, "Genius!" is a little luck adroitly exploited.