I did not realize then that his vanity was of the kind which can in an instant spring into a Redwood colossus from the shriveled stalk to which the last glare of truth has wilted it. Still his words and manner jarred on me. As our eyes met, something in mine--perhaps something he imagined he saw--made him frown in the majesty of offended pose. Then his timidity took fright and he said apologetically, "How can I repay you? After all, it is your victory." I protested. "Then _ours_," said he. "Yours, for us." XVII SCARBOROUGH Now came _the_ problem--to elect. We hear much of many wonders of combination and concentration of _industrial_ power which railway and telegraph have wrought. But nothing is said about what seems to me the greatest wonder of them all--how these forces have resulted in the concentration of the _political_ power of upwards of twelve millions of our fifteen million voters; how the few can impose their ideas and their will upon widening circles, out and out, until all are included. The people are scattered; the powers confer, man to man, day by day. The people are divided by partizan and other prejudices; the powers are bound together by the one self-interest. The people must accept such political organizations as are provided for them; the powers pay for, and their agents make and direct, those organizations. The people are poor; the powers are rich. The people have not even offices to bestow; the powers have offices to give and lucrative employment of all kinds, and material and social advancement,--everything that the vanity or the appetite of man craves. The people punish but feebly--usually the wrong persons--and soon forget; the powers relentlessly and surely pursue those who oppose them, forgive only after the offender has surrendered unconditionally, and they never forget where it is to their interest to remember. The powers know both what they want and how to get it; the people know neither. Back in March, when Goodrich first suspected that I had outgeneraled him, he opened negotiations with the national machine of the opposition party. He decided that, if I should succeed in nominating Burbank, he would save his masters and himself by nominating as the opposition candidate a man under their and his control, and by electing him with an enormous campaign fund.