Waterbury evening Democrat., 1907-07-25
THE PLUM TREE.

sOulS lOueS, WOulu nave luTilleu Lie. Said by him and in that tone and with that look, they made me shudder and shrink. Neither of us spoke again. When he dropped me at my hotel we touched hands and smiled formally for appearances before the gaping, peep ing, peering crowd. And as he drove away, how they cheered him-the man risen high above S0,000,00G, alone on the mountain-peak, in the glorious sunshine of success. The president!
 The next seven months were months of turmoil in the party and in the country-a turmoil of which was a silent spectator, conspicuous by my silence. Burbank, the deepest pas sions of his nature rampant. had burst through the meshes of partisan ship and the meshes of social and per sonal intimacies in which, he, as good party man" and as the father of children with social aspirations and as the worshiper of wealth and responsibility, was entangled and bound down; with the desperate cour- age that comes from fear of destruc- tion, he was trying to save himself.
 But his only available instruments were all either Goodrich men or other kinds of machine-men: they owed nothing to him, they had noth- ing to fear from him-a falling king is a fallen king. Every project he devised for striking down his traitor friends and making himself popular was subtly turned by his cabinet or by the senate or by the press or by all three into something futile and ridiculous or contemptible. It was complete demonstration of the stiffness of the fiction that the president could be an autocrat if he chose. Even had Burbank seen through the fawnings and the flat teries of the traitors round him, and dismissed his cabinet, whatever men he might have put into it would not have attached themselves to his lost cause, but would have used their posi- tions to ingratiate themselves with the power that had used and exhaust ed and discarded him.
 He had the wisdom, or the timidity. to proceed always with caution and safe legality and so to avoid impeach- ment and degradation. His chief at tempts were, naturally, upon monop- oly; they were slyly baked by his sly attorney general, and their failure was called by the press, and was believed by the people, the cause of the hard times which were just beginning to be acute. What made him such an easy victin to his lieutenants was not their craft, but the fact that he had lost his sense of right and wrong A man of affairs may not, indeed will not, always steer by that compass; but he must have it aboard. Without it he cannot know how far off the course he is. or how to get back to it. No ship ever reached any port except that of failure and disgrace, unless 1t. in spite of all its tackings before the cross-winds of practical life, kept in the main to the compass and to the course
 His last stagger. was-or seemed to bean attempt to involve us in a war with Germany. 1 say seemed to be" because l hesitate to ascribe project as infamous to him, even when un- balanced by despair The first ugly dispatch he ordered his Goodrich secretary of state to send, somehow leaked to the newspapers before it could be put into cipher for trans mission. It was not sent-for from the press of the entire country rose a clamor against deliberate provoca- tion of a nation with which We are, and wish to remain, at peace" He repudiated the dispatch and dismissed the secretary of state in disgrace to disgrace-the one stroke in his fight against Goodrich in which he got the advantage. But that advantage was too small, too doubtful and too late.
 His name was not presented to the convention.