This action, tallying so closely with what his former assistant had
predicted, had bewildered and unsettled West; the continuing silence of
the leaders--"the other leaders," he had found himself saying--had led
him into anxious speculations; and now, in a staggering burst, the
disgraceful truth was revealed to him. They had used him, tricked and
used him like a smooth tool, and having used him, had deliberately
passed him, standing fine and patient in the line, to throw the mantle
over the corrupt and unspeakable Bangor.
By heavens, it was not to be endured. Was it for this that he had left
Blaines College, where a career of honorable usefulness lay before him;
that he had sacrificed personal wishes and ambitions to the insistent
statement that his City and State had need of him; that he had stood ten
months in the line without a murmur; and that at last, confronted with
the necessity of choosing between the wishes of his personal intimates
and the larger good, he had courageously chosen the latter and suffered
in silence the suspicion of having played false with the best friends he
had in the world? Was it for this that he had lost his valuable
assistant, whose place he could never hope to fill?--for this that he
was referred to habitually by an evening contemporary as the Plonny Neal
organ?
He was thoroughly disgusted with newspaper work this morning, disgusted
with the line, disgusted with hopeful efforts to uplift the people.
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