European diplomacy, had expected to enter an honorable career in
the press as the champion and confidant of a new Washington, and
already he foresaw a life of wasted energy, sweeping the stables
of American society clear of the endless corruption which his
second Washington was quite certain to breed.

By vigorously shutting one's eyes, as though one were an
Assistant Secretary, a writer for the press might ignore the Erie
scandal, and still help his friends or allies in the Government
who were doing their best to give it an air of decency; but a few
weeks showed that the Erie scandal was a mere incident, a rather
vulgar Wall Street trap, into which, according to one's point of
view Grant had been drawn by Jay Gould, or Jay Gould had been
misled by Grant. One could hardly doubt that both of them were
astonished and disgusted by the result; but neither Jay Gould nor
any other astute American mind -- still less the complex Jew --
could ever have accustomed itself to the incredible and
inexplicable lapses of Grant's intelligence; and perhaps, on the
whole, Gould was the less mischievous victim, if victims they
both were. The same laxity that led Gould into a trap which might
easily have become the penitentiary, led the United States
Senate, the Executive departments and the Judiciary into
confusion, cross-purposes, and ill-temper that would have been
scandalous in a boarding-school of girls. For satirists or
comedians, the study was rich and endless, and they exploited its
corners with happy results, but a young man fresh from the rustic
simplicity of London noticed with horror that the grossest
satires on the American Senator and politician never failed to
excite the laughter and applause of every audience. Rich and poor
joined in throwing contempt on their own representatives. Society