give me the name of the "bright young man" who had deceived him.

However, that "bright young man" remained permanently without a name.
I also asked Mr. Gorman, if he did not wish to give us the name of
his informant, to give us the date of the examination in which he was
supposed to have taken part; and I offered, if he would send down a
representative to look through our files, to give him all the aid we
could in his effort to discover any such questions. But Mr. Gorman, not
hitherto known as a sensitive soul, expressed himself as so shocked
at the thought that the veracity of the "bright young man" should be
doubted that he could not bring himself to answer my letter. So I made
a public statement to the effect that no such questions had ever been
asked. Mr. Gorman brooded over this; and during the next session of
Congress he rose and complained that he had received a very "impudent"
letter from me (my letter was a respectful note calling attention to
the fact that, if he wished, he could by personal examination satisfy
himself that his statements had no foundation in fact). He further
stated that he had been "cruelly" called to account by me because he
had been endeavoring to right a "great wrong" that the Civil Service
Commission had committed; but he never, then or afterwards, furnished
any clue to the identity of that child of his fondest fancy, the bright
young man without a name.[*]

[*] This is a condensation of a speech I at the time made to
the St. Louis Civil Service Reform Association. Senator
Gorman was then the Senate leader of the party that had just
been victorious in the Congressional elections.

The incident is of note chiefly as shedding light on the mental make-up
of the man who at the time was one of the two or three most influential