MR. CREWE'S CAREER

By Winston Churchill


BOOK 2.




CHAPTER XI

THE HOPPER

It is certainly not the function of a romance to relate, with the
exactness of a House journal, the proceedings of a Legislature. Somebody
has likened the state-house to pioneer Kentucky, a dark and bloody ground
over which the battles of selfish interests ebbed and flowed,--no place
for an innocent and unselfish bystander like Mr. Crewe, who desired only
to make of his State an Utopia; whose measures were for the public good
--not his own. But if any politician were fatuous enough to believe that
Humphrey Crewe was a man to introduce bills and calmly await their fate;
a man who, like Senator Sanderson, only came down to the capital when he
was notified by telegram, that politician was entirely mistaken.

No sooner had his bills been assigned to the careful and just
consideration of the committees in charge of the Honourable Brush Bascom,
Mr. Botcher, and others than Mr. Crewe desired of each a day for a
hearing. Every member of the five hundred was provided with a copy; nay,
nearly every member was personally appealed to, to appear and speak for