I guess I've been what you might call kind of an assistant boss pretty
much all my life; at least, ever since I could vote; and I was
something of a ward-heeler even before that. I don't suppose there's
any way a man of my disposition could have put in his time to less
advantage and greater cost to himself. I've never got a thing by it,
all these years, not a job, not a penny--nothing but injury to my
business and trouble with my wife. _She_ begins going for me,
first of every campaign.

Yet I just can't seem to keep out of it. It takes a hold on a man that
I never could get away from; and when I reach my second childhood and
the boys have turned me out, I reckon I'll potter along trying to look
knowing and secretive, like the rest of the has-beens, letting on as
if I still had a place inside. Lord, if I'd put in the energy at my
business that I've frittered away on small politics! But what's the
use thinking about it?

Plenty of men go to pot horse-racing and stock gambling; and I guess
this has just been my way of working off some of my nature in another
fashion. There's a good many like me, too; not out for office or
contracts, nor anything that you can put your finger on in
particular--nothing except the _game_. Of course, it's a
pleasure, knowing you've got more influence than some, but I believe
the most you ever get out of it is in being able to help your friends,
to get a man you like a job, or a good contract, something he wants,
when he needs it.

I tell you _then's_ when you feel satisfied, and your time don't