when we took Farwell Knowles, that we had 'em at last. Fact is, they
did seem stirred up, too. They called it a "moral victory" when we
were forced to nominate Knowles to have any chance of beating
Gorgett. That was because it was _their_ victory.

Farwell Knowles was a young man, about thirty-two, an editorial writer
on the _Herald_, an independent paper. I'd known him all his
life, and his wife--too, a mighty sweet-looking lady she was. I'd
always thought Farwell was kind of a dreamer, and too excitable; he
was always reading papers to literary clubs, and on the speech-making
side he wasn't so bad--he liked it; but he hadn't seemed to me to know
any more about politics and people than a royal family would. He was
always talking about life and writing about corruption, when, all the
time, so it struck me, it was only books he was really interested in;
and he saw things along book lines. Of course he was a tin god,
politically.

He was for "stern virtue" only, and everlastingly lashed compromise
and temporizing; called politicians all the elegant hard names there
are, in every one of his editorials, especially Lafe Gorgett, whom
he'd never seen. He made mighty free with Lafe, referred to him
habitually as "Boodler Gorgett", and never let up on him from one
year's end to another.

I was against our adopting him, not only for our own sakes--because I
knew he'd be a hard man to handle--but for Farwell's too. I'd been a
friend of his father's, and I liked his wife--everybody liked his
wife. But the boys overruled me, and I had to turn in and give it to
him.