The Gilded Age


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CHAPTER LIII.  
The session was drawing toward its close. Senator Dilworthy thought he  
would run out west and shake hands with his constituents and let them  
look at him. The legislature whose duty it would be to re-elect him to  
the United States Senate, was already in session. Mr. Dilworthy  
considered his re-election certain, but he was a careful, painstaking  
man, and if, by visiting his State he could find the opportunity to  
persuade a few more legislators to vote for him, he held the journey to  
be well worth taking. The University bill was safe, now; he could leave  
it without fear; it needed his presence and his watching no longer.  
But there was a person in his State legislature who did need watching  
-
-a person who, Senator Dilworthy said, was a narrow, grumbling,  
uncomfortable malcontent--a person who was stolidly opposed to reform,  
and progress and him,--a person who, he feared, had been bought with  
money to combat him, and through him the commonwealth's welfare and its  
politics' purity.  
"If this person Noble," said Mr. Dilworthy, in a little speech at a  
dinner party given him by some of his admirers, "merely desired to  
sacrifice me.--I would willingly offer up my political life on the altar  
of my dear State's weal, I would be glad and grateful to do it; but when  
he makes of me but a cloak to hide his deeper designs, when he proposes  
to strike through me at the heart of my beloved State, all the lion in me  
is roused--and I say here I stand, solitary and alone, but unflinching,  
unquailing, thrice armed with my sacred trust; and whoso passes, to do  
562  


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560 561 562 563 564

Quick Jump
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