“I doubt if he would shine under those circumstances. But never mind him. He spoke, for once, without due reflection, and with perhaps an exaggerated remembrance of your school-day offenses. What happened when you went to Washington?”
“A strange thing happened. When I was admitted to the senator’s library, I saw another fellow, whom I thought I knew, sitting there. I said to the senator: ‘I will come when you are alone.’ The senator looked up in surprise, and said: ‘I am alone.’ I didn’t say anything, but went on with my interview; and the other fellow took notes all the time. I didn’t like this, but said nothing, for the senator is not a man to offend, and it is by not offending these fellows that I can get the information I do. Well, the other fellow came out with me, and as I looked at him I saw that he was myself. This did not strike me as strange at the time, but I argued with him all the way to New York, and tried to show him that he wasn’t treating me fairly. I wrote up the interview, with the other fellow interfering all the while, so I compromised, and half the time put in what he suggested, and half the time what I wanted in myself. When the political editor went over the stuff, he looked alarmed. I told him frankly just how I had been interfered with, and he looked none the less alarmed when I had finished. He sent at once for a doctor. The doctor metaphorically took me to pieces, and then said to my chief: ‘This man is simply worked to death. He must have a vacation, and a real one, with absolutely nothing to think of, or he is going to collapse, and that with a suddenness which will surprise everybody.’ The chief, to my astonishment, consented without a murmur, and even upbraided me for not going away sooner. Then the doctor said to me: ‘You get some companion--some man with no brains, if possible, who will not discuss politics, who has no opinion on anything that any sane man would care to talk about, and who couldn’t say a bright thing if he tried for a year. Get such a man to go off to the woods somewhere. Up in Maine or in Canada. As far away from post offices and telegraph offices as possible. And, by the way, don’t leave your address at the _Argus_ office.’ Thus it happened, Stilly, when he described this man so graphically, I at once thought of you.”