"You never had a doubt in your own mind that the position taken was in perfect accordance with justice and common sense?" I ventured.
"Never for a moment. Men, you see, being creatures of use and wont, are naturally bound up in old traditions. While every court which had ever considered the question had decided one way, we had been used to the other. Fortunately for the country, there was no wavering in our ranks."
"But how did you feel," said I, "when the uproar was at its worst, when the members of the minority were raging on the floor together?"
"Just as you would feel," was the reply, "if a big creature were jumping at you, and you knew the exact length and strength of his chain, and were quite sure of the weapon you had in your hands."
This conversation gives a clear insight into the character of Thomas B. Reed. It shows his chief characteristics: manly aggressiveness, an iron will--qualities which friend and foe alike have recognized in him--with a certain serenity of temper, a broadness, a bigness of horizon which only the men who have been brought into personal contact with him fully appreciate.
Standing, as he does, in the foremost rank of public men, one of the leaders of his party, the public has certainly a right to know something of the man. First of all, one thing about him has to be emphasized; he lacks one of the traits that popular leaders too often possess. He cannot be all things to all men. He is bound to be true to his personal convictions, and he is not the man to vote for a measure he detests, because his constituents clamor for it. Every one knows how public men have at times voted against their earnest convictions, and then gone into the cloak room and apologized for it; but it would be difficult to imagine a man of Mr. Reed's composition in this rôle.
To judge a man well, to know his best side, it is necessary to see him at home, and I cull from notes made several weeks ago, during a visit to Mr. Reed in Portland.
I found Mr. Reed in a three-story corner brick house, on one of the most sightly spots in town. Over the western walls of that modern, substantial New England home there clambers a mass of Japanese ivy, which, relieving the straightness of the architectural lines, gives a pleasing something, an artistic touch, to the _ensemble_. Its owner having shown his pride in that beautiful ivy, straightway took me to the roof of the house, to admire the superb view of Casco Bay and the picturesque expanse of country around Portland.