behind the public smile; the private What-in-hell-did-I-come-for."
With less bitterness Mr. Dooley—in 1897, the year of Queen Victoria's jubilee—testifies to the same effect in summarizing the achievements of his own time in America:
While she was lookin' on in England, I was lookin' on in this counthry. I have seen America spread out fr'm th' Atlantic to th' Pacific, with a branch office iv th' Standard Ile Comp'ny in ivry hamlet. I've seen th' shackles dropped fr'm th' slave, so's he cud be lynched in Ohio. . . an' Corbett beat Sullivan, an' Fitz beat Corbett . . . An' th' invintions . . . th' cotton gin an' th' gin sour an' th' bicycle an' th' flying machine an' th' nickle-in-th'-slot machine an' th' Croker machine an' th' sody fountain an'—crownin' wurruk iy our civilization—th' cash raygister.
It would be easy to multiply illustrations of the effect of this busy but mercenary and humdrum national mind upon the finer spirits in the political arena. John Hay, for example, as Secretary of State under McKinley, seems to have gone earnestly about his work, suppressing now a yawn of disgust, now a sigh of despair. "Office holding per se," he writes in 1900, "has no attraction for me." He has some far-sighted policies for his department, but he can't put them through, for "there will always be 34 per cent of the Senate on the blackguard side of every question that comes before them." Even more of this quiet disgust with American public
