THE MERCY OF DEATH
By William Allen White
WITH the reporter it was only the matter of a Sunday story. If Congressman Thomas Wharton had not been elected United States Senator the day before, the story that Sunday would have been a sanitary article under the head "A Little Italy is a Dangerous Thing." But with Senator-elect Wharton it was a matter of some moment to have a city reporter come down to one's home on the eight o'clock train in the morning and stay until the six-thirty train in the evening, taking an inventory of one's goods and chattels, intellectual equipment, moral endowment, and previous condition of servitude. In his capacity of cataloguer the reporter made mental note of the masterpieces of art in Wharton's library—the campaign picture of Blaine and Logan, a dust-stained steel engraving representing the Lincoln family, apparently glued about a marble-topped centre-table; also portraits of Hereford royalty by Cecil Palmer, and of Berkshire royalty of unknown artisanship. During the morning Wharton took the reporter over the wide, tame grass fields and showed off the royal originals.
As the two men walked in the fields Wharton explained that his father was a Pennsylvanian and his mother pure-bred Donegal Irish. While he was relating the details of his early life, his struggles for an education with the appurtenances of the log school-house, the pine-knot and the blue Webster Speller, the reporter was condensing the narrative into a paragraph in which the phrase "the short and simple annals of the poor" should find a place.
After the noonday dinner, and when the reporter had secured photographs of Mrs. Wharton and of the children—the two married daughters in the little town of Baxter, the daughter in the high-school, and the boy who was running the farm—also five likenesses of Wharton, including an army daguerreotype, the newly made senator was in a talkative mood. He was sprawling, rather than sitting, in a huge leather chair in front of the fire; his feet were wide apart. One hand kept ruffing his iron-gray hair, the other hand held a cigar. As he talked the reporter wondered just how much of Wharton's double chin and crescent-shaped vest the managing editor would leave in the copy if the reporter told the truth about them. Wharton was saying:
"The trouble with the East is, they're getting flabby. They don't get enough hard knocks. Take the Eastern fellows in Congress. Why, not one in ten of the younger set ever went barefooted. They've lived in steam-heated flats and ridden around in street-cars all their lives. They can't stick to a fight. They're what you fellows call effete. Look at the pickle that Harvard puts on a boy. You can spot a boy from Harvard as far as you can see him. He has a kind of highty-tighty air, sniffs at his country, and tolerates his universe. If I ever had a boy come home with that Harvard pickle on him I'd put him into the chamber-work department of a livery stable till he got so he could say his prayers and take off his hat to the flag."
Wharton threw a leg over the low arm of his chair, opened his half-shut eyes, grinned at the reporter, and added:
"Don't you put that in the paper. There's a little bunch of Harvard in the Senate, and I may need it in my business." The reporter assented and Wharton cut in with:
"Yep, son, sugar catches more flies than vinegar."
"Do you want to talk Civil Service, Senator?" questioned the reporter, as he mentally stored away Wharton's epigram to use in some other part of the interview.
Wharton rose and paced the room twice, with his cigar in his teeth and his hands deep in his trousers pockets.
"I dunno—anything wrong with this: say that the thing that threatens this country is political apathy. Citizens pay too
