AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN
that has steadily taken place for many years, of the destruction of the authority of the states and the concentration of all power in Washington. This tendency meant that in the end, after the national government has become top-heavy, some man with the impulses and lack of self-restraint of Roosevelt will stay there continuously. To me the situation seemed to be propitious. It is very doubtful whether the like of it had ever occurred in an American state before. A man had been chosen for governor whose associations with the state took him back to the settlement, whose studies had made him familiar with the growth of its institutions, whose training had been in a profession which ought to have prepared him for carefulness in deliberation and circumspection in action, and whose habits had been such as fairly to insure propriety of conduct. Moreover, he had been elected without seeking the office, without having paid any money to secure it and without having been tied up with promises and obligations which might interfere with the performance of his duties. He came to the office, therefore, with no other purpose than to endeavor to advance the interests of the state. The situation was emphasized by the fact that contemporaneously Massachusetts chose a governor, William L. Douglass, who put his face, as an advertisement for the sale of shoes, in every available place in the country and whose purpose in securing the office appeared to be to use his influence in lowering the duties on hides; and that New York, a few years later, elected as Governor, William Sulzer, an uncleanly outcome of the slums, who had to be removed by impeachment. There are two essentials, however, to a full harvest: good seed and favorable conditions. No poet ever arises until there is sufficient literary development about him to appreciate what he writes. Rembrandt paints no portraits until the time comes when there is a desire for the expression of art. No Vanderbilt constructs a fortune on the island of Juan Fernandez, no statesman ever appears among a people until
