"No, damn you," he said. "It's not!"
I cannot let him finish on that uncontrolled phrase,
though it will be acknowledged that his provocation was
great. Nor must we leave him in heavy captivity to the
thought of oblivion in the unregarding welter of the near
republic, of plunging into more strenuous activities and
abandoning his ideal, in queer inverted analogy to the
refuging of weak women in a convent. We know that his
ideal was strong enough to reassert itself, under a keen
irony of suggestion, in the very depth of his overwhelming:
and the thing that could rise in him at that black moment
may be trusted, perhaps, to reclaim his fortitude and
reconsecrate his energy when these things come again into
the full current of his life. The illness that, after
two or three lagging days, brought him its merciful
physical distraction was laid in the general understanding
at the door of his political disappointment; and, among
a crowd of sympathizers confined to no party, Horace
Williams, as his wife expressed it, was pretty nearly
wild during its progress. The power of the press is
regrettably small in such emergencies, but what restoration
it had Horace anxiously administered; the Express published
a daily bulletin. The second election passed only
half-noticed by the Murchison family; Carter very nearly
re-established the Liberal majority.
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