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 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:

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