Page:Despotism and democracy; a study in Washington society and politics (IA despotismdemocra00seawiala).pdf/153

 aloud for the poor who are born to suffer and to die, and to have helped them she would cheerfully have given the very clothes off her back. But cowardice kept her silent, as it kept her silent in the presence of her servants, whom she feared inexpressibly.

If Mrs. Baldwin was constitutionally timid, not so Eleanor. All the courage of her father had gone into his willowy, beautiful, well-groomed daughter. Her first recollections were of the inland town where they lived secluded in their big house, because nobody was good enough for them to associate with after their fortune was made. Then she was taken to Europe and returned a finished product, with no more notion of what the word "American" meant than if she had been a daughter of the Hapsburgs. As a compromise between Europe and America, Baldwin had pitched upon Washington as a place of residence. His social status had been agreeably fixed by a lucky accident—he had been asked to be pall-bearer for a foreign Minister who died in Washington. Baldwin rightly considered the dead diplomat worth, to him, all the live ones going; for, having assisted