Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/244

 *the history of the Republic is strewn with the wrecks of careers that were broken by a jest—and told him that I had taken my oath of office before a notary public, and that perhaps it had not been of full efficacy on that account.

And then I went away, and forgot the incident. It was revived in my memory, however, and intensified in its interest for me the next morning, when on getting back home, I saw in the newspapers a despatch from Columbus, under the most ominous of black headlines, stating that I had told the distinguished representative, on the very floor of the House, under the aegis, one almost might say, of the state, that I had no reverence for my oath of office, and did not intend to respect it. Here was anarchy for you, indeed, from the old pupil of Altgeld!

It was, of course, useless to explain, since any statement I might make would be but one more welcome knot to the tangle of misrepresentation in which the unhappy incident was being so gladly snarled, and I tried to forget it, though that was impossible, since it provided the text for many a sanctimonious editorial in the land, in each one of which some addition was made to the original report. Herbert Spencer says somewhere that for every story told in the world there is some basis of truth, and I suppose he is right, but I have always felt that he did not, at least in my reading of him, sufficiently characterize that worst vice of the human mind, intellectual dishonesty. Perhaps if he had associated less with scientists and more with profes