Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/119



you guess why ? One of them told me what their faith was founded upon.

“We’ll get Colby,” he said. “We’ll get him before the session is over. He wants some thing. Every man wants something. It’s all a matter of finding out what he wants. He may not know what it is himself, but we’ll find out; and he’ll get it and we’ll get him — or his crowd, or both.”

There is no conceit about Colby, no bluster, and when I told him this, he did not clench his fist and set his jaw. He pondered a moment, then he said:

“I wonder if they will.”

Colby knows the tremendous power and the infinite ingenuity of the interests that will oppose him, so he wondered, as you or I may, what is going to happen to him. He is as open-minded to the truth about himself as he is to the truth about corruption, and because he is open-minded, and because he can confess his mistakes when he sees them; because he takes fences as he comes to them, and because he says he “will go any length to put a stop to the corruption of men and government,” it is likely that the Gentleman from Essex will fight to a finish. What the end will be in Jersey, Jerseymen must decide; they will have to watch the struggle and choose between those representatives who represent them