crusher.
    But alas, it didn't crush. No, I had to give it up. What those people valued
was high wages; it didn't seem to be a matter of any consequence to them whether
the high wages would buy anything or not. They stood for protection, and swore
by it; which was reasonable enough, because interested parties had gulled them
into the notion that it was protection which had created their high wages. I
proved to them that in a quarter of a century their wages had advanced but 30
per cent, while the cost of living had gone up 100; and that with us, in a
shorter time, wages had advanced 40 per cent while the cost of living had gone
steadily down. But it didn't do any good. Nothing could unseat their strange
beliefs.
    Well, I was smarting under a sense of defeat. Undeserved defeat, but what of
that? That didn't soften the smart any. And to think of the circumstances! the
first statesman of the age, the capablest man, the best informed man in the
entire world, the loftiest uncrowned head that had moved through the clouds of
any political firmament for centuries, sitting here apparently defeated in
argument by an ignorant country blacksmith! And I could see that those others
were sorry for me! - which made me blush till I could smell my whiskers
scorching. Put yourself in my place; feel as mean as I did, as ashamed as I felt
- wouldn't you have struck below the belt, to get even? Yes, you would; it is
simply human nature. Well, that is what I did. I am not trying to justify it;
I'm only saying that I was mad, and anybody would have done it.
    Well, when I make up my mind to hit a man, I don't plan out a love-tap; no,
that isn't my way; as long as I'm going to hit him at all, I'm going to hit him
a lifter. And I don't jump at him all of a sudden, and risk making a blundering
half-way business of it; no, I get away off yonder to one side, and work up on
him gradually, so that he never suspects that I'm going to hit him at all; and
by and by, all in a flash, he's flat of his back, and he can't tell for the life
of him how it all happened. That is the way I went