They at least seemed to love their fellow men.

Each had been tried by many adventures.

Each had gone, as it were, "through the flint mill." Born to good conditions--Mr.Blaine sprang from aristocratic forebears--each knew by early albeit brief experience the seamy side of life; as each, like Clay, nursed a consuming passion for the presidency.

Neither had been made for a subaltern, and they chafed under the subaltern yoke to which fate had condemned them.
II In Grover Cleveland a total stranger had arrived at the front of affairs.

The Democrats, after a rule of more than half a century, had been out of power twenty-four years.