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Over the past few years he had slowly modified his regimen of living to conform to the requirements of his age; he did this without hesitation or regret, for he was a realist who meant to keep alive for some time to come, and he knew that at his time of life the list of permissible pleasures dwindled steadily, year by year.
The morning poetry reading, regarded with rage by his enemies, had been championed by his supporters: they saw the habit as an awesome and barely attainable ideal, like celibacy or telling the truth, and they were proud of Skeffington for his dedication to it.
He had no high opinion of the intelligence of the electorate, but experience had taught him that it quite adequately grasped the fact that all successful political activity was based on quid pro quo
“He seemed pretty unbelievable. I don’t think I really understood just why he was given the keys to the city.” “A courteous gesture towards the distinguished visitor. A time-hallowed custom,” Skeffington said urbanely, “although the word distinguished now takes in somewhat more territory than it did years ago. A necessary concession to the spirit of the times; even the British Government has been forced to give in to it. Their last knight over there was a jockey. Our problem is essentially the same, only instead of handing out knighthoods, we distribute keys. We used to give them to General
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In those days he was quite a good political writer; he had all the qualifications: full of innuendo and damaging hints, careless about little things like facts, not too scrupulous.
I hope, incidentally, you don’t think I’m prejudiced against the gentlemen of the Fourth Estate?” Adam smiled. “I wouldn’t say that they were among your favorite people.” “They’re not bad fellows,” Skeffington said, “but they write. In this city they write mostly about me, and one of the great advantages to reading a story about yourself is that you’re in a pretty good position to check on the facts. I must say the most of our journalists don’t seem to be too strong on facts; no doubt they have an occupational distrust of them.
Anyway, the years went by and as they did Caleb kept getting littler; in his final years the man weighed almost nothing at all. For his own good the family eventually had to put him on a leash. You see, he was in the habit of taking a morning walk down by the river, and this got to be dangerous: gusts of wind would blow him into the water, where he’d thrash around, screaming for help. Humanitarian strangers kept pulling him out. The family was sensible enough to realize this kind of luck couldn’t possibly last. Sooner or later he’d be blown in and there’d be no one around but people who knew
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His voice seemed to originate somewhere high in the back of his long, chalky head, and to emerge, finally, through his nostrils; it was like the ceaseless hum of some articulate bee.
He was not a bad man, but he was worse: he was a self-made one.
A lifetime spent on the politely savage battleground of his profession had given him a high opinion of silence and self-control as tactical weapons.
“Was he a Ku Kluxer?” Gorman said. “That I didn’t know.” “Not many people do, including the people who gave him a Brotherhood award last winter. But he was, about thirty years ago. I never did know why he quit, exactly: I always suspected it was because he found out he was expected to buy his own sheet. Little things like that can drive a man to Tolerance.
“they suddenly discovered two things about Charlie. First, that he was honest, and second, that he was crazy. It was the combination that killed him. Theoretically at least, an honest man can succeed in politics; and there’s a considerable body of evidence to prove that a crazy man can. But a man who’s both honest and crazy might just as well be a Chinese midget for all the good he’ll do himself at the polls.”
They’re so honest! I mean, they’re so serious about being honest. And they’re always so right. About everything, not just politics. There’s this one little professor with a funny head: he’s right all the time. About politics, and television comedians, and movies and the right way to feed babies. Jack says he’s very bright. But he’s just so serious and so right and so angry about being right.
it doesn’t do to go poking too deeply into our most valuable traditions.”
And it seems to me, now, that to have lived a long life, to have left the lot of many of those around you a little bit better than it once was, to have been genuinely loved by a great many people, and to have died in God’s good grace, is no small thing to have happened to any man.
