President Sarason immediately began appointing the fancier of his young officer friends to the most responsible offices in State and army. It amused him, seemingly, to shock people by making a pink-cheeked, moist-eyed boy of twenty-five Commissioner of the Federal District, which included Washington and Maryland. Was he not supreme, was he not semi-divine, like a Roman emperor? Could he not defy all the muddy mob that he (once a Socialist) had, for its weak shiftlessness, come to despise?
