Democracy in the making (dedikált példány) [antikvár]

CHAPTER I "Disaster Hath Ruined Us" 1Robert J. Walker, destined maker of one president^ and close adviser of three others, sat in his law office at Natchez thinking.It was an old custom of his, derived from undergraduate days at the University of Pennsylvania. With feet up on a desk, he frequently took time off to get his personal and political bearings; always the two seemed to go together. Even his law practice had been built up looking to a day whenBut, oddly enough, that day had already come. And it was loaded with disaster. March 1, 1834, was a day of decision.For the first time in his thirty-three years, Robert J. Walker knew the meaning of fearnot just passing, isolated fear, the kind that comes to all men at intervals, but a demoralizing, unreasoning fear, born of the annihilation of reality, the collapse of things tangible. Yet outwardly no sign was visible of the storm within.It was a balmy spring day, such as Natchez knows in March. From the window of his ground-floor law office, young Walker could see the trees just beginning to turn green in the courthouse yard. Beyond, idle figures were shifting about in the square. It was a curious sight for one13