The strain was terrific. How was this young man to
main- tain his own simplicity, his own few clear-cut convictions, against the adulation of a whole continent? It was almost with ferocity that he struggled to remain himself. And in the process of that arduous struggle his simplicity became muscle-bound ; his virility-ideal became, not merely inflex- ible, but actually rigid ; his self-confidence thickened into arrogance ; and his convictions hardened into granite. He became impervious to anything outside his own legend— the legend of the lad from Minnesota whose head could not be turned. Then came the murder of his child. The suffering which that dreadful crime entailed upon himself and those he loved did pierce the armour and enforce a change. He emerged from that ordeal with a loathing of publicity which was almost pathological. He identified the outrage to his private life, first with the popular Press, and then, by inevitable associations, wtih freedom of speech and then, almost, with freedom. He began to loathe democracy. * *
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