Weed. The trait
that astounded and confounded cynicism was his apparent
unselfishness. Never, in any man who wielded such power, did
Adams meet anything like it. The effect of power and publicity on
all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by
killing the victim's sympathies; a diseased appetite, like a
passion for drink or perverted tastes; one can scarcely use
expressions too strong to describe the violence of egotism it
stimulates; and Thurlow Weed was one of the exceptions; a rare
immune. He thought apparently not of himself, but of the person
he was talking with. He held himself naturally in the background.
He was not jealous. He grasped power, but not office. He
distributed offices by handfuls without caring to take them. He
had the instinct of empire: he gave, but he did not receive. This
rare superiority to the politicians he controlled, a trait that
private secretaries never met in the politicians themselves,
excited Adams's wonder and curiosity, but when he tried to get
behind it, and to educate himself from the stores of Mr. Weed's
experience, he found the study still more fascinating. Management
was an instinct with Mr. Weed; an object to be pursued for its
own sake, as one plays cards; but he appeared to play with men as
though they were only cards; he seemed incapable of feeling
himself one of them.
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