Any service he could have done to Mrs. Rivington surely did not
harm him. His purchase of Costell's place pleased the political friends
of the dead leader. His aiding the strikers' families placated the men,
and gained him praise from the press. I dislike greatly to oppose this
rose-colored view of Peter, but, from my own knowledge of the man, I
must. He is without feeling, and necessarily makes no mistakes, nor is
he led off from his own ambitions by sentiment of any kind. When we had
that meeting with the strikers, he sat there, while all New York was
seething, with mobs and dead just outside the walls, as cool and
impassive as a machine. He was simply determined that we should
compromise, because his own interests demanded it, and he carried his
point merely because he was the one cool man at that meeting. If he had
had feeling he could not have been cool. That one incident shows the
key-note of his success."
"And I say his strong sympathies and feeling were the key-note,"
reiterated Dorothy.
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