So they'd better hustle to get solid with me." In the two years since he had seen Craig, Arkwright had almost forgotten his habit of bragging and blowing about himself--what he had done, what he was going to do.

The newspapers, the clippings Josh sent him, had kept him informed of the young Minnesotan's steady, rapid rise in politics; and whenever he recalled the absurd boasting that had made him feel Craig would never come to anything, he assumed it was a weakness of youth and inexperience which had, no doubt, been conquered.

But, no; here was the same old, conceited Josh, as crudely and vulgarly self-confident as when he was twenty-five and just starting at the law in a country town.

Yet Arkwright could not but admit there had been more than a grain of truth in Craig's former self-laudations, that there was in victories won a certain excuse for his confidence about the future.
This young man, not much beyond thirty, with a personality so positive and so rough that he made enemies right and left, rousing the envy of men to fear that here was an ambition which must be downed or it would become a tyranny over them--this young man, by skill at politics and by sympathetic power with people in the mass, had already compelled a President who didn't like him to appoint him to the chief post under an Attorney-General who detested him.
"How are you getting on with the Attorney-General ?" asked Arkwright, as they set out in his electric brougham.
"He's getting on with me much better," replied Craig, "now that he has learned not to trifle with me." "Stillwater is said to be a pretty big man," said Arkwright warningly.
"The bigger the man, the easier to frighten," replied Josh carelessly, "because the more he's got to lose.

But it's a waste of time to talk politics to you.