This is the moment when the two whited sepulchres at either end of the Avenue reek with the thick atmosphere of bargain and sale.

The old is going; the new is coming.

Wealth, office, power are at auction.

Who bids highest?
who hates with most venom?
who intrigues with most skill?
who has done the dirtiest, the meanest, the darkest, and the most, political work?
He shall have his reward.
Senator Ratcliffe was absorbed and ill at ease.

A swarm of applicants for office dogged his steps and beleaguered his rooms in quest of his endorsement of their paper characters.