He was quite out of sympathy with it.
He hated the sight of his tobacco-chewing, newspaper-reading satellites, with their hats tipped at every angle except the right one, and their feet everywhere except on the floor.

Their conversation bored him and their presence was a nuisance.

He would not submit to this slavery longer.

He would have given his Senatorship for a civilized house like Mrs.Lee's, with a woman like Mrs.Lee at its head, and twenty thousand a year for life.

He smiled his only smile that evening when he thought how rapidly she would rout every man Jack of his political following out of her parlours, and how meekly they would submit to banishment into a back-office with an oil-cloth carpet and two cane chairs.
He felt that Mrs.Lee was more necessary to him than the Presidency itself; he could not go on without her; he needed human companionship; some Christian comfort for his old age; some avenue of communication with that social world, which made his present surroundings look cold and foul; some touch of that refinement of mind and morals beside which his own seemed coarse.