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Paxton Hibben was a smal cantankerous boy, son

of one of the best families (the Hibbens had a whole-sale dry goods business in Indianapolis); in school the rich kids didn't like him because he went around with the poor kids and the poor kids didn't like him because his folks were rich,

but he was the star pupil of Short Ridge High

ran the paper,

won al the debates.

At Princeton he was the young col egian, editor

of the Tiger, drank a lot, didn't deny that he ran around after girls, made a bril iant scholastic record and was a thorn in the flesh of the godly. The natural course for a bright young man of his class and position was to study law, but Hibben wanted travel and romance á la Byron and de Musset,

wel groomed adventures in foreign lands,

so

as his family was one of the best in Indiana and

friendly with Senator Beveridge he was gotten a post in the diplomatic service: 3rd see and 2nd see American Embassy St. Peters- burg and Mexico City 1905-6, see Legation and Chargé

d'affaires, Bogotá, Colombia, 1908-9; Then Hague and

-179- Luxemburg 1909-12, Santiago de Chile 1912 (re- tired). Pushkin for de Musset; St. Petersburg was a young

dude's romance:

goldencrusted spires under a platinum sky,

the icegrey Neva flowing swift and deep under

bridges that jingled with sleighbel s;

riding home from the Islands with the Grand

Duke's mistress, the most beautiful most amorous singer of Neapolitan streetsongs; staking a pile of rubles in a tal room glittering

with chandeliers, monocles, diamonds dripped on white shoulders;

white snow, white tableclothes, white sheets,

Kakhetian wine, vodka fresh as newmown hay,

Astrakhan caviar, sturgeon, Finnish salmon, Lapland ptarmigan, and the most beautiful women in the world; but it was 1905, Hibben left the embassy one night and saw a flare of red against the trampled snow of the Nevsky

and red flags,

blood frozen in the ruts, blood trickling down the

cartracks;

he saw the machineguns on the balconies of the

Winter Palace, the cossacks charging the unarmed

crowds that wanted peace and food and a little freedom, heard the throaty roar of the Russian Marseil aise; some stubborn streak in the old American blood

flared in revolt, he walked the streets al night with the revolutionists, got in wrong at the embassy

and was transferred to Mexico City where there

was no revolution yet, only peons and priests and the stil ness of the great volcanos. The Cientificos made him a member of the jockey

Club

-180-where in the magnificent building of blue Puebla tile he lost al his money at roulette and helped them drink up the last few cases of champagne left over from the plunder of Cortez.

Chargé d'Affaires in Colombia (he never forgot

he owed his career to Beveridge; he believed passion-ately in Roosevelt, and righteousness and reform, and the antitrust laws, the Big Stick that was going to scare away the grafters and malefactors of great wealth and get the common man his due) he helped wangle the

revolution that stole the canal zone from the bishop of Bogotá later he stuck up for Roosevelt in the Pulitzer libel suit; he was a progressive, believed in the Canal and T.R. He was shunted to the Hague where he went to

sleep during the vague deliberations of the Interna-tional Tribunal. In 1912 he resigned from the Diplomatic Service

and went home to campaign for Roosevelt,

got to Chicago in time to hear them singing On-ward Christian Soldiers at the convention in the Colos-seum; in the closepacked voices and the cheers, he heard the trample of in the Colos-seum; in the closepacked voices and the cheers, he heard the trample of the Russian Marseil aise, the

sul en silence of Mexican peons, Colombian Indians

waiting for a deliverer, in the reverberance of the hymn he heard the measured cadences of the Declaration of Independence.

The talk of social justice petered out; T.R. was

a windbag like the rest of 'em, the Bul Moose was

stuffed with the same sawdust as the G.O.P.

Paxton Hibben ran for Congress as a progressive