letter, and us gone," he cackled with the garrulous glee of a child
recounting successful mischief; "made me think of the times when you was
little and I stole you away for the circus. Once, your pa thought you
was lost--'member? And once, you had on your school dress and you'd tore
it--she did scold you that time. But we had fun when they used to let me
have money, didn't we, Jenny?"
"Well, now I earn money, we have good times, too, grandpa," said Jenny,
smiling the same tender, comprehending smile.
"We do that; I don't know what I would do 'cept for you, lambie, and
this is--this is a grand time, Jenny, you look and listen; it's a great
thing to see a nation making its principles and its president--and such
a president!"
He half turned his head as he spoke, with a mounting enthusiasm, thus
bringing his flushing face and eager eyes--no longer dim--into the focus
of his next neighbor's bright gray eyes. The neighbor was a young man,
not very young, but hardly to be called elderly, of an alert bearing and
kindly smile.
"I think him a pretty fair man myself," said the other with a jocose
understatement; "I come from his town."
What was there in such a simple statement to bring a distinctly anxious
look into the young girl's soft eyes? There it was; one could not
mistake it.
"Well!" said the old man: there was a flattering deference in his voice.
"Well, well. And--and maybe you've seen him lately?" The quavering
tones sharpened with a keener feeling; it was almost as if the man were
inquiring for some one on whom he had a great stake of affection. "How
did he look? Was he better, stronger?"
"Oh, he looked elegant," said the Ohio man, easily, but with a
disconcerted side glance at the girl whose eyes were imploring him.
"I've been a Blaine man ever since he was run the time Bob Ingersoll
nominated him," said the old man, who sighed as if relieved. "I was at
that convention and heard the speech--"
"Ah, that was a speech to hear," said a man behind, and two or three men
edged their heads nearer.
The old Republican straightened his bent shoulders, his winter-stung
features softened and warmed at the manifestation of interest, his voice
sank to the confidential undertone of the narrator.
"You're right, sir, right; it was a magnificent speech. I can see him
jest as he stood there, a stoutish, good-looking man, smooth-faced, his
eye straight ahead, and an alternate that sat next me--I was an
alternate; I've been an alternate four times; I could have been a
delegate, but I says, 'No, abler men than me are wanting it; I'm willing
to fight in the ranks.' But I wished I had a vote, a free vote that
day, I tell you. The alternate near me, he says, 'You'll hear something
fine now; I've heard him speak.'"
"You did, too, I guess."
"We could hear from the first minute. That kinder fixed our attention.
He had a mellow, rich kind of voice that melted into our ears. We found
ourselves listening and liking him from the first sentence. At first he
was as quiet as a summer breeze, but presently he began to warm up, and
the words flowed out like a stream of jewels. It was electrifying: it
was thrilling, sir; it took us off our feet before we knew it, and when
he came to the climax, those of us that weren't yelling in the aisles
were jumping up and down on our chairs! I know I found myself prancing
up and down on my own hat on a chair, swinging somebody else's hat and
screaming at the top of my voice, with the tears running down my cheeks.
God! sir, there were men there on their feet cheering their throats out
that had to vote against Blaine afterward--had to, because they were
there instructed--no more free will than a checked trunk!" The light
died out of his face. "Yes, sir, a great speech; never so great a
speech, whoever made it; but it did no good, he wasn't nominated, and
when we did nominate him we were cheated out of our victory. Well, we'll
do better this day."
"We will that," said the other man, heartily; "McKinley--"
"You'll excuse me"--the old man struck in with a deprecating air, yet
under the apology something fiercely eager and anxious that glued the
hearer's eyes to his quivering old face--"You'll excuse me. I--I am a
considerable of an invalid and I don't keep the run of things as I used
to. You see, I live with my daughter, and you know how women folks are,
fretting lest things should make you sick, and my girl she worries so,
me reading the papers. Fact is I got a shock once, an awful shock"--he
shivered involuntarily and his dim eyes clouded--"and it worried her
seeing me read. Hadn't ought to; it don't worry Jenny here, who often
gets me a paper, quiet like; but you know how it is with women--it's
easier giving them their head a little--and so I don't see many papers,
and I kinder dropped off. It seems queer, but I don't exactly sense it
about this McKinley. Is he running against Blaine or jest for vice?"
The girl, under some feminine pretext of dropping and reaching for her
handkerchief, threw upward a glance of appeal at the interlocutor.
Hurriedly she stepped into the conversation. "My grandfather read a
false report about--about Mr. Blaine's sickness, and he was not well at
the time, and it brought on a bad attack."
"I understand," said the listener, with a grave nod of his head and
movement of his eyes in the girl's direction.
"But about McKinley?" the old man persisted.
"He's for vice-president," the girl announced, her eyes fixed on the
hesitating man from Canton. I have often admired the intrepid fashion in
which a woman will put her conscience at a moral hedge, while a man of
no finer spiritual fiber will be straining his eyes to find a hole
through which he can crawl.
"McKinley is not opposed to Blaine, is he?" she asked the man.
"The Republican party has no name that is more loved than that of James
G. Blaine," said the man, gravely.
"That's so, that's so!" the old partisan assented eagerly; "to my mind
he's the logical candidate."
The Canton man nodded, and asked if he had ever seen Blaine.
"Once, only once. I was on a delegation sent to wait on him and ask him
to our town to speak--he was in Cincinnati. I held out my hand when my
turn came, and the chairman nearly knocked the breath out of me by
saying, 'Here's the man gave more to our campaign fund and worked harder
than any man in the county, and we all worked hard for you, too.' Well,
Mr. Blaine looked at me. You know the intent way he looks. He has the
most wonderful eyes; look right at you and seem to bore into you like a
gimlet. I felt as if he was looking right down into my soul, and I tell
you I was glad, for I choked up so I couldn't find a word, not a word,
and I was ready and fluent enough in those days, too, I can tell you;
but I stood there filling up, and squeezed his hand and gulped and got
red, like a fool. But he understood. 'I have heard of your loyalty to
Republican principles, Mr. Painter,' says he, in that beautiful voice of
his that was like a violin; and I burst in--I couldn't help it--'It
ain't loyalty to Republican principles, it's to you.' I said that right
out. And he smiled, and said he, 'Well, that's wrong, but it isn't for
me to quarrel with you there, Mr. Painter,' and then they pushed me
along; but twice while the talk was going on I saw him look my way and
caught his eye, and he smiled, and when we were all shaking hands for
good-by he shook hands with a good firm grip, and said he, 'Good-by, Mr.
Painter; I hope we shall meet again.'"
The old man drew a long sigh. "Those few moments paid for everything,"
he said. "I've never seen him since. I've been sick and lost money. I
ain't the man I was. I never shall be put on any delegation again, or be
sent to any convention; but I thought if I could only go once more to a
Republican convention and hear them holler for Blaine, and holler once
more myself, I'd be willinger to die. And I told Tom Hale that, and he
and Jenny raised the money. Yes, Jenny, I'm going to tell--he and Jenny
put off being married a bit so's I could go, and go on plenty of money.
Jenny, she worked a month longer to have plenty, and Tom, he slipped ten
dollars into my hand unbeknown to her, jest as we were going, so I'd
always have a dime to give the waiter or the porter. I was never one of
these hayseed farmers, too stingy to give a colored boy a dime when he'd
done his best. I didn't need no money for badges; I got my old
badges--see!"
He pushed out the lapel of his coat, covered with old-fashioned frayed
bits of tinsel and ribbon, smiling confidently. The girl had flushed
crimson to the rim of her white collar; but there was not a trace of
petulance in her air; and, all at once looking at him, her eyes filled
with tears.
"Tom's an awful good fellow," he said, "an awful good fellow."
"I'm sure of that," said the Canton man, with the frank American
friendliness, making a little bow in Miss Jenny's direction; "but see
here, Mr. Painter, do you come from Izard? Are you the man that saved
the county for the Republicans by mortgaging his farm and then going on
a house-to-house canvass?"
"That's me," the old man acquiesced, blushing with pleasure; "I didn't
think, though, that it was known outside--"
"Things go further than you guess. I'm a newspaper man, and I can tell
you that I shall speak of it again in my paper. Well, I guess they've
got through with their mail, and the platform's coming in."
Thus he brushed aside the old man's agitated thanks.
"One moment," said the old man, "who--who's going to nominate him?"
For the space of an eyeblink the kindly Canton man looked embarrassed,
then he said, briskly: "Foraker, Foraker, of Ohio--he's the principal
one. That's he now, chairman of the committee on resolutions. He's
there, the tall man with the mustache--"
"Isn't that elderly man, with the stoop shoulders and the chin beard and
caved-in face, Teller?" It was a man near me, on the seat behind, who
spoke, tapping the Canton man with his fan, to attract attention;
already the pitiful concerns of the old man who was "a little off" (as I
had heard some one on the seat whisper) were sucked out of notice in the
whirlpool of the approaching political storm.
"Yes, that's Teller," answered the Canton man, his mouth straightening
and growing thin.
"Is it to be a bolt?"
The Canton man nodded, at which the other whistled and communicated the
information to his neighbors, one of whom remarked, "Let 'em bolt and be
damned!" A general, subtle excitement seemed to communicate its
vibrations to all the gallery. Perhaps I should except the old partisan;
he questioned the girl in a whisper, and then, seeming to be satisfied,
watched the strange scene that ensued with an expression of patient
weariness. The girl explained parts of the platform to him and he
assented; it was good Republican doctrine, he said, but what did they
mean with all this talk against the money; were they having trouble with
the mining states again? The Canton man stopped to explain--he certainly
was good-humored.
During the next twenty minutes, filled as they were with savage emotion,
while the galleries, like the floor, were on their chairs yelling,
cheering, brandishing flags and fists and fans and pampas plumes of red,
white and blue at the little band of silver men who marched through the
ranks of their former comrades; he stood, he waved his fan in his feeble
old hand, but he did not shout. "You must excuse me," said he, "I'm all
right on the money question, but I'm saving my voice to shout for
_him_!"
"That's right," said the Canton man; but he cast a backward glance which
said as plainly as a glance can speak, "I wish I were out of this!"
Meanwhile, with an absent but happy smile, the old Blaine man was
beating time to the vast waves of sound that rose and swelled above the
band, above the cheering, above the cries of anger and scorn, the
tremendous chorus that had stiffened men's hearts as they marched to
death and rung through streets filled with armies and thrilled the
waiting hearts at home:
"Three cheers for the red, white and blue!
Three cheers for the red, white and blue!
The army and navy for ever, three cheers for the red, white and
blue!"
But when the chairman had stilled the tumult and made his grim comment,
"There appear to be enough delegates left to transact business," the old
partisan cast his eyes down to the floor with a chuckle. "I can't see
the hole they made, it's so small. Say, ain't he a magnificent
chairman; you can hear every word he says!"
"Bully chairman," said a cheerful "rooter" in the rear, who had enjoyed
the episode more than words can say, and had cheered the passing of
Silver with such choice quotations from popular songs as "_Good-by, my
lover, good-by_," and "_Just mention that you saw me_," and plainly felt
that he, too, had adorned the moment. "I nearly missed coming this
morning, and I wouldn't have missed it for a tenner; they're going to
nominate now."
The old man caught his breath; then he smiled. "I'll help you shout
pretty soon," said he, while he sat down very carefully.
The "rooter," a good-looking young fellow with a Reed button and three
or four gaudy badges decking his crash coat, nodded and tapped his
temple furtively, still retaining his expression of radiant good-nature.
The Canton man nodded and frowned.
I felt that the Canton man need not be afraid. Somehow we were all
tacitly taking care that this poor, bewildered soul should not have its
little dream of loyal, unselfish satisfaction dispelled.
"Ah, my countrymen," I thought, "you do a hundred crazy things, you
crush _les convenances_ under foot, you can be fooled by frantic
visionaries, but how I love you!"
It was Baldwin of Iowa that made the first speech. He was one of the
very few men--I had almost said of the two men--that we in the galleries
had the pleasure of hearing; and we could hear every word.
He began with a glowing tribute to Blaine. At the first sentence our old
man flung his gray head in the air with the gesture of the war horse
when he catches the first, far-off scream of the trumpet. He leaned
forward, his features twitching, his eyes burning; the fan dropped out
of his limp hand; his fingers, rapping his palm, clenched and loosened
themselves unconsciously in an overpowering agitation. His face was
white as marble, with ominous blue shadows: but every muscle was
astrain; his chest expanded; his shoulders drew back; his mouth was as
strong and firm as a young man. For a second we could see what he had
been at his prime.
Then the orator's climax came, and the name--the magic name that was its
own campaign cry in itself.
The old partisan leaped to his feet; he waved his hands above his head;
wild, strange, in his white flame of excitement. He shouted; and we all
shouted with him, the McKinley man and the Reed man vieing with each
other (I here offer my testimony as to the scope and quality of that
young Reed man's voice), and the air rang about us: "Blaine! Blaine!
James G. Blaine!" He shrieked the name again and again, goading into
life the waning applause. Then in an instant his will snapped under the
strain; his gray beard tilted in the air; his gray head went back on his
neck.
The Canton man and I caught him in time to ease the fall. We were helped
to pull him into the aisle. There were four of us by this time, his
granddaughter and the Reed "rooter," besides the Canton man and myself.
We carried him into the wide passageway that led to the seats. The Reed
young man ran for water, and, finding none, quickly returned with a
glass of lemonade (he was a young fellow ready in shifts), and with it
we bathed the old man's face.
Presently he came back, by degrees, to the world; he was not conscious,
but we could see that he was not going to die.
"He'll be all right in no time," declared the Reed man. "You had better
go back and get your seats, and keep mine!"
I assured both men that I could not return for more than a short time,
having an engagement for luncheon.
"That's all right," said the Reed man, turning to the Canton man, "I
ain't shouting when Foraker comes; you are. You go back and keep my
seat; I'll come in later on Hobart."
So the kindly Canton man returned to the convention for which he was
longing, and we remained in our little corner by the window, the young
girl fanning the old man, and the young man on the watch for a boy with
water. He darted after one; and then the girl turned to me.
No one disturbed us. Below the traffic of a great city roared up to us
and a brass band clanged merrily. The crowd hurried past, drawn by the
tidings that "the fight was on," and choked the outlets and suffocated
the galleries.
"He's been that way ever since he read, suddenly, that Blaine was
dead"--she said, lowering her voice to keep it safe from his failing
ears--"he had a kind of a stroke, and ever since he's had the notion
that Blaine was alive and was going to be nominated, and his heart was
set on going here. Mother was afraid; but when--when he cried to go, I
could not help taking him--I didn't know but maybe it might help him; he
was such a smart man and such a good man; and he has had trouble about
mortgaging the farm; and he worked so hard to get the money back, so
mother would feel right. All through the hot weather he worked, and I
guess that's how it happened. You don't think it's hurt him? The doctor
said he might go. He told T--, a gentleman friend of mine who asked
him."
"Oh, dear, no," I exclaimed, "it has been good for him."
I asked for her address, which fortunately was near, and I offered her
the cab that was waiting for me. I had some ado to persuade her to
accept it; but when I pointed to her grandfather's pale face she did
accept it, thanking me in a simple but touching way, and, of course,
begging me to visit her at Izard, Ohio.
All this while we had been sedulously fanning the old man, who would
occasionally open his eyes for a second, but gave no other sign of
returning consciousness.
The young Reed man came back with the water. He was bathing the old
man's forehead in a very skillful and careful way, using my
handkerchief, when an uproar of cheering shook the very floor under us
and the rafters overhead.
"Who is it?" the old man inquired, feebly.
"Foraker! Foraker!" bellowed the crowd.
"He's nominated him!" muttered the old man; but this time he did not
attempt to rise. With a smile of great content he leaned against his
grand-daughter's strong young frame and listened, while the cheers
swelled into a deafening din, an immeasurable tumult of sound, out of
which a few strong voices shaped the chorus of the Battle Cry of
Freedom, to be caught up by fifteen thousand throats and pealed through
the walls far down the city streets to the vast crowd without.
The young Reed "boomer," carried away by the moment, flung his free hand
above his head and yelled defiantly: "Three cheers for the man from
Maine!" Instantly he caught at his wits, his color turned, and he lifted
an abashed face to the young girl.
"But, really, you know, that ain't giving nothing away," he apologized,
plucking up heart. "May I do it again?"
The old partisan's eye lighted. "Now they're shouting! That's like old
times! Yes, do it again, boy! Blaine! Blaine! James G. Blaine!"
He let us lead him to the carriage, the rapturous smile still on his
lips. The "rooter" and I wormed our way through the crowd back to the
seats which the kind Canton man had kept for us.
We were quite like old acquaintances now; and he turned to me at once.
"Was there ever a politician or a statesman, since Henry Clay, loved so
well as James G. Blaine?"
MAX--OR HIS PICTURE
A knock sounded on the principal's door. "That's Florence," she thought;
and she sighed in the same breath. The principal had secretly liked
Florence Raimund, the best of her two hundred girls, for three years;
and, sometimes, she suspected that Florence knew it. Miss Wing sat at
her desk. It was a large desk of oak, always kept in blameless order. No
one could recall seeing more than one letter at a time lying on the
blotter. Any others, yet unread, lay in the wicker tray to the left; the
letters read but not answered were in the wicker tray to the right; the
answered letters were in appropriate pigeonholes or in ashes, Miss Wing
being a firm believer in fire as a confidential agent. Above the desk
hung the most interesting object in the room, to the school-girls; in
fact it would be hard to gage justly the influence this one, mute and
motionless, had over their young imaginations; or how far it was
responsible for the rose-tinted halo that beyond doubt, glorified the
principal for them. The object was a picture, the picture of a young man
in the uniform of a captain in the German cuirassiers. His thick light
hair was brushed back from a fine and candid forehead. A smile creased
his cheek under the warlike curl of his mustachios. It was a smile so
happy and so friendly in its happiness, that it won the beholder. The
eyes were not large, but even in the black and white of a photograph
(the portrait was an ordinary cabinet _carte_) they seemed to sparkle.
The young fellow's figure was superb, and held with a military precision
and jauntiness. One said, looking at the whole presence, "This man is a
good fellow." Viewing him more closely, one might add, "And he is in
love." The picture was framed handsomely in a gilded frame. On the desk
below, an exquisite vase of Venice lifted a single, perfect rose. For
fifteen years a flower had always bloomed thus. Miss Wing had hung the
picture herself, fifteen years ago. Then, she was the new principal, and
the school was but half its size; and the village people exclaimed at
trusting "such a girl" with so much responsibility. During those fifteen
years the new building had been built, the school had grown and
flourished; and the gray had crept into Margaret Wing's bright hair. She
had so often put on mourning for her near kindred that she had assumed
it as her permanent garb. To the certain (and ecstatic) knowledge of the
school, she had refused divers offers of marriage from citizens of good
repute and substance. But during all the changing years, the picture had
kept its place and the fresh flowers had bloomed below. No girl could
remember the desk without the picture; and when the old girls visited
the school, their eyes would instinctively seek it in its old place;
always with a little moving of the heart. Yet no one ever alluded to it
to the principal; and no one, not her most trusted teacher, nor her best
loved pupil, had ever heard the principal speak of it. The name of the
pictured soldier, his story, his relation to Miss Wing; Miss Wing's
nearest kindred and friends knew as much about all these as the
school--and that was nothing. Nevertheless, the school tradition
reported part of a name on the authority of a single incident. Years ago
an accident happened to the picture. It was the principal's custom to
carry it with her on her journeys, however brief; always taking it down
and putting it back in its place herself. On this occasion the floor had
been newly polished, and in hanging the picture her chair on which she
stood slipped and she fell, while the picture dropped out of her grasp.
One of the girls, who was passing, ran to her aid; but she had crawled
toward the picture and would have it in her hands before she allowed the
girl to aid her to rise--a circumstance, you may be sure, not likely to
escape the sharp young eyes. Neither did these same eyes miss the
further circumstance that the jar had shifted the _carte_ in the frame
and a line of writing, hitherto hidden, was staring out at the world.
The hand was the sharp, minute German hand, but the words were English;
the girl took them in at an eyeblink, as she handed the picture to Miss
Wing: "_Thine for ever, Max._" Miss Wing made no comment; perhaps she
supposed that the girl had not seen, perhaps--in any case she was
silent.