rule three, which prohibits smoking in the hall of the house. The chair
dislikes to be compelled to repeat this admonition so frequently, and
trusts that gentlemen will observe the injunction without additional
suggestion. The clerk will proceed with the calling of the roll.’ And
he smashed the broken sounding-board again with his gavel. We needed
time. Some of the members laughed, but that only gave ’Zeke a chance
to gain more time by rapping for order. We feared the effect, however,
on discipline. Then he called Brisbane, one of our fellows, and he
didn’t vote. I grew uneasy, and Judge Hardin was squirming there beside
me on the lounge. When I thought of Berry I grew mad, and wondered if
we could save the bill without him. At that instant my eye happened
to light upon Henderson of Greene. He was standing under the gallery
just as he had been standing all evening. He seemed not to have moved.
He had his hands clasped awkwardly behind him, and was chewing his
tobacco contemplatively. And here was my chance! I thought of the
pathetic biography in the house directory. I thought of his wife as
I had seen the poor old thing going around town with him the week
before. I thought of the way he had worked and toiled for her and all
those children, and how little life held for him. If I could get him
for the bill in Berry’s place, the Chicago people, I knew, would be
liberal with him, and he could go back home better off in a financial
way than when he came. And so I motioned to Burke, and when he came up
I told him to ask the gentleman from Greene to meet me at once in the
speaker’s room, and I retired to await him. Presently, in his clumsy
way, he shuffled in. He came close up to me, and when I had given the
poor devil a cigar he bent over to hear what I might have to say. I
asked him how he was going to vote on the bill, and he said he thought
he would vote against it, inasmuch as the governor had said it was a
bad piece of legislation. Well, there was no time to discuss that phase
of the question.
“‘Look here, comrade,’ I said, ‘this is a bill that concerns Chicago
alone--it does not affect and can not affect you or your constituents
one way or the other, can it?’
“‘No,’ he said; ‘reckon not.’
“‘They don’t even know down in Greene County that there is such a bill,
do they?’
“‘Reckon not,’ he said, ‘leastways I hain’t heerd ary one say nothin’
’bout it.’
“‘Of course you haven’t,’ I said, ‘and what’s more, you never will.
Now, see here,’ I said, ‘I’ll be quite frank with you, for I like
you’--he cast a strange, sidling glance at me, distrustful, like all
farmers--‘for I like you,’ I said, ‘and I want to do something for you.
The men who are promoting this legislation have exactly enough votes
to pass it over the governor’s veto, and it’s going to pass. On this
ballot they will have just ninety-one votes--one of their men will
vote against it to move a reconsideration if necessary, and about ten
will not vote. When the absentees are called, these ten will vote for
the bill, and on the verification, you’ll see others tumbling into the
band-wagon. Now, your vote is not needed, as you see, and, cast for the
bill or against it, can have no appreciable effect upon the result. The
bill will pass without your vote, and you can not defeat it, for the
hundred and two will stand firm in the end. One of them, however--it
is Berry, I don’t mind telling you--is trying, at the last minute, to
force us into raising his price. You can take his place, you can have
his price of the easy money with his raise added, if you will go out
there and vote for the bill.’
“He stood looking at the floor, ruminating.
“‘I know, Henderson,’ I continued, ‘that you are a poor man, that you
have a large family, that you have to work hard for a living. You are
going home to-morrow, maybe not to come back here any more, and you can
go if you wish, with three thousand dollars clean, cold cash in your
pocket. What do you say?’
“The old man turned his face away and began to fumble with his horny
fingers at his chin. His hand trembled as with a palsy. We could hear
the roll-call going on outside:
“‘Donavin!’
“‘Aye!’
“‘Donnelly!’
“‘Aye!’
“‘Evans!’
“‘No!’
“‘Finerty!’
“‘Aye!’
“‘Fitzmeyer!’
“‘Aye!’
“‘Flanigan!’
“‘Aye!’
“‘Hear them?’ I said. ‘It’s nearly up to you--what do you say?’
“The old man’s lips quivered, and his calloused fingers grated in his
beard. He opened his lips to speak, but his jaw moved helplessly. And
we heard Hen’s voice back there in the house calling--calling so that
you could have heard him over in the Leland bar-room:
“‘Geisbach!’
“‘No!’
“‘He is one of those who will change,’ I said.
“‘Giger!’
“There was no response. ‘He’ll be all right when they call the
absentees,’ I said.
“‘Gordon!’
“‘No!’
“‘Griesheimer!’
“‘Aye!’
“‘Hear them?’ I asked. The H’s came next, and the old man, still
fumbling with his chin, and without turning his head began to talk:
“‘Baldwin,’ he said, ‘you’re right. I am a poor man. I have a wife an’
eight children. To-morrow I’m goin’ back home, an’ o’ Monday I’m goin’
to hunt a job--hunt a job in the harves’ field. I’ve worked hard all my
life. I ’spect to work hard all my life. I’ll keep on huntin’ jobs in
the harves’ fields. I’ll probably die in the poor-house. I’ll be buried
in the potter’s field. God knows what’ll become of that woman and them
children.’
“He nodded his head as in assent to an indisputable proposition, and
his eyes widened as if in fright. They were looking down the barren
years before him, and I felt in that moment glad of my power to
brighten them.
“‘Hallen!’ we heard Hen call.
“‘No!’
“‘Henderson of Effingham.’
“‘Aye!’
“The old man straightened out his long, lank figure, and then suddenly
he turned and looked me in the eyes.
“‘But, Baldwin,’ he said, ‘I come here last January an honest man,
and to-morrow I’m goin’ back, back to ol’ Greene, back to my people,
back to that woman an’ them children, an’ Baldwin’--he gulped the
word--‘Baldwin, I’m goin’ back an honest man.’
“‘Henderson of Greene!’ Hen’s voice called, and the old man stalked
into the corridor and thundered ‘No!’ in a trumpet note.”
The lobbyist ceased. The train had stopped at Chenoa, and they could
hear the breathing of the engine, breathing as a living thing when it
rests. The noise ceased presently, and the silence of the wide country
night ensued. They heard only the notes that came from the throats of
frogs, and the stridulent drumming of the cicadæ. Baldwin looked at
the two politicians, expecting some comment. The oscitant Healy looked
out of the window, into the vast darkness brooding over the prairie
town. Jennings sat meditatively pulling at his moist mustache, an
expression of perplexity in his countenance, the wrinkles of increasing
concentration of mind gathering in his brow. Presently, without a word,
he rose and left the compartment. When he returned he was treading in
his stockings, his coat and waistcoat and collar had been removed, his
suspenders were hanging at his hips. He was evidently preparing for his
berth. Baldwin meanwhile had pressed a button, and sent Gentry, the
aged porter, now in white jacket, for his bag, and laid out on the seat
beside him his pajamas, and a traveler’s case filled with silver toilet
articles. Jennings lifted his own big valise to his knees, and from
its depths drew a bottle, wrapped heavily in a newspaper. He held one
of the heavy little glasses under the faucet of the water-cooler, and
allowed the water to trickle into it. Then, peeling back the paper from
his bottle, he took a long pull from its naked neck, and passed it to
Baldwin. As he did so, his brows still knotted in perplexity, he asked:
“What’d you say that feller’s name was?”
“Henderson.”
“Henderson of Greene, eh?”
“Yes.”
Jennings threw back his head and tilted the water, deadly cold from the
ice and tasting of smoke, into his throat, and when he had rinsed his
mouth, he said, with the happy expression of a man who has resolved a
doubt:
“Oah, yes, John Henderson, of Greene. He lived out at Rabb’s Corners.
Yes, that’s him; the governor ’p’inted him public administrator of
Greene County right after that session.”
The train lurched, and Jennings, bracing himself, wrapped up his bottle
and stowed it carefully away in his valise. And swinging the valise in
one hand and with the other hitching up his trousers, now beginning to
drag at his heels, he stepped away in his stockinged feet to his berth.
Baldwin began to wind his watch, and the Limited, with its three
hundred tons, and its tossing heads full of the schemes of politics,
went careering away on its paper wheels toward the capital of Illinois.
SENATE BILL 578
He was a page in the Illinois legislature--“House Page No. 7,” the
bright metal badge on the lapel of his little coat said--and all day
long he heard nothing but “Here, boy!” from city members, or “Hey,
bub!” from country members, or “Hi, there, kid!” from the other pages,
or “Get a move on you, Seven!” as the chief page snapped his fingers
at him in his lordly way. His real name was James, but he never heard
that, now that his father was dead. His mother called him Jamie.
Jamie was kept very busy and yet he enjoyed his legislative duties. He
felt that it was a big thing to help, even in his humble little way,
to make laws for all the people in the state. It was pretty important,
for instance, to carry a paper from some member up to the clerk’s desk,
for after the clerk had read it, on three different days, and the house
had voted on it and passed it, and after it had been read on three
different days and passed by the senate, and after the governor had
read it and thought over it as he walked back and forth between the
executive mansion and the state house, and had written his name on it,
it became a law, and everybody in the state had to obey it or go to
jail.
The people were called constituents, they seemed to be divided up among
all the members of the legislature; everybody in the state house had
his constituents. Jamie felt that, as a legislator, he should have some
constituents, but he couldn’t decide who his constituents were, and he
didn’t like to ask anybody. But finally he thought of his mother, and
when he told her that she was his constituent she took his little face
between her two hands and kissed him and pressed her cheek to his. Her
cheek was moist with tears.
If everybody in the state house had been as good to his constituents as
Jamie, Illinois would have been a very happy place in which to live.
When his father died, Jamie’s mother had to take in sewing and to work
hard to keep things going. She was sad much of the time, and always
looked tired, and this made Jamie sad. He longed to help her, but he
did not know what to do. Then a friend of theirs, Mr. Woodbridge, said
he could get Jamie a place in the house as a page boy--they always say
“page boy” in the legislature--and one morning Jamie’s mother dressed
him in his Sunday suit and sent him up to the state house with Mr.
Woodbridge.
And so he became a page. He was paid a dollar and a half a day. Every
twenty days the payrolls were made out, and Jamie would go down to the
treasury, sign his name in a big, round hand, “James Horn,” and then
proudly take home to his mother thirty dollars in fresh, crisp, green
bills! His mother had wished him to stay in school, but, of course,
being a page was better than going to school. There were no books to
study, and then you got out so much earlier every day! And more than
all, you couldn’t take home money from school!
The house met every morning at ten o’clock, and after the speaker had
taken his place under the canopy where the beautiful flag was draped,
and had rapped for order, and the chaplain had prayed, the clerk would
call the roll for the introduction of bills. This was Jamie’s busiest
time. Everybody would have bills to introduce or petitions from his
constituents to present, and for an hour Jamie would be scampering up
and down the aisles between the members’ desks and the clerk’s desk.
But after that he had a breathing spell, and could sit on the speaker’s
steps and whisper to the speaker’s page, or look about over the house
and watch the members. There were grave members from the country
districts with long whiskers and steel-bowed spectacles, there were
city members with fancy vests and diamonds, there were Irish members
and German members, there was a Polish member named Kumaszynski, and
there was a negro member, who sat away back on the Republican side
almost under the galleries, and was very quiet, and wore black clothes
and gold eye-glasses.
But there was one whom Jamie liked above all the others. He was tall,
with smiling blue eyes that saw everything, and though his black hair
was patched with gray at the temples, his face was that of a young
man, clean-shaven and ruddy. He was a Chicago member and the most
fashionably dressed man in the house--he wore a different suit of
clothes every day. He was a lawyer and his name was Bronson Meredith.
Jamie loved him the first time he ever saw him, and whenever Mr.
Meredith clapped his hands Jamie would spring to his side before any
other page had started, and if by chance Mr. Meredith ever gave a
resolution or a bill to any of the other boys Jamie felt a twinge of
jealousy at his heart.
Sometimes he would loiter an instant beside Mr. Meredith’s desk, and
a smile from him made Jamie happy all that day. Jamie longed to touch
him with his hand, but dared not. The only thing he could do was to
pat Mr. Meredith’s overcoat, with its soft, silken lining, as it hung
on its hook in the cloak-room. At night, lying in his bed, Jamie would
close his eyes and see Mr. Meredith standing beside his desk, his lips
slightly parted in a smile, showing his white teeth and replying so
sharply to members who interrupted him that they would shoot down into
their seats with red faces and all the other members would laugh, while
Mr. Meredith, raising his hand, would go on with his speech, saying:
“Now, Mr. Speaker, as I was about to remark when I yielded to the
perplexing question of the distinguished gentleman from Pike--”
Mr. Meredith was not often on his feet, as they say in legislative
bodies, but when he took part in a debate all the other members kept
still and listened with their hands behind their ears, which they
didn’t do when any one else spoke. Mr. Meredith was a leader--many
called him a reformer. Jamie decided that when he grew up he would be a
lawyer, a leader and a reformer.
Now, when the session was about over there was a bill in the house
which almost all the Chicago members hoped to see made into a law; but
Mr. Meredith was against it. The country members, too, for the most
part, were against the bill, and Jamie noticed that when it first came
over from the senate there was a stir in the house, and that every
time it came up, after that, all the members would rush in from the
cloak-rooms, or the lobbies, or the supreme court library, or the
rotunda of the state house, to speak about it and to vote on it.
Jamie did not understand the bill, or know what it was for; he only
knew that it was something about a franchise in Chicago, and that every
week a party of rich-looking gentlemen would come down to Springfield
and stand about in the house, or sit on the big red lounge behind the
speaker’s chair, and whisper and try to get men to vote for it.
And Jamie knew, too, that it was called senate bill No. 578; he
impressed that number firmly on his mind and could never forget
it. He soon observed that on any day when he saw S. B. 578 on the
calendar--which is a kind of program printed every morning to tell what
bills are coming up--Mr. Meredith would be on his feet and make motions
and speeches, and that the gentlemen on the speaker’s red lounge would
scowl at him and the other city members try to answer him. And Jamie
noticed that Mr. Meredith always succeeded in having the bill referred
back to some committee, or did something to keep it from becoming a law.
Jamie read the newspapers now and then. He always turned first to
the base-ball news--the season was just opening--and then to the
legislative news, although he never read that as carefully as he did
the base-ball news. Often he saw Mr. Meredith’s name in the types--the
papers said he was making a gallant fight against the franchise grab.
Jamie hoped with all his soul that Mr. Meredith would win in that
fight; not, of course, that he cared about the franchise grab--he had,
like many older persons, very hazy ideas about that--but he always
wished to see Mr. Meredith win.
The spring had come, and as the legislature usually ends early in June,
and the work was piling up, the house was meeting at nine o’clock in
the morning. The house adjourned every Friday at noon, in order that
the members might go home over Sunday, and it didn’t meet again until
Monday afternoon at five o’clock, and then only for a few minutes. The
members who had gone home did not get back until Tuesday morning, and
there were never many there Monday afternoon, not even a quorum, and it
was always understood that nothing was to be done at that session. The
chaplain prayed, the journal of Friday’s session was read and approved,
and the house adjourned until Tuesday morning.
But one Monday afternoon when Jamie reached the hall of the house
he was surprised to find a big body of members there--almost all
the Chicago members except Mr. Meredith. Those rich gentlemen were
there, too, sitting on the speaker’s red lounge. Jamie looked for
Mr. Meredith--he was not there. He thought instantly of senate bill
578--something was up! They were going to try to pass senate bill
578--that was why the gentlemen were there on the speaker’s red lounge;
that was why the Chicago members had come down to Springfield on the
Monday afternoon train instead of waiting for the Monday night train.
Jamie was worried.
It was a balmy spring day with a sky blue and tender, and a soft wind
that wafted strange sweet country smells about, smells that filled
Jamie with dreamy longings and a kind of pleasant sadness. The speaker
gently tapped with his gavel; the good old chaplain rose and spread out
his white hands.
“O Lord,” he prayed, “we thank Thee that the winter is past, that the
rain is over and gone, that the flowers appear upon the earth, that the
time of the singing of birds is come.”
The words stole sweetly in upon Jamie’s soul. He sat on the steps,
looking out of the open windows at the tender young leaves of the maple
trees--it was just the way he used to look out of the open windows in
school before vacation came, when he thought of the swimming-hole out
at Sycamore and of going barefooted. It was all so calm and peaceful.
But with the chaplain’s “Amen!” the speaker’s gavel cracked and the
buzzing noise peculiar to the house began again. And Jamie awoke from
his reveries with a start. He had heavier things to think of now; he
was almost a man; he was in the legislature. Senate bill 578 was on its
third reading, the gang was present, and Mr. Meredith had not come.
Jamie was troubled, and sighed. He must attend to his duties--he must
do something.
Jamie looked over all the faces before him; nowhere could he find one
man he could trust as a friend of Mr. Meredith.
He glanced at the door with a lingering hope that Mr. Meredith would
appear, but of course he did not come. Then Jamie slowly hitched down
the speaker’s stairs, a step at a time, and, reaching the floor,
slipped over by the reporters’ boxes--empty that afternoon, for the
correspondents, like the legislators, never returned until Tuesday
morning--and thence into the side aisle, under the gallery, and to the
cloak-room. There he got his cap, looked longingly at Mr. Meredith’s
hook, empty now, with no satin-lined overcoat for him to nestle
lovingly against for a blissful second, and then he went out into the
hall under the huge dome. No one, of course, observed a mere page
boy, but Jamie felt, as he clicked his hurrying little heels across
the marble floors, that something was about to poke him in his cold,
unprotected back--the fear of a rear attack that boyhood inherits from
its far-distant savage ancestry. Jamie didn’t take the elevator, or the
grand staircase, but reached the main floor by leaping two steps at a
time down a narrow side stairway, unused and dark.
Then he flew out of the east entrance, ran down the wide walk and on up
Capitol Avenue for four long blocks--ran as fast as he could pump his
little short legs to the hotel where he knew Mr. Meredith lived when
he was at the capital. But Jamie had no hope of finding him there that
afternoon. He went to the hotel simply because he did not know where
else to go--that was all. Rushing into the hotel and up to the clerk’s
desk, he put his chin over its edge and, as the clerk leaned down with
his face almost in Jamie’s face, the boy panted:
“Is--now--Honorable Bronson Meredith in?”
The clerk smiled and Jamie blushed, fearing the clerk was making fun of
him. And his heart sank--he might have known Mr. Meredith was not in.
“Whom did you say?” asked the clerk.
“Honorable Bronson Meredith--the gentleman from Cook--”
The clerk was knitting his brows, though the wrinkles about his lips
were twitching as if he found it hard to keep them from rippling out
into smiles. Jamie thought the clerk was wonderfully stupid not to know
such a great man as Mr. Meredith, and he added, in order to jog the
man’s memory a little:
“You know--the reformer.”
The clerk straightened up, placed his hands on his hips, threw back his
head and laughed. Jamie stared at him with wide eyes--he saw nothing
to laugh at, especially when senate bill 578 was coming up. Presently
the clerk took one of his hands from his side and dropped it on the big
bell beside the register, and as it clanged out in the empty lobby, he
shouted in his laughing voice:
“Front!”
A bell-boy in buttons slid to the desk just as a page boy does in the
house when a member claps his hands. The bell-boy and Jamie looked each
other all over from head to toe in the instant they stood there facing
each other, and the clerk began:
“Go see if Mr. Meredith--”
And just then a tall form appeared around the corner of a wall, and
Jamie looked up.
It was Mr. Meredith himself, as smiling as the spring, with a bunch of
violets in the lapel of his new light coat. Jamie sprang at him.
“Oh, Mr. Meredith,” he exclaimed, raising his clasped hands almost
appealingly, “come--quick! Come quick!”
“Why, what’s the matter?” said Mr. Meredith, halting in surprise.
“They’ve got senate bill 578 up!”
Mr. Meredith’s eyes opened; his face lost its mild expression.
“What do you know about senate bill 578?”
Jamie took him by the coat--he dared at last to lay hands on his sacred
person--and tugged as he said:
“Oh, honest--Mr. Meredith--honest--cross my heart they have--you’ll be
too late!”
Mr. Meredith looked at the pleading lad closely, and then suddenly
exclaimed:
“Oh, yes! You’re one of the page boys.” And then he ran as fast as he
could through the lobby, down the steps and across the sidewalk, Jamie
after him.
“Come on!” cried Mr. Meredith, as he stooped to plunge into a carriage
at the curb, dragging Jamie in after him, and shouting to the driver:
“The state house--fast as you can drive!”
The driver whirled his carriage about in Sixth Street, and as Mr.
Meredith drew in his head and slammed the heavy door he shouted:
“Faster there--I’ll double your fare!”
The carriage lurched around the corner, the lash of the driver’s whip
writhed in the air, and the horses went galloping with the rattling old
hack down Capitol Avenue. And as the carriage pitched and rocked Jamie
was supremely happy--he had done what he could, and, better than all,
he was sitting beside Mr. Meredith and actually riding in the same hack
with him!
Mr. Meredith was silent until the carriage whirled into the state
house grounds and the horses, breathing heavily, were plunging up the
driveway toward the north portico. Then he turned and said:
“How’d they know I was in town?”
Jamie looked up in surprise.
“Who?” he said.
“Why,” replied Mr. Meredith, “whoever sent you.”
Jamie felt hurt.
“But no one sent me, Mr. Meredith,” he said; “I just came.”
“And how did you know I was here?”
“I guessed.”
Mr. Meredith was thoughtful for an instant and then said:
“But why did you come?”
Jamie blushed.
“I--I--I--now--” he stammered. “I don’t like to tell.” And he hid his
face against Mr. Meredith’s sleeve.
The carriage stopped, the driver leaped from his box and flung open
the door. Mr. Meredith sprang out, leaped up the stone steps, ran down
the corridors, dashed into the elevator and was shot up to the third
floor. Jamie had been compelled to run faster than he ever did in his
life to keep up with him. He was nearly pinched by the iron door of the
elevator as the man slid it shut.
But he was close at Mr. Meredith’s heels when he ran into the house.
The few senators, having just concluded a perfunctory Monday afternoon
session over in their more or less solemn chamber, were bustling into
the hall of the house, evidently expecting something of interest to
occur. They pressed by the doorkeeper, and as they entered Jamie heard
the speaker cry:
“The gentleman from Cook asks unanimous consent to have senate bill 578
taken up out of the regular order, read at large a third time, and put
upon its passage. Are there any objections?”
The speaker raised his gavel, waited an instant, and said:
“The chair hears--”
But suddenly a voice beside Jamie rang out like a bugle:
“Object!”
The speaker looked up in amazement. The members of the gang turned
about in their seats with startled, guilty faces; the rich gentlemen on
the speaker’s red lounge leaned forward with pained expressions. Mr.
Meredith was striding down the center aisle, his hat in his hand, his
face red, his eyes on fire.
Half-way down the aisle he halted, and once more shouted in that
fearless note: