“You are not in earnest? The good Ship of State has been driving
straight on to the rocks ever since I can recollect, and she has not
struck yet. Think of the Clay and Polk campaign!”
“Child’s play compared with the fight that is on now!” was the curt
retort.
Something—I know not what—in his manner moved me to put a leading
question.
“Have you made up your mind how _you_ will vote?”
“Yes.”
“A month ago, you said you had not.”
“A good deal has happened in that month.”
It was not like him to be sententious with me, but I pushed the subject.
“I have never interfered with your political opinions, as you know,
and I don’t care to vote, myself; but if I had a vote, I should be in
no doubt where to cast it. Lovers of peace and concord should unite
upon Bell and Everett. That party seems to me to represent the sanest
element in this mammoth muddle.”
He smiled.
“To say nothing of your fondness for Mr. Everett. A charming gentleman,
I grant. But the helm of state is not to be in his hands. Even,
supposing”—grave again, and sighing slightly—“that they are strong
enough to hold it in a storm.”
There was a boding pause. Then I spoke, and unadvisedly:
“I ask no questions that I think you would not care to answer. But I
do hope you are not thinking of voting for Abraham Lincoln? Think of
him in the White House! Mr. Buchanan may be weak—and a Democrat. I
heard father say, as the one drop of comfort he could express from his
election: ‘At any rate, he is a gentleman by birth and breeding.’ Mr.
Lincoln is low-born, and has no pretensions to breeding.”
“Then, if I should be so far lost to the proprieties as to vote for
him, I would better not let either of you know.” And he glanced
teasingly at Alice, who had just entered the room.
“I could never respect you if you did!” she said, spiritedly. “I am
persuaded better things of you.”
A teasing rejoinder was all she got out of him. The matter was never
brought up again by any of us. When Election Day came, I was too proud
to seem inquisitive. But in my inmost soul I was assured that reticence
boded no good to my hope of one gallant gentleman’s vote for Bell and
Everett.
Months afterward, when we were once again of one mind with respect to
the nation’s peril and the nation’s need, he told me that he had kept
his own counsel, not only because the truth might grieve me, but that
party feeling ran so high in his church he thought it best not to
intimate to any one how he meant to vote.
“And, like Harry Percy’s wife, I could be trusted not to tell what I
did not know?” said I.
“You might have been catechised,” he admitted. “There are times when
the Know-nothing policy is the safest.”