REPRESENTATIVE HOLLOWAY HAS THE FLOOR
At the conclusion of Senator Bull's story President Madison was again requisitioned, and a crap game which was in lively progress in the dining-car was thus rudely disturbed.
"Tell us, Holloway, about your nomination and election to Congress. Was it not somewhat in the nature of a surprise?" asked Congressman Van Rensselaer.
"Very much so. It will hardly make a story, but if you would like to hear how it happens that the —th District of Illinois is represented in Congress by a Democrat for the first time in its history, here goes—but mind you, now, I don't pretend to be in Senator Bull's class as a story teller.
"It was a piping hot day in August, and Harrisville at its worst. Whenever a vehicle passed, clouds of dust floated in at the windows and settled upon my books, my papers, and covered my green baize table with an infinitesimal section of H—— County real estate. Even the slumberer on the sofa was not exempt. His usually ruddy face had become ashen, and his snoring was developing into a series of choking gasps. It was fearful, this dust,—alkaline, penetrating, stifling,—and from such soil the raw-boned, hard-featured men of H—— wrung a living. And I, sharing their narrow lives, began to understand the true significance of the word 'onery' as applied to us by our more prosperous and ofttimes just exasperated neighbors.
"It was court day, and I had just come in after a stiff tussle with a pig-headed judge, an irritating opposing counsel, and a H—— County jury. I thought of old Uncle Peter Whitehead, 'The onriest critters in the whole State of Illinoy come out o' H——! Thar ain't no tellin' which way an H—— County jury's a goin' to jump. The law and the facts ain't nothin' ter them, it's jest the way they are feelin' that particler day and minnit. If so happen they got outer bed the wrong foot furrard that mornin', then it's good-by ter the pris'ner, and hell fer the lawyer that's defendin' him!'
"Court had adjourned until two o'clock, leaving the fate of my client undecided, and I came into my office, tired-out, warm, and exceedingly anxious. Clearing Thad Hawley meant a great deal to me just then. It was my first important case, and I felt that my future would be decided in a great measure by its outcome. If the twelve stolid farmers upon whom I had showered my eloquence went Fraley-ward in their verdict, I knew that my professional goose would be cooked, and visions of a move to some distant bailiwick rose up before me. Fraley and Hicks would then monopolize the Harrisville practice, and perhaps in a year or so some other fledgling would rise up in his ignorance and be as ruthlessly cut down as I had been.
"Yes, I was worried, and the sight of Andrew Sale asleep on my sofa did not tend to soothe that feeling. At any time a visit from the county chairman would have been most unwelcome, but now it was an exhibition of unmitigated gall! Another contribution, I supposed, angrily eyeing the sleeper. I had been the 'good thing' for Sale and his crowd for some years past, and had pretty well resolved to cut loose from them—and politics. I thought of the many ambitious young fellows I knew who had been permanently injured while hovering around the political flame. Some, indeed, were burned to death, others are floundering through life on crippled wings; all were more or less singed, both morally and financially. My experience thus far had been a financial singe, and the last scorching was still fresh and quivering. Only the week before I had given Sale my check for quite a tolerable sum, and then as soon as he had left my office, kicked myself for doing so. The money, he said, was to go toward defraying the expenses of the nominating convention, which was to meet at Shawnee on the twenty-first, and as a good man and true I had to 'cough up' with the rest of them.
"And here he was again!
"As I glared at him the chairman turned over uneasily, sputtered, sneezed, opened his eyes, and sat up, staring stupidly.
"'How're you? How're you?' he roared, wiping his face with a grimy handkerchief. 'Ain't this dust awful? There ain't no doing anything with it. If you put the winders down you'll smother with the heat, and if you leave 'em up, you'll choke to death. Hobson's choice, eh? Ha, ha! And all that prayin' for rain on Sunday, too. Providence's ways is certainly beyond us—ain't they? Well, I rather guess this visit 'll surprise ye.'
"'It does, Mr. Sale, it does!' said I warmly. 'You know I told you when you were here the other day that I could not—you know damn well that——'
"'Now, now, now,' said he soothingly, holding up his hand, 'don't do that! You're on the wrong tack, Mister, 'deed you are. There's another guess a comin' to you. It ain't money we want this time, no, siree! Money don't cut no ice this trip, though it is a mighty handy thing to have a jinglin' in your jeans—ain't it? No, it ain't the "sinews," as Jim McGubbin calls it; it's you, Mr. Holloway; it's you, sir!'
"'Me, Mr. Sale?'
"'Yes, sir; you. Why it's as plain as the nose on your face, Mr. Holloway, and that is—the Democratic party of the —th deestric' is pretty unanimous on one thing anyhow, this year. I'll admit we ain't come to no final decision on our platform, but we air pretty generally agreed on our candidate, and that's the Honrubble Andrew Jackson Holloway—yourself, sir! That's why I am here to-day. When I heerd you speakin' in court just now, I turned and says to Jim McGubbin, says I, "That there's the voice that'll wake 'em up in Congress." I felt just like the old feller in the Bible. The sperrit of prophecy was on me. And Jim he agreed with me. Jim's got the Shawnee organization right under his thumb, same as—'tween you and me—I've got H——. McGubbin's out and out for Holloway. "Holloway and Reform!" That's our cry this year. I seen Potter James and old Pete Whitehead over to Andrewville yesterday, and they'll fetch their people in line for you all right. If you'll make the run, we'll elect you sure; and that ain't no lie.'
"Sale, a big man with a loud voice, impressive tones, and masterful ways, overpowered me.
"'Sit down, Mr. Sale,' I said weakly, 'sit down. Let us talk it over. This nomination—it is a great honor, I am sure—I can scarcely tell you how flattered—how——'
"'Oh, that's all right, that's all right,' said he, beaming. 'I know'd you'd be a little, well—flustered, eh?—when I fust broke the news to you, and I don't say but what it isn't perfectly natural, too. These things don't happen to a man every day, and especially to—beggin' your pardon—to a man as young as yourself, sir. But the Democratic party of the —th deestric' of Illinoy knows a good thing when they sees it.' Sale's unconscious sarcasm hurt me. 'I have sounded them to the bottom,' he went on, 'and it's Holloway, Holloway, Holloway, everywhere. Now you'll let us put you up, won't you? There ain't no earthly doubt 'bout your gettin' the nomination. Harrison may give old Colonel Harrison its vote on the first ballot, just as a compliment, you know; and I'll admit that down Hall City way there's some talk of Sile Munyon, but there ain't nothin' to it. We'll prick the Munyon boom before it's bigger'n a pea. We'll fix things, you bet. And we'll elect you, too! It's a good job to hold down—that of being a Congressman; it ain't the office so much as it is the purgatives that go with it. I'd like to go to Congress myself. Maybe I will some day. Well, as I was goin' to say, I driv over to the Courthouse Sunday, and saw the boys there, and I talked them into the right way o' thinkin'. They are all O. K.
"'There's a deal of grumblin' and dissatisfaction 'mongst the Republicans just now. Sam Thorne ain't done the square thing by the gang that 'lected him, and they are mighty sore over it. Washington's kinder turned his head. He's got awful stuck up of late, and wears a long-tailed coat and beaver hat all the time. And that 'pointment of Ben McConnell postmaster of Liberty has hurt Thorne and the Republican party a heap all over the deestric'. Ben McConnell never voted the Republican ticket but twicst in his life. Up to two years ago he was a red-hot Democrat, and no one down in their hearts, Republican or Democrat, has any use for a turncoat. I take it all in all, he is the most onpopular man in Illinoy to-day. His conduct is as hard to swaller as a dose of them old Greek twins, Castor Oil and Politics, we use to wrastle with at school. Of course in political life, like in ordinary life, you have to eat a peck o' dirt before you die, but you don't have to eat it all at oncst like he's a doin'! Why, old war-horses, Republicans all their lives, were turned down for this here upstart! It's done the party a deal of harm. And then, as I said before, Sam Thorne's confounded airs is making everybody sick. No one ever thought anything of the Thornes when I fust grew up. They wasn't no better'n any one else. Sam Thorne's father was the clerk of the court at Liberty, and a darned poor one at that, as I have often heard my father say. I went to school with Sam, and many's the thrashin' I have given him, but that's neither here nor there.
"'Oh, we've got 'em this time, sure! Yes, they're going to run Thorne again. He's got hold of a wad there in Washington, and can buy up the whole convention if need be. I wouldn't trust any of them Republicans. The Democratic party is above sech doin's. We stand for purity, patriotism—the whole bag o' tricks! Ha, ha! And politics, I guess, is like everything else. So long as you stick to the Thirteenth Commandment, you'll get there without any trouble.'
"'The Thirteenth Commandment'?
