“But,” Rankin went on, “the committee has chosen as temp’rary chairman o’ this convention Judge Zephaniah P. Bailey of Mason County.”
There was a hum of human interest in the crowd. But Rankin had not done. He still stood there, and the delegates cocked their ears to hear the rest. One or two leaders among the Sprague faction rose to their feet in readiness for parliamentary action.
“An’ fer temp’rary sec’etary, Joseph Hale of Tazewell.”
Instantly the Sprague leaders began to shout:
“Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman!”
Their cries were reinforced by the shouts of half the delegates, the half, approximately, that were there to vote for Sprague. The Garwood men sat tight, with soft smiles of satisfaction.
One of Sprague’s lieutenants, Randolph, began an impetuous speech, shaking his fist and a mass of disordered hair at Rankin. The chairman, however, mauled the desk with his gavel, and did not wait for quiet to say:
“I’ll interduce to you your temp’rary chairman, Judge Zephaniah P. Bailey o’ Mason County.”
The man who, having awaited Rankin’s announcement at the foot of the three steps that led to the rostrum, now took the gavel from him, was tall, and thin and spare. He had walked from the side to the center of his stage with splay-footed steps, and now he stood, bent awkwardly, almost helplessly, over the desk. He was dressed in gray, ill-fitting clothes, his ready-made coat hanging from his bony shoulders with that loose absence of identity which characterizes the garment fashioned for the type rather than for the individual. A standing collar, wide open in front, disclosed a protruding larynx; about the collar was knotted a stringy cravat of black. His hair was low parted on the left side, and hung in a great plume over the right temple. But the man showed in the face, a face smooth shaven, long and firm, with its heavy jaw, pointed chin, and level lips cut straight as the eyebrows that shadowed his eyes. And it was the eyes that marked and inspired the face. Small they were, and half closed, so that at first glance they seemed sleepy, yet when they opened they could flash sparks from a bright, determined mind. But always they showed uncommon shrewdness, and a knowledge of common people and common things, and now and then they twinkled with the keen, dry humor sleeping in the brain that lay behind them. It was beginning to be observed within the confines of his own county, Mason, that Zeph Bailey looked like Abraham Lincoln, a resemblance much prized and sometimes cultivated by the Illinois politician, with whom the physical resemblance too often suffices for the moral. Judge Bailey, however, was too independent to care to resemble any other man, even such a man as Lincoln. He had already had a term as county judge of Mason, had been a member of the lower House at Springfield, and was again a candidate for the Legislature, with ambitions, it was understood, to be Speaker. There was about this man, strange, silent, uncouth and awkward in appearance, that mysterious thing called personal magnetism, beloved of politicians, even beyond the boundaries of Illinois, above any resemblance to Lincoln, and this magnetism was shown the minute he appeared, for the delegates were silent; they raised their eyes to him, and the strange spell of his personality began to play upon them.
Rankin, who had instantly removed his coat on leaving the rostrum, and seated himself in the front row of delegates, though not yet with his fellows from Polk, turned to the man beside him and whispered, prophetically, reader of men that he was: