Having responded to the personal request, which as a good party man he considered a command from the commanding officer of his party in that campaign, Mr. Kern plunged into the campaign with his usual zeal and made a thorough canvass of the state. The extent of the Republican landslide that year is a matter of history. Kern had made his second sacrifice.
CHAPTER VIII
Europe and Asheville: An Interlude
I
IN July, 1906, feeling the need of rest and relaxation, Mr. Kern, accompanied by Alonzo Green Smith, formerly attorney-general of Indiana, sailed from New York for a few weeks of meandering and sightseeing in the British Isles. It would be hard to imagine a more incongruous couple for an European jaunt. The ex-attorney-general was an able lawyer of much strength of character, a rough diamond accused by his enemies of “practicing law with a club.” More interested in law and politics than in scenery and shrines, more practical than sentimental, to him that scenery which would not yield a harvest was uninteresting waste land, and the building of venerable years and rich in history could not compare with a New York sky-scraper with its modern conveniences. The travelers were fond of one another, but they were soon to find that nature had never intended that they should tour Europe together.
As both were traveling for their health, they took a slow, ten-day boat, leaving New York harbor on July 21st and reaching Glasgow on the last day of the month. The trip over was uneventful and pleasant enough, although they were five days in a fog and two on a rough sea. They had seats at the captain’s table, made many friends on board, and Kern records in a letter that “Green didn’t enjoy the rough sea or the fog, but didn’t grumble much and became quite a favorite on board. He won’t admit it, but his cough is much better and he is greatly improved.” It was characteristic of Kern to write home the moment he landed. “It seems an age since I saw you,” he wrote the morning of his landing, “I am writing this hurriedly and am going out to send a cable, which you will get by your breakfast time.” Later the same day he wrote his second letter home, giving more particulars of the voyage and relating how he had not thought of “getting sunburned with the sun shining through the fog until I found my nose and face blistered and looking like an old bloat,” how he “got some cold cream from an old lady on board,” how in a rough sea he was thrown from his chair and slid down to the rail. “I am getting along very well with Mr. Smith,” he writes, as though surprised. “He is quite willing to do as I suggest and has thus far been as docile as a child, except on one or two occasions, when he got to talking politics, when he partly startled the whales and the other monsters of the deep.” Unhappily for the peace of the moment, but fortunately for future reminiscences, this docility was not to last long.
They lingered for more than two weeks in Scotland visiting the birthplace of Burns and the country associated with his life, riding across Lake Lomore and Lake Katrine, the scene of The Lady of the Lake, and journeying through the “Trossacks” by Sterling and on to Edinburgh.
His love of home shines out in an incident at Lake Katrine, where he waited for the boat to carry him across. “It came,” he wrote, “bringing a lot of tourists who were traveling through the Trossacks in the opposite direction. As I was rushing down to the boat I ran right into Rev. M. L. Haines (First Presbyterian Church at Indianapolis), who was rushing up the hill for dear life to get seats on the big brake wagon which was waiting at the hotel. He looked around and grabbed me by the hand, but we hadn’t time for a word. There was his wagon and my boat both waiting and we both rushed on. The wagon and boat, however, were not more than seventy-five yards apart, and we spent the several minutes that elapsed before the wagon started by standing up and waving and making all kinds of friendly signs at each other. There were two ladies with him, but I did not see them until they got up in the wagon with him and joined in the waving. It was like ships passing in the night, but Brother Haines looked awfully good to me just the same.” He was delighted with the beauty and the historic charm of Edinburgh. While passing through Holyrood Palace and looking at the bed in which Mary, Queen of the Scots slept, he was accosted by another Hoosier he had never met but who recognized him. By this time the docility of Smith had passed. He grumbled over the foolishness of tramping about looking at old palaces where dead queens had slept, and at tumble-down shacks in which poets had penned immortal lines. At length, patient though he was, Kern issued his declaration of independence. “Now don’t you pay any attention to my movements in a town or on the trip,” he said, “we haven’t time to argue and we are not here for argument. I am going just where I please and in the way I please and I want you to do the same.” The result was that Smith thereafter spent hours in his room at the hotel writing long letters about places he had not seen, and the remainder in regaling the natives with lurid stories of the greatness of America. “I overheard him,” Kern wrote, “telling the other day how a calf had been carried over two hundred miles in a cyclone.”
The travelers went up to London on August 16th, where they went their separate ways, meeting in the evening, and not bothering each other with a recital of their doings of the day. The ancient city fascinated Kern as it had ten years before. I am indebted to Thomas R. Shipp of Washington and Indianapolis for an incident which is interesting in that it again reflects Kern’s love of home and home folks:
“When mother and I were in England we happened to be lunching with Mr. and Mrs. Henry Rauh of Indianapolis in a little café opposite Windsor Castle, when suddenly from an unnoticed alcove came a deep voice, saying, ‘Has anybody seen anything of Henry Rauh and Tom Shipp?’ Upon investigating we found it was Mr. Kern, who was taking a quiet lunch with Alonzo Green Smith. Nothing would do Mr. Kern but that we all should meet him that evening in the Hotel Victoria, where he promised an Indiana party.