While the convention was acting Mr. Kern sat alone in his room at the Albany smoking. His first act on learning of his nomination when enthusiastic Hoosier friends burst in upon him was to send a telegram to his family at Indianapolis—“Have just now been nominated. God bless you all.” Within a few minutes after the convention acted he began to pay the penalty of the celebrity thrust upon him. The crowds flocked to his room in such numbers that he was finally forced to make his escape to Mr. Taggart’s room in the Brown Palace, but almost immediately afterward his hiding place was discovered by Senator Gore and thereafter no further effort was made to find a place of retirement. Among the first telegrams that reached him was the one that meant more perhaps than any other—from Mr. Bryan:
“Lincoln, Neb., July 10.
“Hon. John W. Kern, Denver, Colo.:
“Accept my warmest congratulations. Your nomination gratifies me very much. We have a splendid platform and I am glad to have a running mate in such complete harmony with the platform. Stop off and see us on your way east.
“William Jennings Bryan.”
Addressing a delegation of returning Nebraskans soon afterwards, Mr. Bryan said:
“I am sure that when people come to know John W. Kern as I have known him for many years, they will believe, as I do, that he is in perfect harmony with the platform, and can be trusted to carry out that platform to the letter, if circumstances should place upon him the responsibility for its enforcement.”
Into his retreat at the Brown Palace the crowds thronged. The newspaper men with their cameras and note books appeared and the candidate, with his customary amiability, submitted to being cross-examined as to the most intimate details of his life. The Denver Times was much impressed because Kern did not “talk in the Hoosier dialect”—a puzzle that was solved to its satisfaction by the discovery that his father was a Virginian and he, as a boy, had lived in Iowa. Other papers solemnly assured their readers that he was the original of “The Man From Home” of Booth Tarkington’s creation. The nomination of Bryan having been a foregone conclusion, the vice-presidential nominee became the chief topic of conversation, and that night Kern was being discussed almost exclusively by the politicians in hotel lobbies, cafés and upon the streets. An interview on the nomination by as astute an observer as Herbert Quick, of Iowa, gives as accurate an appraisement of the atmosphere in which it was made as can be found. “The nomination of Mr. Kern was widely favored,” he said, “in my section of the middle west long before the convention. He is regarded as a man whose high character and place of residence would add strength to the ticket. He will not be regarded as an unknown or an accident. I watched the convention as it nominated Kern and mingled in the groups engaged in the preliminary discussions. No one was ever nominated in an atmosphere freer from dickering and trading. The galleries were for Kern and the galleries have a curious faculty of feeling the national pulse.”
He remained in Denver for a time so as to reach Lincoln just in time for the meeting of the national committee at Fairview on July 14th, and during the interval was kept busy conferring with party leaders and with social engagements. I was with him on the train on the return trip as far as Lincoln and had an opportunity to note the effect the new celebrity had upon him. If anything, and if possible, he was even more democratic, genuinely democratic, in his manner, and a trifle subdued, as though he felt the responsibility that would fall to him in meeting his share of the burdens of the campaign. The night his party left Denver he stayed up late keeping his companions in mirthful mood with a seemingly interminable string of stories gleaned from his own experiences. It was on the train that he first had an opportunity to read the Indianapolis papers and learn of the joy and jubilation of his friends and neighbors of both parties and of the plans of his old Kokomo friends to tender him a great reception. These things seemed to touch him more than the honor of the nomination.