"Yes, so he is,—learned it all at night schools. When he was a boy he used to fire the kilns, and they say you could always find him with a spelling-book in one hand and a chunk of wood in the other, reading nights by the light of the kiln fires."
"You say he went to Congress?" The Doctor's eyes were now fixed on the speaker.
"No, I said he wouldn't go. His wife was taken sick about that time, and when he found she wasn't going to get well,—she had lung trouble,—he told the committee that he wouldn't accept the nomination; and of course nomination meant election for him. He told 'em his wife had stuck by him all her life, had washed his flannel shirts for him and cooked his dinner, and that he was going to stick by her now she was down. But I tell you what he did do: he stumped the district for his opponent, because he said he was a better man than his own party put up,—and elected him, too. That was just like John Stedman. The heelers were pretty savage, but that made no difference to him.
"He's never recovered from his wife's death. That daughter with him is the only child he's got. She's been so afraid he'd die on board and have to be buried at sea that he's kept his berth just to please her. The doctor at home told him Carlsbad was his only chance, and the daughter begged so he made the trip. He was so sick when he went out that he took a coffin with him,—it's in the hold now. I heard him tell his daughter this morning that it was all right now, and he thought he'd get up. You see, there are only two days more, and the captain promised the daughter not to bury her father at sea when we were that close to land. Stedman smiled when he told me, but that's just like him; he's always been cool as a cucumber."
"How did he lose his arm?" I inquired. I had been strangely absorbed in what he had told me. "In the war?"
"No. He served two years, but that's not how he lost his arm. He lost it saving the lives of some of his men. I happened to be up at Parkinton at the time, buying some coke, and I saw him carried out. It was about ten years ago. He had invented a new furnace; 'most all the new wrinkles they've got at the Union Company Stedman made for 'em. When they got ready to draw the charge,—that's when the red-hot iron is about to flow out of the furnace, you know, the outlet got clogged. That's a bad thing to happen to a furnace; for if a chill should set in, the whole plant would be ruined. Then, again, it might explode and tear everything to pieces. Some of the men jumped into the pit with their crowbars, and began to jab away at the opening in the wrong place, and the metal started with a rush. Stedman hollered to 'em to stop; but they either didn't hear him or wouldn't mind. Then he jumped in among them, threw them out of the way, grabbed a crowbar, and fought the flow until they all got out safe. But the hot metal had about cooked his arm clear to the elbow before he let go."
The Doctor, with hands deep in his pockets, began pacing the floor. Then he stopped, and, looking down at me, said slowly, pointing off his fingers one after the other to keep count as he talked:—
"Tender and loyal to his wife—thoughtful of his child—facing death like a hero—a soldier and patriot. What is there in the make-up of a gentleman that this man hasn't got?
"Come! Let's go out and find that high-collared, silk-stockinged, sweet-scented Anglomaniac from Salem! By the Eternal, Todd's got to apologize!"