The stir created by the unforeseen situation was very great. The several prominent men of the party were named one after another for the high place, and the newspapers by their advocacy of local "favorite sons" soon made the contest between them a very heated one.
Braine wrote with extreme courtesy of each of them in his newspaper, favoring none in particular, but daily pointing out the necessity of uniting upon some man who could command the hearty approval of the entire party, and emphasizing the apparent impossibility of such a union in behalf of any of those who had been named.
Mose Harbell held his peace, perhaps because he was equally impressed with the exceeding "geniality" of all the candidates.
Braine pleaded strongly for harmony in the interest of the party, and particularly for the selection of some rising man of ability, whose age had not deprived him of the energy necessary to make his ability felt at Washington.
When the Legislature assembled it was found that an extraordinarily large number of the members on the majority side were not positively pledged to any candidate for the caucus nomination, beyond the first two or three ballots, and a careful canvass showed that on the first ballot at least six candidates would be voted for, no one of whom would receive more than one fourth of the total vote.
Mose Harbell, of course, knew all the "genial" men about him in the Legislature and all of them knew Mose—mainly as a joke. Mose entered the caucus, pledged, for the first two ballots, to the least likely candidate on the list. He made his first speech in advocacy of that candidate's election, emphasizing the "geniality" of the man, and telling some stories of his own peculiar manufacture in illustration of it. With three others he voted for that man.
The first ballot in the caucus showed six candidates voted for and no election. The second ballot showed six candidates voted for and no election.
When the third ballot was ordered, Mose Harbell untwisted his long legs, removed his feet from the desk to the floor, and rose in his place to make a very brief speech.
"Mr. Chairman," he said, "it is evident that we cannot nominate any of the gentlemen for whom we have been voting. Why should we not nominate the man who best represents the intelligence and integrity of the party, the man to whose earnest devotion in the late election the party owes its opportunity to elect a senator? I, for one, shall vote on this ballot for Edgar Braine!"
It will be observed that the style of this speech was wholly unlike the usual literary methods of Mose Harbell. Perhaps that was sufficiently accounted for by the fact that the slip of paper from which Mose had committed it to memory, was in the handwriting of—his master.