Social dissipation is unknown in the Bryan household. Since Miss Ruth has grown to the dignity of young womanhood, and has gathered about her a bevy of young friends, an added gaiety has been given. She has had her little parties, but her parents receive rarely, and then but informally. The Bryans have several carriages and horses, and in these they find their chief amusement. Once in a while Mr. and Mrs. Bryan are seen at the theatres, but only at the best plays. Mr. Bryan has grown much stouter in late years, and has taken to frequent horseback rides as both an exercise and a pleasure. His favorite animal is a Kentucky bred saddle horse. It was presented him by ex-Governor W. J. Stone, of Missouri, and in compliment to its donor, Mr. Bryan has named it “Governor.”
The figure of W. J. Bryan on horseback is a familiar one in the city of Lincoln, a city where horseback riding has never been in vogue. Governor is a coal-black, high-spirited animal, and prances and pirouettes with nervousness at every halt. Mr. Bryan’s favorite ride is to his farm, four miles east of the city. Here, on a thirty-acre tract, he has for several years been making experiments in farming, or rather in endeavoring to discover whether he has forgotten the lessons instilled into his mind by his agricultural experiences in youth. Mr. Bryan insists that he is not a farmer, but an agriculturalist, and defines the difference tersely in this wise: “You see, a farmer is a man who makes his money in the country, and spends it in the town. The agriculturalist makes his money in town and spends it in the country.”
Mr. Bryan has no intention of taking up the life of a farmer. Ten years ago, in the boom days of Lincoln, he purchased a five-acre tract close to the suburb of Normal. He had driven out east of the city one day, and at the top of a hill stopped to rest his horse. As he sat in his carriage the splendid panorama of field and house and tree unrolled before him. He was enchanted. Then and there he resolved to build a permanent home upon that spot some day. The original five acres cost him a good round sum, but his later purchases, made now and then, have been at greatly reduced figures. The buildings upon the farm are largely temporary in character. The house is a small one of five rooms, and shelters the man who does the real work on the place. Mr. Bryan has found much pleasure and recreation during the summer at the farm. During the planting season and in the weeks that followed, he made a visit daily and spent several hours “puttering” about, directing things here and bearing a hand there himself, at the harder tasks. In the rural atmosphere, away from the conventions of the city, he threw aside every care and every burden. His ordinary clothing was cast aside for the habiliments that distinguish the farmer at work. Mr. Bryan confesses to a weakness for high-top boots, in which his trouser ends can be hidden,—and then to work.
The one singular thing about everything that this man does is that he is at all times able to preserve his dignity. There is nothing selfconscious about that dignity. In the West, that sort is dangerous to attempt. Simplicity is the dominant note in his character, his manners, his talk, his walk. His amiability is inexhaustible, his patience unending. If a delegation of Democrats passing through Lincoln do not have time to go out and see Mr. Bryan, Mr. Bryan finds time to ride down to the depot and see them. He has, since his nomination, made several speeches from horseback, to boisterous but zealous delegations, and always with the old charm and effect.
As to his patience, no better witnesses to its enduring qualities need be asked than the newspaper correspondents who form a corps of watchful guardians upon his footsteps. Many are the questions, some of them impertinent, that are asked him, and during a campaign, the presence of the press representatives, unobtrusive as they are, really destroys whatever privacy remained to him. And yet through it all, his courtesy is ever gentle, his good nature unfailing, his temper always under such control as to seem to be an absent quantity in his make-up.
Lincoln, the city of his residence, has always been dominated by the Republican party, and so great has been the preponderance of that political organization that Mr. Bryan has never been able to carry it in any of his campaigns. Mr. Bryan came to Lincoln a young man, and entered into a very brisk competition with a number of other young lawyers, most of them Republicans. None of these have risen above the political level of county leaders, nor have they found fame or other reward at the bar. The rapid flight of Mr. Bryan and his pre-eminence has engendered in their breasts a bitterness of partisanship, accentuated and multiplied by their personal jealousies, that has found its vent in mean and malicious assaults upon his political integrity and attempted belittlings of his abilities. This influence has in the past over-ridden a local pride that would have justified an endorsement at least of his Presidential candidacy, and added flame to the fires of partisanship that particularly distinguishes the city. These two facts form the solution to a mystery that has seemingly vexed a great many good people in America, who do not understand the local conditions. Mr. Bryan seems, too, to have pitched his tent in the most rabidly Republican section of the city, as evidenced by the elaborate display of McKinley pictures in the front windows of the houses of his neighbors, who are as lacking in good taste as in civic pride.
None of these elaborate attempts at incivility have ever ruffled his temper, nor have they caused him to retaliate with the weapons he so well knows how to use. The fact is, he has many warm friends among the Republicans of the city. His old law partner has long been a Republican leader, and is now president of the State Senate. This year he has espoused Mr. Bryan’s cause.
It has been said that the home of Mr. and Mrs. Bryan is a typical one. It is more than a type; it is an ideal. The simplicity of the life his family leads, the wholesomeness of the atmosphere, the absence of affectation, the presence of a democracy that includes courtesy, gentleness, amiability, and cordiality invariably impresses one. The home life of a man is the mirror of his character; and in its limpid depths one sees the secret springs of thought and reads the heart aright. That that of Mr. Bryan reflects with truthful fidelity is a fact within the knowledge of all who know the man and revere the woman. The words he himself used in describing the beautiful home life of a friend who had been called across the river apply with equal fitness to his own:
“He found his inspiration at his fireside, and approached his ideal of the domestic life. He and his faithful wife, who was both his help-mate and companion, inhabited as tenants in common that sacred spot called home, and needed no court to define their relative rights and duties. The invisible walls which shut in that home and shut out all else had their foundation upon the earth and their battlements in the skies. No force could break them down, no poisoned arrows could cross their top, and at the gates thereof love and confidence stood ever upon guard.”