When quiet had been restored Judge Priest got slowly up from where he sat and took an action which was not entirely unexpected, inasmuch as rumours of it had been in active circulation for half an hour or more. In twenty words he withdrew the name of the Honourable J. C. C. Guest as a candidate before the convention.
Only a rustle of bodies succeeded this announcement—that and an exhalation of breath from a few delegations, which attained to the volume of a deep joint sigh.
The chairman glanced over the house with a brightening eye. It was almost time to begin the jubilation. As a matter of fact several ardent souls among the Maydewites could hardly hold themselves in until the few remaining formalities had been complied with. They poised themselves upon the edges of their chairs, with throats tuned to lead in the yelling.
“Are there any other nominations?” asked the chairman, turning this way and that. He asked it as a matter of form merely. “If not, the nominations will be closed and the secretary will—”
“Mister Cheerman, one minute, ef you please.”
The interrupting voice was the high-piped voice of Judge Priest, and the chairman straightened on his heels to find Judge Priest still upon his feet.
“The chair recognises Judge Priest again,” said the chairman blandly. He assumed the judge meant to accept his beating gracefully and, in the interest of party harmony, to move the nomination of Maydew by acclamation. On his part that would have been a fair enough presumption, but the first utterances that came now from the old judge jerked open the eyes and gaped the mouth of the presiding officer. However, he was not alone there; nearly everybody was stunned.
“It was my painful duty a minute ago to withdraw the candidate that I had been privileged to foller in this campaign,” said Judge Priest in his weedy notes. “It is now my pleasure to offer in his stead the name of another man as a suitable and a fittin' representative of this district in the National Halls of Congress.” He glanced about him as though enjoying the surprised hush that had fallen upon the place, and for just a fraction of a second his eyes focused upon the lone occupant of the right-hand stage box, almost above his head. Then he went on, deliberately prolonging his syllables:
“The man whom I would nominate has never so fur as I know been active in politics. So fur as I know he has never aspired to or sought fur public office at the hands of his feller-citizens; in fact, he does not now seek this office. In presentin' his name for your consideration I am doin' so solely upon my own responsibility and without consultin' any one on this earth.
“My present candidate is not an orator. He is not a mixer or an organiser. I am constrained to admit that, measured by the standards of commerce, he is not even a successful man. He is poor in this world's goods. He is leadin' at this moment a life of retirement upon a little barren hillside farm, where the gulleys furrow his tobacco patch and the sassafras sprouts are takin' his cornfield, and the shadder of a mortgage rests heavy upon his lonely roof tree.