As for the latter, I have always considered every year's experience I had as an auctioneer equal to any three years of other business.
On my new plan of operating, I at once saw that success, especially during the fall and winter season, was assured me.
This was in the fall of 1876, when Hayes and Tilden were candidates for the Presidency. I had never interested myself in politics in the least, up to this time, and hardly knew which side either man was running on. But Mr. Hayes being from my own county, and I might add the fact that I then had in my possession a history of one branch of my father's family which contained his name, and enabled me to prove him at least a fourteenth cousin, I at once became interested in him and anxious to see him in the Presidential chair.
I likewise began reading up on politics; and seeing the necessity of familiarizing myself with the party platforms, so as to be able to score every Democrat I met in good shape, I took the precaution to preserve every good Republican speech I read, and at my leisure cut such extracts from them as I considered good.
After getting a lot of these together I arranged them so as to read smoothly, and pasted in a scrap book; and discovered that I had a "bang up" political speech. I lost no time in committing it to memory, and was thereby successful in carrying everything by storm.
As I could talk louder, longer and faster than the average person, I usually experienced little trouble in making the Democrats "lay still."
At last, however, I came in contact with one landlord who was a Democrat and who made it so very unpleasant for me that I concluded to manufacture a Democratic speech also, in order to be prepared for another such occasion.
Therefore I did the same as I did with the Republican speech; and although I rather preferred Hayes, I didn't think my own prospects for a post office were so flattering but that, when I considered it a matter of policy, I could deliver a Democratic speech as well. This I often did, with as much success as with the Republican.
Whenever I registered at a strange hotel, the first inquiry I made was about the landlord's politics; and he always found me with him.
Before the campaign was over I had argued about equally for both parties, and the day before election I felt that I ought to go into mourning, because whichever was elected I knew I would be sorry it wasn't the other.