I picked up the paper lying on top and began to fan with it a while before wading into the mazes of the stack. In the few papers which I had already looked over I found, not the object of my search, it is true, but wood-cuts and cartoons of men whose names have been familiar to me for months in a vague, unreal sort of way, making a sound to my ears, but meaning nothing—like the ringing of the telephone bell in the next room when you are fast asleep. Yet the telephone bell will finally awaken you if you are not dead—even so it might, if it is a doctor's telephone—and with what a start do you come to your senses as you reproach yourself for not recognizing its important voice sooner! I have felt this way many times lately, since I have taken up the study of politics; and have found it vastly more interesting than geometry.
The first mighty political name which ever forced itself upon my understanding was Cleveland, and it is not surprising to me now that I was mixed up as to its significance and imagined that, instead of a surname, it was a title of nobility. It sounded like such a swelling note of praise to me, for I was only a few years old, and the torchlight procession on the night of his election filled me with a strange delight.
Since then I have always had a good memory for oft-repeated names, although I have frequently held as hazy impressions concerning them as I did of Mr. Cleveland's honored cognomen. The politicians of my native state have all gone by names that were as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals to my untutored ears until the last few days, when I have turned in and studied them as most girls study new embroidery stitches.
This is, in part, what I have learned: Appleton is our governor and is said to be everything that Charles I. of England was beheaded for—"tyrant, traitor, murderer, and enemy to his country." I know this is true because the paper we take says so; and if you are going to doubt what your favorite newspaper says, why, then, do you take it? I believe in loyalty above everything, and I think if the paper which supports the other side of the question should, by mistake, be thrown into your yard, you ought to run and kick the horrid sheet over the fence into the gutter. That is, if you are a man. If you are a lady I advise you to use the tongs for the purpose, especially if there is any one passing by at the time.
Personally, I do not know Mr. Appleton, but I heard one fat, motherly woman, whose son held a job under him, say that he was such a kind-hearted governor because he set free so many poor prisoners! This remark impressed me, and I was beginning to think well of him, when here came that paper again (Rufe's paper) saying that the governor was turning them loose at so much per, a murderer being a little higher in price than a "pistol-toter," who, in turn, is more expensive than a boot-legger, the last really being a kind of bargain-day leader, inasmuch as he is such a help to the administration!
Well, I dare say no governor is a hero to all the papers in his state!
This is quite enough penmanship wasted on Mr. Appleton anyway; for he is as dead as Philadelphia on Sunday, and the public, with its handkerchief held to its nose, is only waiting until next election, when quicklime will be poured over the remains by the young and gallant Richard Chalmers.
Of course, you understand the cause of the political unrest? It is the whisky question, and everything in our state has been turned upside down by it; that is, everything except the whisky. It is turned upside down only when there is a glass under the bottle. Mr. Appleton favors this phase of the whisky agitation.
Next in importance after the governor is a man named Blake, Jim Blake, whom nobody ever calls James, and who is so much like a big fat worm that I never pass him in the streets without wanting to mash him. He is like one of those soft, white worms, you know, which I am sure I have eaten dozens of on nights when I used to take a handful of chestnuts to bed with me.
In the mountainous regions during his campaigns, they say, to make himself solid with the boys, Jim Blake uses bad English and good whisky; in the cities he uses good English and better whisky. All in all, he is the most popular man in the state—a fact which makes you wish you had anticipated Carlyle's remark about the population of his country being mainly fools.