"Endorses the rest of our party ticket, doesn't he?"
"Yes; it's a personal bolt."
Shelby ruminated earnestly.
"It's only a one-horse country daily," he declared finally. "The Whig! You'd think Henry Clay still above ground."
"Strikes you that way, does it?" Bowers emitted with a cloud of smoke.
"Why, yes. You don't consider such a paper dangerous?"
"All newspapers are dangerous in politics; there's none too mean to have its following. The Whig has influence."
"It's a one-horse paper," reiterated Shelby.
"M-yes; it is a slow coach," Bowers admitted; "but it suits a lot of people. They respect it because it keeps the old name and jogs along in the old gait it had under Volney's father before him. It's been a stanch party paper, too, and that without soliciting a dollar's worth of public advertising or political pap of any description. The Whig doesn't often kick over the traces. The Greeley campaign was its last bolt."
"Well, the milk's spilt," said Shelby, with strenuous cheerfulness; "we've one reason the more to make next week's ratification meeting a rousing success. What did you think of our little welcome at the club last night?"