At the conclusion of Senator Bull's story President Madison was again requisitioned, and a crap game which was in lively progress in the dining-car was thus rudely disturbed.
"Tell us, Holloway, about your nomination and election to Congress. Was it not somewhat in the nature of a surprise?" asked Congressman Van Rensselaer.
"Very much so. It will hardly make a story, but if you would like to hear how it happens that the —th District of Illinois is represented in Congress by a Democrat for the first time in its history, here goes—but mind you, now, I don't pretend to be in Senator Bull's class as a story teller.
"It was a piping hot day in August, and Harrisville at its worst. Whenever a vehicle passed, clouds of dust floated in at the windows and settled upon my books, my papers, and covered my green baize table with an infinitesimal section of H—— County real estate. Even the slumberer on the sofa was not exempt. His usually ruddy face had become ashen, and his snoring was developing into a series of choking gasps. It was fearful, this dust,—alkaline, penetrating, stifling,—and from such soil the raw-boned, hard-featured men of H—— wrung a living. And I, sharing their narrow lives, began to understand the true significance of the word 'onery' as applied to us by our more prosperous and ofttimes just exasperated neighbors.
"It was court day, and I had just come in after a stiff tussle with a pig-headed judge, an irritating opposing counsel, and a H—— County jury. I thought of old Uncle Peter Whitehead, 'The onriest critters in the whole State of Illinoy come out o' H——! Thar ain't no tellin' which way an H—— County jury's a goin' to jump. The law and the facts ain't nothin' ter them, it's jest the way they are feelin' that particler day and minnit. If so happen they got outer bed the wrong foot furrard that mornin', then it's good-by ter the pris'ner, and hell fer the lawyer that's defendin' him!'
"Court had adjourned until two o'clock, leaving the fate of my client undecided, and I came into my office, tired-out, warm, and exceedingly anxious. Clearing Thad Hawley meant a great deal to me just then. It was my first important case, and I felt that my future would be decided in a great measure by its outcome. If the twelve stolid farmers upon whom I had showered my eloquence went Fraley-ward in their verdict, I knew that my professional goose would be cooked, and visions of a move to some distant bailiwick rose up before me. Fraley and Hicks would then monopolize the Harrisville practice, and perhaps in a year or so some other fledgling would rise up in his ignorance and be as ruthlessly cut down as I had been.
"Yes, I was worried, and the sight of Andrew Sale asleep on my sofa did not tend to soothe that feeling. At any time a visit from the county chairman would have been most unwelcome, but now it was an exhibition of unmitigated gall! Another contribution, I supposed, angrily eyeing the sleeper. I had been the 'good thing' for Sale and his crowd for some years past, and had pretty well resolved to cut loose from them—and politics. I thought of the many ambitious young fellows I knew who had been permanently injured while hovering around the political flame. Some, indeed, were burned to death, others are floundering through life on crippled wings; all were more or less singed, both morally and financially. My experience thus far had been a financial singe, and the last scorching was still fresh and quivering. Only the week before I had given Sale my check for quite a tolerable sum, and then as soon as he had left my office, kicked myself for doing so. The money, he said, was to go toward defraying the expenses of the nominating convention, which was to meet at Shawnee on the twenty-first, and as a good man and true I had to 'cough up' with the rest of them.
"And here he was again!
"As I glared at him the chairman turned over uneasily, sputtered, sneezed, opened his eyes, and sat up, staring stupidly.
"'How're you? How're you?' he roared, wiping his face with a grimy handkerchief. 'Ain't this dust awful? There ain't no doing anything with it. If you put the winders down you'll smother with the heat, and if you leave 'em up, you'll choke to death. Hobson's choice, eh? Ha, ha! And all that prayin' for rain on Sunday, too. Providence's ways is certainly beyond us—ain't they? Well, I rather guess this visit 'll surprise ye.'