“Do you mean to say you intend to use this against him in the campaign?”
“I told him so, and some of the other fellows too, down at the post office the other day. I told him they’d better not nominate him. If they did, I’d circulate this. He knows it’ll kill him if I do. I showed it to the Quaker minister here the other night, and he ’lowed it ’ud do for him.”
“What’s a Quaker minister?” I asked, suddenly interrupting the main theme of our conversation, curious as to the existence of such an official. “I never heard of the Quakers having a minister. I know they have elders and ministers in a general or democratic sense—men whose counsels are given more or less precedence over that of others[over that of others], but no particular minister.”
“Well, they have out here,” he replied. "I don’t know where or when they got ’em. This one lives right over there next the Quaker Church.
“So you have a Quaker Church instead of a meeting house, do you?” I commented.
“Yes, and they have congregational singing and an organ,” observed the dark-eyed sister, who was just coming up now. “You don’t hear of anything like that in a Friends' meeting house in the East, but you will here tomorrow.” She smiled and called us in to breakfast.
It appeared that our host had eaten at six A. M., or five, but he came in with me for sociability’s sake.
The discussion of the pornographic jocosity and its political use was suspended while we had breakfast, but a little later, the veranda being cleared and the old gentleman still sitting here, rocking and ruminating, I said:
“Do you mean to say you intend to use that leaflet against this man in case he runs?”
“I intend to use it,” he replied definitely, but still with a kind of pleasant, chuckling manner, as though it were a great joke. “I don’t think they’ll nominate him, though, but if they do, it’ll kill him sure.”