“But about McKinley?” the old man persisted.
“He’s for vice-president,” the girl announced, her eyes fixed on the hesitating man from Canton. I have often admired the intrepid fashion in which a woman will put her conscience at a moral hedge, while a man of no finer spiritual fibre will be straining his eyes to find a hole through which he can crawl.
“McKinley is not opposed to Blaine, is he?” she asked the man.
“The Republican party has no name that is more loved than that of James G. Blaine,” said the man, gravely.
“That’s so, that’s so!” the old partisan assented eagerly; “to my mind he’s the logical candidate.”
The Canton man nodded, and asked if he had ever seen Blaine.
“Once, only once. I was on a delegation sent to wait on him and ask him to our town to speak—he was in Cincinnati. I held out my hand when my turn came, and the chairman nearly knocked the breath out of me by saying, ‘Here’s the man gave more to our campaign fund and worked harder than any man in the county, and we all worked hard for you, too.’ Well, Mr. Blaine looked at me. You know the intent way he looks. He has the most wonderful eyes; look right at you and seem to bore into you like a gimlet. I felt as if he was looking right down into my soul, and I tell you I was glad, for I choked up so I couldn’t find a word, not a word, and I was ready and fluent enough in those days, too, I can tell you; but I stood there filling up, and squeezed his hand and gulped and got red, like a fool. But he understood. ‘I have heard of your loyalty to Republican principles, Mr. Painter,’ says he, in that beautiful voice of his that was like a violin; and I burst in—I could n’t help it—‘It ain’t loyalty to Republican principles, it’s to you.’ I said that right out. And he smiled, and said he, ‘Well, that’s wrong, but it isn’t for me to quarrel with you there, Mr. Painter,’ and then they pushed me along: but twice while the talk was going on I saw him look my way and caught his eye, and he smiled, and when we were all shaking hands for good-bye he shook hands with a good firm grip, and said he, ‘Good-bye, Mr. Painter; I hope we shall meet again.’”
The old man drew a long sigh. “Those few moments paid for everything,” he said. “I’ve never seen him since. I’ve been sick and lost money. I ain’t the man I was. I never shall be put on any delegation again, or be sent to any convention; but I thought if I could only go once more to a Republican convention and hear them holler for Blaine, and holler once more myself, I’d be willinger to die. And I told Tom Hale that, and he and Jenny raised the money. Yes, Jenny, I’m going to tell—he and Jenny put off being married a bit so ‘s I could go, and go on plenty of money. Jenny, she worked a month longer to have plenty, and Tom, he slipped ten dollars into my hand unbeknown to her, jest as we were going, so I’d always have a dime to give the waiter or the porter. I was never one of these hayseed farmers too stingy to give a colored boy a dime when he’d done his best. I didn’t need no money for badges; I got my old badges—see!”
He pushed out the lapel of his coat, covered with those old-fashioned frayed bits of tinsel and ribbon, smiling confidently. The girl had flushed crimson to the rim of her white collar; but there was not a trace of petulance in her air; and, all at once looking at him, her eyes filled with tears.
“Tom’s an awful good fellow,” he said, “an awful good fellow.”