During the next twenty minutes, filled as they were with savage emotion, while the galleries, like the floor, were on their chairs yelling, cheering, brandishing flags and fists and fans and pampas plumes of red, white, and blue at the little band of silver men who marched through the ranks of their former comrades, he stood, he waved his fan in his feeble old hand, but he did not shout. “You must excuse me,” said he, “I’m all right on the money question, but I’m saving my voice to shout for him!”
“That’s right,” said the Canton man; but he took occasion to cast a backward glance which I met, and it said as plainly as a glance can speak, “I wish I were out of this!”
Meanwhile, with an absent but happy smile, the old Blaine man was beating time to the vast waves of sound that rose and swelled above the band, above the cheering, above the cries of anger and scorn, the tremendous chorus that had stiffened men’s hearts as they marched to death and rung through streets filled with armies and thrilled the waiting hearts at home:
“Three cheers for the red, white, and blue!
Three cheers for the red, white, and blue!
The army and navy forever, three cheers for the
red, white, and blue!”
But when the chairman had stilled the tumult and made his grim comment, “There appear to be enough delegates left to transact business,” the old partisan cast his eyes down to the floor with a chuckle. “I can’t see the hole they made, it’s so small. Say, ain’t he a magnificent chairman; you can hear every word he says!”
“Bully chairman,” said a cheerful “rooter” in the rear, who had enjoyed the episode more than words can say, and had cheered the passing of Silver with such choice quotations from popular songs as “Good-bye, my lover, good-bye,” and “Just tell them that you saw me,” and plainly felt that he, too, had adorned the moment. “I nearly missed coming this morning, and I would n’t have missed it for a tenner; they’re going to nominate now.”
The old man caught his breath; then he smiled. “I’ll help you shout pretty soon,” said he, while he sat down very carefully.