Without the inner circle of the Quadrilateral, which had taken matters into its own hands, were a number of persons, some of them disinterested and others simple curiosity- and excitement-seekers, who might be described as merely “lookers-on in Vienna.” The Sunday afternoon before the convention was to meet, we, the self-elect, fell in with a party of these in a garden “over the Rhine,” as the German quarter of Cincinnati is called. There was first general and rather aimless talk, then came a great deal of speech-making. Schurz started it with a few pungent observations intended to suggest and inspire some common ground of public opinion and sentiment. Nobody was inclined to dispute his leadership, but everybody was prone to assert his own. It turned out that each regarded himself, and wished to be regarded, as a man with a mission, having a clear idea how things were not to be done. There were civil-service reform protectionists and civil-service reform free traders. There were a few politicians, who were discovered to be spoilsmen, the unforgivable sin, and as such were quickly dismissed. The missing ingredient was coherence of belief and united action. Not a man of them was willing to commit or bind himself to anything. Edward Atkinson pulled one way, and William Dorsheimer exactly the opposite way. David A. Wells sought to get the two together; it was not possible. Sam Bowles shook his head in diplomatic warning. Horace White threw in a chink or so of a rather agitating newspaper independence, while Halstead, to the more serious-minded, was in an inflamed state of jocosity.

From a photograph by Sarony

MURAT HALSTEAD

All this was grist to the mill of the Washington correspondents, chiefly “story” writers and satirists, who were there to make the most out of an occasion in which the bizarre was much in excess of the conventional, with George Alfred Townsend and Donn Piatt to set the pace. Hyde of the “Republican” had come from St. Louis to keep special tab on Grosvenor of the “Democrat.” Though rival editors facing our way, they had not been admitted to the Quadrilateral. McCullagh and Nixon were among the earliest arrivals from Chicago. The lesser lights of the gild were innumerable. One might have mistaken it for an annual meeting of the Associated Press.

IV

THE convention assembled. It was in Cincinnati’s great music-hall. Schurz presided. Who that was there will never forget his opening words, “This is moving day.” He was just turned forty-two; in his physiognomy a scholarly Herr Doktor; in his trim, lithe figure a graceful athlete; in the tones of his voice an orator.

Even the bespectacled doctrinaires of the East, whence, since the days the Star of Bethlehem shone over the desert, wisdom and wise men have had their emanation, were moved to something like enthusiasm. The rest of us were fervid. Two days and a night and a half the Quadrilateral had the world in a sling and things its own way. It had been agreed, as I have said, to limit the field to Adams, Trumbull, and Greeley, and Greeley being out of it as having no chance whatever, the list was still further abridged to Adams and Trumbull. Trumbull not developing very strong, Bowles, Halstead, and I, even White, began to be sure that it would require only one ballot to nominate Adams—Adams the indifferent, who had sailed away for Europe, observing that he was not a candidate for the nomination, and otherwise intimating his disdain of it and us.

Matters being thus apparently cocked and primed, the convention adjourned over the first night of its session with everybody happy except the “D. Davis” contingent, which lingered, but knew its “cake was dough.” If we had forced a vote that night, as we might have done, we should have nominated Adams. But, inspired by the bravery of youth and inexperience, we let the golden opportunity slip. The throng of delegates and the vast audience dispersed.

In those days it being the business of my life to turn day into night and night into day, it was not my habit to go to bed much before the presses began to thunder below. This night proved no exception: being tempted by a party of Kentuckians, some of whom had come to back me and some to watch me, I did not quit their agreeable society until the “wee sma’ hours ayant the twal.”