Honest John Vane :: :: University of Virginia Library

Her manner, however, was pathetically mild
and meek, as of a woman who is accustomed to
be trampled upon by misfortune, and of a mother
who has learned to bow down to her children.

She was a somewhat worn creature; originally,
indeed, of fair outlines both physical and spiritual;
but considerably rubbed out and defaced by the
storms of adversity. She reminded one of those
statues which travelers have seen in Italian
court-yards, which were once, no doubt, rounded,
vigorous, clean-cut, sparkling, and every way
comely, but which, being made of too soft a
marble, or beaten upon too long by winds and
rains, have lost distinctness of lineament and
brightness of color. “A good liquor at the start,

but too much matured somehow 'r nuther,” judged
one of her boarders, Mr. Jonas Damson, the
grocer.

Yet this seemingly dilapidated and really tottering
woman was the entire support, financially and
morally, of two healthy daughters. Why? Because
she was a relic of the time when ladies
were not mere dandies; when work steadily done
and responsibility loyally borne trained their
characters into vigor; when they, like their men,
were producers as well as consumers. Mrs.
Smiles was not as highly educated as Olympia;
she could not talk, whether wisely or foolishly, of
so many subjects; but industrially and morally
she was worth six of her.

Well, as this sorrowfully forethoughted mother
had foreseen, the proposal of marriage came at
last. John Vane popped the question with the
terror and anguish and confusion natural to a
self-made man who is madly in love with a “born
lady.” His tender heart, hysterical with affectionate
fear and desire, nearly pounded the breath

out of him while he uttered his message. What
he said he was not then sanely conscious of, and
could never afterwards distinctly remember. He
may have spoken as beautiful words as lover ever
did, or he may have expressed himself in the
slang which Olympia found so repellent. But
five minutes later he had forgotten the most momentous
speech of his life; the particulars of it
had departed from him as irretrievably as the
breath in which they had been uttered; they were
as completely gone as the odors of last year's
flowers. Olympia's response, however, remained
engraven upon his soul with sad distinctness; it
was as plain as, “Sacred to the memory of,” cut
into the marble of a gravestone.

“Mr. Vane, I sincerely respect you, and I thank
you for this mark of your esteem, but I cannot
be your wife,” was the decorous but unsympathetic
form of service which she read over his
hopes.

He essayed to implore, to argue his suit, to ask
why, etc. But she would not hear him. “It

cannot be,” she interrupted, hastily and firmly;
“I tell you, Mr. Vane, it cannot be.”

And so, what seemed to him his ghost, went
out from her presence, to walk the earth in cheerless
unrest.

Of course, however, there was yet hope in the
depths of his wretchedness, like a living though
turbid spring of water in the bottom of a ruined
well. He still wanted this girl; meant to bring
her somehow to favor his suit; trusted in cheerful
moments that she would yet be his. How
should he move her? His friend, Mr. Jonas
Damson, to whom he confided his venture and
shipwreck, said to him, “John, you must show
her your dignified side. Don't stay here and
look melted butter at her, and cry in your coffee.
Don't make a d—d fool of yourself, John, right
under her nose. If you can't keep a good face
on the business here, quit the house. Show her
your independence. Let her see you can live
without her. Sorry to lose you, John, from your
old chair; but as a friend, I say, look up another
hash house.”

So, despite the plaintive reluctance of Mrs.
Smiles, and despite his own desire to gaze daily
upon his fair tormentor, the rejected lover changed
residence. A rival boarding-house received
John Vane and his two children, and his weekly
payment of forty dollars. Next, after a little
period of nerveless stupor, he rushed into the
arena of politics. A politician of some local note,
he was already able to send to the polls a “crowd”
of the artisans whom he employed, or who knew
him favorably as an old comrade in handicraft,
and was consequently a sure candidate for the city
council from his own ward, and a tolerably strong
one for the State legislature.

Happily for his reawakened ambition, there had
been a scandal of late among the “men inside
politics.” The member of Congress from the district
of Slowburgh had been charged, and proved
guilty too, of taking a one thousand dollar bribe
from the “Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea
Steam Navigation Company.” Some old war-horses
of the party, after vainly trying to hush

the matter up, had decided to throw the Honorable
James Bummer overboard.

“Bummer never could run again,” they unanimously
neighed and snorted. “To try to carry
Jim Bummer would break down the organization.
Jim must take a back seat, at least until this
noise about him blows over, and give some fresh
man a chance. A man, by George, that would
cut the cherry-tree, and then tell of it, was n't fit
to guide the destinies of his country.”

On the other hand, the personal friends of
Bummer, that is to say, the men whom he had
put into “soft places,” or who had shared his
“perks,” supported him for many cogent reasons.
They charged his enemies with encouraging the
Copperheads and the Ku-Klux; with dishonoring
American institutions in the face of monarchical
Europe and of high Heaven,—both apparently
hostile countries; worst of all, and what was insisted
upon with the bitterest vehemence, they
charged them with demoralizing the party, as if
Bummer had moralized it. They denied the

bribe doubly: first, they asserted that their man
had accepted no stock in said Steam Navigation
Company; second, they affirmed that he had as
much right to own stock in it as any other citizen.
They were stubborn and very uproariously
wrathful, and not feeble in point of following. It
was evident that the battle which must take place
in the nominating caucus would be very fiercely
contested. The friends of reform were forced to
concede that, if they did not put up a candidate
of admittedly high character and of great personal
popularity, the meretricious veteran who
now carried the banner of the district would continue
to carry it. The whole momentous struggle,
too, must center in the aforesaid caucus. Of
course, after this mysterious agency had decided
who should head the party, no good Republican
could “go back on” the nominee, though he were
the impenitent thief.

“John Vane, you must be there to-night,” said
Mr. Darius Dorman to our hero, a few hours previous
to the caucus. “We may want you like

the Devil,” he added, without considering the
precise uncomplimentary sense of the comparison.

Darius Dorman called himself a broker or general
business man; he shaved notes when he had
money, and when he had none speculated in city
lots; he was always on the lookout for public
jobs, such as paving contracts, and the supply of
stores to the State militia; of late he was reported
to be “engineering something through Congress.”
A very sooty and otherwise dirty chore
this last must have been, if one might judge of it
by the state of his linen, his hands, and even his
face. Indeed, there was about Dorman such a
noticeable and persistent tendency toward griminess,
that it seemed as if he must be charged
with some dark, pulverous substance, which shook
through the interstices of his hide. Soap and
water were apparently of no more use to him
than they would be to a rag-baby of coarse calico
stuffed with powdered charcoal instead of sawdust.
His collar, his cuffs, his haggard, ghastly

features, his lean, griping claws, his very fingernails,
were always in a somber condition, verging
in spots towards absolute smirch. This opaque
finish of tint, coupled with a lean little figure
and a lively, eager action, caused some persons
to liken him to a scorched monkey. Other persons,
whose imaginations had been solemnized by
serious reading, could not look upon him without
thinking of a goblin fresh from the lower regions,
who had not found time since he came on
earth to wash himself thoroughly. In truth, if
you examined his discoloration closely, you distinguished
a tint of ashes mingled with the coal
smirch, so that a vivid fancy might easily impute
to him a subterranean origin and a highly heated
history. Another poetical supposition concerning
him was, that his dusky maculations and
streakings were caused by the exudations of an
exceedingly smutty soul. His age was unknown;
no one in Slowburgh knew when he was born,
nor so much as where he came from; but the
iron-grey of his unkempt, dusty hair suggested
that he must be near fifty.

“They mean to put up Saltonstall against
Bummer, don't they?” asked John Vane, with a
languid air, as if he took little interest in the
caucus.

“Yes, but it won't work,” replied Dorman.
“Saltonstall is altogether too much of a gentleman
to get the nomination. He's as calm and
cold and dead as his buried ancestors, the old
governors. You can't get people to hurrah for a
gravestone, even if it has a fine name on it. In
fact, the fine name is a disadvantage; American
freemen hate an aristocrat. It's really curious to
see how Saltonstall's followers are killing him off.
They are saying that, because he is the son of an
honorable, he ought to be an honorable himself,
and that he will do the right thing for the sake
of his forefathers. Our voters don't see it in that
light. They want plain people to become honorables.
Besides, who wants a Congressman to be
fussy? The chaps inside politics know that they
won't get any favors out of a man who has a high
and mighty character to nurse. I tell you that

Saltonstall won't get the nomination. Bummer
won't get it either. Some third man is bound
to come in; and you may be the very fellow.
So, don't fail to be on hand, Vane. Everything
depends on your showing yourself. When you
are called for, rise up to the full height of your
manly figger, and see what a yell there 'll be for
honest John Vane.”

“O, pshaw! nonsense, now,” smiled Vane, shaking
his large and shapely head; but none the less
he resolved to attend the caucus, and, indeed,
positively promised so to do.