University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.

ALTHOUGH Darius Dorman was noted for
his unfulfilled prophecies,—for instance, frequently
making business predictions which caused
such widows and orphans as believed in him to
lose their money,—he on this occasion hit the
nail of the future pretty squarely on the head.

As soon as the caucus had been organized and
had listened to a pair of brief speeches urging
harmonious action, it split into two furiously hostile
factions, each headed by one of the gentlemen
who had talked harmony. Fierce philippics
were delivered, some denouncing Bummer for
being a taker of bribes and a pilferer of the
United States Treasury, and some denouncing
Saltonstall (as near as could be made out) for being
a gentleman. So suspicious of each other's
adroitness were the two parties, and so nearly
balanced did they seem to be in numbers, that

neither dared press the contest to a ballot. The
war of by no means ambrosial words went on
until the air of the hall became little less than
mephitic, and the leading patriots present had
got as hoarse and nearly as black in the face as
so many crows. At last, when accommodation
was clearly impossible, and the chiefs of the contending
parties were pretty well fagged with their
exertions, Darius Dorman sprang to his feet (if,
indeed, they were not hoofs), and proposed the
name of his favored candidate.

“I beg leave to point the way to a compromise
which will save the party from disunion and from
defeat,” he screamed at the top of a voice penetrating
enough to cleave Hell's thickest vapors.
“As Congressman for this district, I nominate
honest John Vane.”

Another broker and general contractor, whose
prompt inspiration, by the way, had been previously
cut and dried with great care, instantly
and, as he said, spontaneously seconded the motion.
Then, in rapid succession, a workingman

who had learned the joiner's trade with Vane,
and a Maine liquor law orator who had more
than once addressed fellow-citizens in his teetotal
company, made speeches in support of the nomination.
The joiner spoke with a stammering
tongue and a bewildered mind, which indicated
that he had been put up for the occasion by
others, and put up to it, too, without regard to
any fitness except such as sprang from the fact
of his being one of the “hard-handed sons of
toil,”—a class revered and loved to distraction by
men whose business it is to “run the political
machine.” The practised orator palavered in a
fluent, confident sing-song, as brassily penetrating
as the tinkle of a bell, and as copious in repetitions.
“Let the old Republican,” he chanted,
“come out for him; let the young Republican
come out for him; let the Democrat, yea, the
very Democrat, come out for him; let the native-born
citizen come out for him; let the foreign-born
citizen come out for him; let the Irishman,
and the German, and the colored man come out
for him; let the cold-water temperance man come
out for him; let the poor, tremulous, whiskey-rotted
debauchee come out for him; let the
true American of every sort and species come
out for him; let all, yea, all men come out for
awnest Jawn Vane!”

There was no resisting such appeals, coming
as they did from the “masses.” The veteran
leaders in politics saw that the “cattle,” as they
called the common herd of voters, were determined
for once to run the party chariot, and
most of them not only got out of the way, but
jumped up behind. They were the first to call
on Vane to show himself, and the first to salute
his rising with deafening applause, and the last to
come to order. A vote was taken on his nomination,
and the ayes had it by a clear majority.

Then Darius Dorman proposed, for the sake of
party union, for the sake of the good old cause,
for the sake of this great Republic, to have the
job done over by acclamation. There was not an
audible dissenting voice; on the contrary, there

was “wild enthusiasm.” The old war-horses and
wheel-horses and leaders all fell into the traces
at once, and neighed and snorted and hurrahed
until their hard foreheads dripped with patriotic
perspiration, every drop of which they meant
should be paid for in municipal or State or Federal
dollars.

Many elders of the people escorted Vane home
that evening, and sat up with him with a devotion
which deserved no end of postmasterships. Of
all these admirers, however, the one who snuggled
closest and stayed latest, was that man of
general business, Darius Dorman.

“John, a word with you,” he began confidentially,
after his rivals had all departed, at the same
time drawing close up to Vane's side, and insinuating
a dark, horny claw into one of his button-holes;
“I think you must own, John, that I have
done more than any other man to help you into
this soft thing. Would you mind hearing a word
of advice?”

“Go on,” replied Vane, with that cheery, genial

smile which had done so much toward making
him popular; “I owe you an oyster supper.”

“You'll owe me a good many, if you follow my
counsel,” continued Dorman. “Now listen to me.
You'll be elected; that's a sure thing. But after
that, what? Why, you've got a great career open
to you, and you may succeed in it, or you may
fail. It all depends on what branch of politics
you work at. Don't go into the war memories
and the nigger worshiping; all those sentimental
dodges are played out. Go into finance. The
great national questions to be attended to now
are the questions of finance. Spread yourself
on the tariff, the treasury, the ways and means,
internal improvements, subsidy bills, and relief
bills. Dive into those things, and stick there.
It's the only way to cut a figure in politics and
to make politics worth your while.”

“I've thought of that already,” replied Vane
hopefully. “It's my line, you know,—business,
money-matters, practical finance.”

“Exactly!” assented Dorman. “Well, throw

yourself on it, especially internal improvements
and subsidy bills,—that sort of thing. When
you get in, I shall have a scheme to propose to
you which you'll like to push. Something big,
something national, something on a grand scale.
If it goes through, it will make reputations, and
fortunes, too, for that matter,” he added, with a
glance at Vane which was monkey-like in its sly
greediness.

“I don't propose to go into Congress for
money,” answered honest John Vane.

“O, of course not!” leered Dorman. “You
want honor, and the respect of the country, and
so on. Well, this is just the kind of a measure
that will fix the eyes of the country on whoever
carries it through. You'll be delighted with it, I
know you will. However, I mustn't blow it now;
the time hasn't come. All I meant to say was,
that I wanted you to keep a hand ready for it
when it comes round. Well, that's all. I congratulate
you, I do, with all my heart. Goodnight.”

Next day all Slowburgh was talking of Vane's
unexpected nomination for congress. “Queer
choice,” said some people. “Everything happens
in politics. Vane is as ignorant of real public
business as he is of Sanscrit.” Others remarked,
“Well, we shall have a decent man in the place.
John is a good-hearted, steady, honest fellow.
Not very brilliant, but he will learn the ropes as
others have; and then he is so confounded
honest!”

After a nomination, as we Americans know by
wearisome experience, there must be an election.
The struggle between the two great and noble
parties of the ins and the outs which divided
Slowburgh was on this occasion unusually vehement.
The opposition, trusting to the divisions
which they supposed to exist in the administration
ranks, made such a fight as despair makes
when it changes to hope.

Many of those genteel and highly cultivated
persons who ordinarily hate politics became excited;
and among these abnormally agitated ones

was Miss Olympia Smiles. It seems very strange,
and yet it was natural. Discovering that her rejected
suitor had become an object of interest to
all Slowburgh, she also, by mere human infection
or contagion, began to find him interesting. We
know how women go on when they once begin;
we remember how, during the war, they flung
their smiles, their trinkets, and seemingly their
hearts, to unintroduced volunteers; we have all
seen them absorb enthusiasm from those around,
and exhale it with doubled heat. So it went,
during that political crisis, with the young lady in
question. Before the campaign had roared halfway
through its course, she was passionately interested
in it, and electioneered for her preferred
candidate even to her mother's Democratic boarders.

“Measures are of little consequence,” she declared
when she was argued with and confuted
by these prejudiced individuals. “What we want
and all that we want is good men in high places.
And, if I had a vote,” she frequently asserted

with a convincing blush, so beautiful was it,—“if
I had a vote, it should go for. Honest John
Vane.”

Honest John heard of this and of other similar
speeches of Olympia's, and they seemed to him
altogether the most eloquent efforts of the campaign.
They gave him a joy which a connoisseur
in happiness might envy,—a joy which more
than once, when he was alone, brought the tears
into his eyes. He had cherished no spite against
the girl because she had refused him; and he did
not now say to himself scornfully that she would
like to be the wife of a Congressman, but that it
was too late; he was too thoroughly a good fellow
and true lover to secrete any such venom of
thought or feeling. The hope that he might yet
win Olympia Smiles, and devote to her such part
of his life as his country and the refrigerator
business could spare, opened to him the prospect
of a little heaven upon earth. Meeting her one
day in the street, he ventured to stop her, thanked
her stammeringly for her favorable wishes, pressed

her hand with unconscious vehemence, and parted
from her with a swimming head.

Olympia was sensible enough and sensitive
enough to carry away a rejoiced heart from this
interview. She knew now that she could still
have this hero of the hour, and she began to find
that she wanted him, at least a little. He was
no longer common and, metaphorically speaking,
unclean in her patrician eyes. She looked after
his tall, robust figure as it went from her, and
thought how manly and dignified and even handsome
it was. His condition of widowerhood became
vague to her mind; the gravestone of his
wife vanished like a ghost overtaken by daybreak;
even his two cherished children could not cast a
shadow over her feelings. It would surely be
something fine to enter the capital of the nation
as the wife of one of the nation's law-givers; it
would at least be far better than growing into old-maidenhood
amid the sordid anxieties of a boarding-house.
Aristocratic as her breed was, and
delicate as had been her culture, the title of Mrs.

John Vane tempted her. Should she throw a net
for this man, drag him back to her feet, and accept
him? Well, perhaps so; but first she would see
whether he carried his election; she must not be
caught by a mere prophecy of greatness and
glory.

Let us not be severe upon the young lady because
of her prudence, asserting that she carried
it to the point of calculating selfishness. As far
as concerned love-making, this was her first essay
in that deliberate virtue; and impartial psychology
will not express angry surprise at her overdoing
it a little, so much is the human mind ruled
by the law of undulation or pulsation, or, in other
words, so apt is it to go from one extreme to another.
Besides, in a matter so permanently serious
to woman as marriage, it is pardonable and even
praiseworthy that she should be cautious.