Hector
by
It isn’t the party manager, you understand, that gets the fame; it’s the candidate. The manager tries to keep his candidate in what the newspapers call a “blaze of publicity”; that is, to keep certain spots of him in the blaze, while sometimes it is the fact that a candidate does not know much of what is really going on; he gets all the red fire and sky-rockets, and, in the general dazzle and nervousness, is unconscious of the forces which are to elect or defeat him. Strange as it is, the more glare and conspicuousness he has, the more he usually wants. But the more a working political manager gets, the less he wants. You see, it’s a great advantage to keep out of the high lights.
For my part, not even being known or important enough to be named “Dictator,” now and then, in the papers, I’ve had my fun in the game very quietly. Yet I did come pretty near being a famous man once, a good while ago, for about a week. That was just after Hector J. Ransom made his great speech on the “Patriotism of the Pasture” which set the country to talking about him and, in time, brought him all he desired.
You remember what a big stir that speech made, of course–everybody remembers it. The people in his State went just wild with pride, and all over the country the papers had a sort of catch head-line: “Another Daniel Webster Come to Judgment!” When the reporters in my own town found out that Ransom was a second cousin of mine, I was put into a scare-head for the only time in my life. For a week I was a public character and important to other people besides the boys that do the work at primaries. I was interviewed every few minutes; and a reporter got me up one night at half-past twelve to ask for some anecdotes of Hector’s “Boyhood Days and Rise to Fame.”
I didn’t oblige that young man, but I knew enough. I was always fond of my first cousin, Mary Ransom, Hector’s mother; and in the old days I never passed through Greenville, the little town where they lived, without stopping over, a train or two, to visit with her, and I saw plenty of Hector! I never knew a boy that left the other boys to come into the parlour (when there was company) quicker than Hector, and I certainly never saw a boy that “showed off” more. His mother was wrapped up in him; you could see in a minute that she fairly worshipped him; but I don’t know, if it hadn’t been for Mary, that I’d have praised his recitations and elocution so much, myself.
Mary and I wouldn’t any more than get to tell each other how long since we’d heard from Aunt Sue, before Hector would grow uneasy and switch around on the sofa and say: “Ma, I’d rather you wouldn’t tell cousin Ben about what happened at the G. A. R. reunion. I don’t want to go through all that stuff again.”
At that, Mary’s eyes would light up and she’d say: “You must, Hector, you must! I want him to hear you do it; he mustn’t go away without that!” Then she’d go on to tell me how Hector had recited Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech at a meeting of the local post of the G. A. R. and how he was applauded, and that many of the veterans had told him if he kept on he’d be Governor of his State some day, and how proud she was of him and how he was so different from ordinary boys that she was often anxious about him. Then she would urge him to let me have it–and he always would, especially if I said: “Oh, don’t make the boy do it, Mary!”