PAGE 12
The Need Of Money
by
That let pandemonium loose again, wilder, madder than before. A member threw a pamphlet at Uncle Billy. In a moment the air was thick with a Brobdingnagian snow-storm: pamphlets, huge wads of foolscap, bills, books, newspapers, waste-baskets went flying at the grotesque target from every quarter of the room. Members “rushed” the old man, hooting, cheering; he was tossed about, half thrown down, bruised, but, clamorous over all other clamours, jumping up and down to shriek over the heads of those who hustled him, his hands waving frantically in the air, his long beard wagging absurdly, still desperately vociferating his Democracy and his honesty.
That was only the beginning. He had, indeed, “found his voice”; for he seldom went now to the boarding-house for his meals, but patronized the free-lunch counter and other allurements of the establishment across the way. Every day he rose in the House to speak, never failing to reach the assertion that he was “as honest as the day is long,” which was always greeted in the same way.
For a time he was one of the jokes that lightened the tedious business of law-making, and the members looked forward to his “Mis-ter Speaker” as schoolboys look forward to recess. But, after a week, the novelty was gone.
The old man became a bore. The Speaker refused to recognize him, and grew weary of the persistent shrilling. The day came when Uncle Billy was forcibly put into his seat by a disgusted sergeant-at-arms. He was half drunk (as he had come to be most of the time), but this humiliation seemed to pierce the alcoholic vapours that surrounded his always feeble intelligence. He put his hands up to his face and cried like a whimpering child. Then he shuffled out and went back to the saloon. He soon acquired the habit of leaving his seat in the House vacant; he was no longer allowed to make speeches there; he made them in the saloon, to the amusement of the loafers and roughs who infested it. They badgered him, but they let him harangue them, and applauded his rhodomontades.
Hurlbut, passing the place one night at the end of the session, heard the quavering, drunken voice, and paused in the darkness to listen.
“I tell you, fellow-countrymen, I’ve voted Dem’cratic tick’t forty year, live a Dem’crat, die a Dem’crat! An’ I’m’s honest as day is long!”
* * * * *
It was five years after that session, when Hurlbut, now in the national Congress, was called to the district in which Wixinockee lies, to assist his hard-pressed brethren in a campaign. He was driving, one afternoon, to a political meeting in the country, when a recollection came to him and he turned to the committee chairman, who accompanied him, and said:
“Didn’t Uncle Billy Rollinson live somewhere near here?”
“Why, yes. You knew him in the legislature, didn’t you?”
“A little. Where is he now?”
“Just up ahead here. I’ll show you.”
They reached the gate of a small, unkempt, weedy graveyard and stopped.
“The inscription on the head-board is more or less amusing,” said the chairman, as he got out of the buggy, “considering that he was thought to be pretty crooked, and I seem to remember that he was ‘read out of the party,’ too. But he wrote the inscription himself, on his death-bed, and his son put it there.”
There was a sparse crop of brown grass growing on the grave to which he led his companion. A cracked wooden head-board, already tilting rakishly, marked Henry’s devotion. It had been white-washed and the inscription done in black letters, now partly washed away by the rain, but still legible:
HERE LIES THE MORTAL REMAINS OF WILLIAM ROLLINSON A LIFE-LONG DEMOCRAT AND A MAN AS HONEST AS THE DAY IS LONG
The chairman laughed. “Don’t that beat thunder? You knew his record in the legislature didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“He was as crooked as they say he was, wasn’t he?”
Hurlbut had grown much older in five years, and he was in Congress. He was climbing the ladder, and, to hold the position he had gained, and to insure his continued climbing, he had made some sacrifices within himself by obliging his friends–sacrifices which he did not name.
“I could hardly say,” he answered gently, his down-bent eyes fastened on the sparse, brown grass. “It’s not for us to judge too much. I believe, maybe, that if he could hear me now, I’d ask his pardon for some things I said to him once.”