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He pushed out the lapel of his coat, covered with old-fashioned frayed bits of tinsel and ribbon, smiling confidently. The girl had flushed crimson to the rim of her white collar; but there was not a trace of petulance in her air; and, all at once looking at him, her eyes filled with tears.

“Tom’s an awful good fellow,” he said, “an awful good fellow.”

“I’m sure of that,” said the Canton man, with the frank American friendliness, making a little bow in Miss Jenny’s direction; “but see here, Mr. Painter, do you come from Izard? Are you the man that saved the county for the Republicans by mortgaging his farm and then going on a house-to-house canvass?”

“That’s me,” the old man acquiesced, blushing with pleasure; “I didn’t think, though, that it was known outside–“

“Things go further than you guess. I’m a newspaper man, and I can tell you that I shall speak of it again in my paper. Well, I guess they’ve got through with their mail, and the platform’s coming in.”

Thus he brushed aside the old man’s agitated thanks.

“One moment,” said the old man, “who–who’s going to nominate him?”

For the space of an eyeblink the kindly Canton man looked embarrassed, then he said, briskly: “Foraker, Foraker, of Ohio–he’s the principal one. That’s he now, chairman of the committee on resolutions. He’s there, the tall man with the mustache–“

“Isn’t that elderly man, with the stoop shoulders and the chin beard and caved-in face, Teller?” It was a man near me, on the seat behind, who spoke, tapping the Canton man with his fan, to attract attention; already the pitiful concerns of the old man who was “a little off” (as I had heard some one on the seat whisper) were sucked out of notice in the whirlpool of the approaching political storm.

“Yes, that’s Teller,” answered the Canton man, his mouth straightening and growing thin.

“Is it to be a bolt?”

The Canton man nodded, at which the other whistled and communicated the information to his neighbors, one of whom remarked, “Let ’em bolt and be damned!” A general, subtle excitement seemed to communicate its vibrations to all the gallery. Perhaps I should except the old partisan; he questioned the girl in a whisper, and then, seeming to be satisfied, watched the strange scene that ensued with an expression of patient weariness. The girl explained parts of the platform to him and he assented; it was good Republican doctrine, he said, but what did they mean with all this talk against the money; were they having trouble with the mining states again? The Canton man stopped to explain–he certainly was good-humored.

During the next twenty minutes, filled as they were with savage emotion, while the galleries, like the floor, were on their chairs yelling, cheering, brandishing flags and fists and fans and pampas plumes of red, white and blue at the little band of silver men who marched through the ranks of their former comrades; he stood, he waved his fan in his feeble old hand, but he did not shout. “You must excuse me,” said he, “I’m all right on the money question, but I’m saving my voice to shout for him !”

“That’s right,” said the Canton man; but he cast a backward glance which said as plainly as a glance can speak, “I wish I were out of this!”

Meanwhile, with an absent but happy smile, the old Blaine man was beating time to the vast waves of sound that rose and swelled above the band, above the cheering, above the cries of anger and scorn, the tremendous chorus that had stiffened men’s hearts as they marched to death and rung through streets filled with armies and thrilled the waiting hearts at home:

“Three cheers for the red, white and blue!
Three cheers for the red, white and blue!
The army and navy for ever, three cheers for the red, white and blue!”