Part 75

There was a sudden cheer from the audience, and the people seemed to draw closer around the speaker's stand. Their faces glowed with interest. Sylvia sat up straight and her eyes sparkled. The committee looked a warning at Jimmy Grayson, but he did not see it.

"This question has come up late," he said, "and perhaps it could have been put aside. I have been told that it would be for the good of our party, particularly in this campaign, to do so, and many have advised me to keep silence, saying that I could consistently and honorably follow such a course, as our platform does not declare itself on the question; but there are some things that trouble me. This is an issue, I feel sure, which must be threshed out sooner or later, and as it is now so importantly before the country I think that I, as the standard-bearer of our party, should have an opinion upon it."

The audience cheered again, and longer and louder than ever. Sylvia's eyes not only sparkled, they flashed. Mr. Goodnight half rose in his seat and said something in a loud whisper to the candidate, but Mr. Grayson did not hear it and went on with his speech.

"It did not take me long to make up my mind," he continued. "I have decided opinions upon the subject, and what they are I shall tell you before I leave this stage; but first I want to tell you a story."

Mr. Grayson did not tell stories often; he did so only when they were thoroughly relevant, and Hobart, Blaisdell, and the other correspondents leaned forward with sudden interest. Sylvia's face glowed.

"I think I'll sharpen my lead-pencils," said Hobart.

"I would if I were you," said Harley.

"This story," continued the candidate, in an easy, confidential manner, "is about a man who was in a position much like mine. He was the nominee of his party for a most important office, and towards the close of his campaign a great issue came up again, just as in my case. He did not think that he ought to keep silent about it, but when he was thinking over what he ought to say a committee of men, representing a minority in his party, arrived from the great centres of population, industry, and finance--he was then far away in a thinly settled and somewhat isolated region."

Again the committee stirred, and they whispered loudly both to one another and to Mr. Grayson, but he paid no heed to them and spoke on. All the correspondents were writing rapidly, eagerly, and with rapt attention, while Sylvia's eyes still sparkled and flashed.

"Well, the members of this committee and the man met," continued the candidate, "and from the first they treated him as one who might have an opinion of his own but who must not be allowed to express it. They were not bad men, perhaps, but a long course of exclusive attention to their own personal interests had, we will say, narrowed them. That personal advantage was always dangling before them; they could see nothing else. The sun rose and set in its interest, and such an affair as the government of a mighty nation like the United States must be regulated with sole regard to it. They thought they knew everything in the world when they knew only one thing in it. Their ignorance was equalled only by their presumption."

The rolling cheer came once more from the audience, but Harley saw that the faces of the committee had turned red. They whispered no more, but stared angrily and uneasily at Jimmy Grayson, who did not notice them.

"How glad I am that I sharpened all my lead-pencils!" said Hobart, in a low tone to Harley.

But Harley never stopped writing.

"They did not even have the tact to treat this candidate with courtesy and consideration," continued Mr. Grayson. "They lectured him on his comparative youth and his ignorance of the world, when it was they who were ignorant. They told him, without hesitation, regardless of his own opinion and the fact that he was a free man among free men, that he must not speak on this issue. They threatened him."

"Did he take the bluff?" shouted a big man in the audience.

"Wait and we shall see," said Jimmy Grayson, sweetly. "They were entitled to their opinion, and he would have heard their advice, but their manner was intolerable; they undertook to treat him as a child. They called him to a conference, and there they laid down the law to him as a school-master would order a sulking child to be good."

"Did he take the bluff?" again shouted the big man in the crowd.

"Wait and we shall see," repeated Jimmy Grayson, as sweetly as ever. "Well, this conference came to pass, and it lasted a long time, but only the committee talked; they gave the candidate scarcely a chance to say a word. They treated him with increasing arrogance. They said that if he declared himself upon this great issue they would bolt the party and let him go headlong to destruction."

"The traitors!" shouted the big man in the audience. But the members of the committee, from some strange cause, seemed to be struck speechless. Their jaws fell, but the faces of them all were as red as fire. Sylvia leaned forward and clapped her gloved hands.

"Blaisdell," whispered Hobart, "slip away and arrange at the telegraph-office; any of us will give you his report. I shall have at least five thousand words myself."

Blaisdell slid noiselessly away.

"The candidate endured it all, but only for the time," thundered Jimmy Grayson, and now his voice was swelling with passion, while his eyes fairly sparkled with heat and anger--"but only for the time. He had decided opinions upon this subject, as I have upon the question of tariff revision, and he intended to utter them as I intend to utter mine. They said--and they said it with intolerable condescension and patronage--that for the sake of his record he might make one little speech upon the subject before a few people out in what they called the desert, and he accepted the concession. But there was rage in his heart. He was willing to be beaten by the biggest majority ever given against a Presidential candidate before he would yield to such insolent dictation. Moreover, there was the question of his true opinion, which the people had a right to know, and he took his resolve. There was that little speech, and he remembered the telegraph wire, the thin line that binds the farthest little village to the great world, and I say he took his resolve."

"He called the bluff!" shouted the big man in the audience, in a perfect roar of triumph, and Jimmy Grayson smiled sweetly.

Suddenly Mr. Goodnight, in all the might of his majesty and importance, rose up and stalked from the stage, and the eleven other members of the committee, headed by Mr. Crayon, followed him in an angry file, accompanied by the derisive shouts of the audience. They quickened their pace somewhat when they reached solid ground, but before they were within the sheltering confines of their private car, Jimmy Grayson was launched upon his great and thrilling tariff speech, in which he invested the driest subject in the world with an interest that absorbed the attention of ninety million people.

All day the wires eastward and westward sang with the burden of the great speech made in the tiny hamlet of Waterville, in the Wyoming mountains, and the next morning it occupied the front pages of ten thousand newspapers. It was absolutely clear and decisive. No one could doubt how the candidate stood. He was heart and soul for revision. Sylvia threw her arms around his neck, and said, "Uncle James, I was never prouder of you than I am at this moment."

When they left Waterville the private car of the committee was still attached to their train, but there was no communication between it and the other cars. About the middle of the afternoon they reached a junction with another railroad line. There the private car was cut off and attached to a new engine. Then it sped eastward at the rate of fifty miles an hour.

Meanwhile the correspondents were holding a little conference of their own.

"They will bolt him sure," said Hobart. "Will it ruin Jimmy Grayson?"