“We will that,” said the other man, heartily; “McKinley--”
“You’ll excuse me--” the old man struck in with a deprecating air, yet under the apology something fiercely eager and anxious that glued the hearer’s eyes to his quivering old face--“you’ll excuse me. I--I am a considerable of an invalid and I don’t keep the run of things as I used to. You see I live with my daughter, and you know how women folks are, fretting lest things should make you sick, and my girl she worries so, me reading the papers. Fact is I got a shock once, an awful shock,” he shivered involuntarily and his dim eyes clouded, “and it worried her seeing me read. Hadn’t ought to; it don’t worry Jenny here, who often gets me a paper, quiet like; but you know how it is with women--it’s easier giving them their head a little--and so I don’t see many papers, and I kinder dropped off. It seems queer, but I don’t exactly sense it about this McKinley. Is he running against Blaine or jest for vice?”
The girl, under some feminine pretext of dropping and reaching for her handkerchief, threw upward a glance of appeal at the interlocutor. Hurriedly she stepped into the conversation. “My grandfather read a false report about--about Mr. Blaine’s sickness, and he was not well at the time and it brought on a bad attack.”
“I understand,” said the listener, with a grave nod of his head and movement of his eyes in the girl’s direction.
“But about McKinley?” the old man persisted.
“He’s for vice-president,” the girl announced, her eyes fixed on the hesitating man from Canton. I have often admired the intrepid fashion in which a woman will put her conscience at a moral hedge, while a man of no finer spiritual fibre will be straining his eyes to find a hole through which he can crawl.
“McKinley is not opposed to Blaine, is he?” she asked the man.
“The Republican party has no name that is more loved than that of James G. Blaine,” said the man, gravely.
“That’s so, that’s so!” the old partisan assented eagerly; “to my mind he’s the logical candidate.”
The Canton man nodded, and asked if he had ever seen Blaine.
“Once, only once. I was on a delegation sent to wait on him and ask him to our town to speak--he was in Cincinnati. I held out my hand when my turn came, and the chairman nearly knocked the breath out of me by saying, ‘Here’s the man gave more to our campaign fund and worked harder than any man in the county, and we all worked hard for you, too.’ Well, Mr. Blaine looked at me. You know the intent way he looks. He has the most wonderful eyes; look right at you and seem to bore into you like a gimlet. I felt as if he was looking right down into my soul, and I tell you I was glad, for I choked up so I couldn’t find a word, not a word, and I was ready and fluent enough in those days, too, I can tell you; but I stood there filling up, and squeezed his hand and gulped and got red, like a fool. But he understood. ‘I have heard of your loyalty to Republican principles, Mr. Painter,’ says he, in that beautiful voice of his that was like a violin; and I burst in--I could n’t help it--‘It ain’t loyalty to Republican principles, it’s to you.’ I said that right out. And he smiled, and said he, ‘Well, that’s wrong, but it isn’t for me to quarrel with you there, Mr. Painter,’ and then they pushed me along: but twice while the talk was going on I saw him look my way and caught his eye, and he smiled, and when we were all shaking hands for good-bye he shook hands with a good firm grip, and said he, ‘Good-bye, Mr. Painter; I hope we shall meet again.’”
