Bellefonte, Pa., May 25. 1900. Be ROBERT HARDY’S SEVEN DAYS. A Dream and Its Consequences. BY REV, CHARLES SHELDON. Author of “In His Steps.” “The Crucirixion of Philip Strong,” Malcolm Kirk,” Ete. (Copyright, 1900, by Advance Publishing Co.) (BEGUN IN No. 12, marcH £3, 1900.) oem monster mass meeting in the town hall for the benefit of the sufferers, both in the railroad accident and in the explo- sion of the Sunday before in the shops. gt was true the company would settle for damages, but in many cases through Barton the adjustment of claims would not be made until much suffering and hardship had been en- dured. There was a common feeling on the part of the townspeople that a meet- ing for public conference would result in much good, and there was also, as has been the case in other large hor rors, a craving to relieve the strain of feeling by public gathering and con- sultation. “Can you come out to the meeting, Hardy?” asked his friend. Mr. Hardy thought a minute and re- plied, “Yes; I think I can.” Already an idea had taken shape in his mind which he could not help feeling was inspired by God. “Might be a good thing if you could come prepared to make some remarks. I find there is a disposition on the part of the public to charge the road with carelessness and mismanagement.” “I'll say a word or two,” replied Mr. Hardy, and after a brief talk on busi- ness matters his friend went cut. Robert immediately sat down to his desk, and for an hour, interrupted on- ly by an occasional item cf business brought to him by his secretary, he jot- ted down copious notes. The thought which had come to hima +twhen his friend suggested the meeting was this: He would go and utter a message that burned within him, a message which the events of the past few days made imperative should be uttered. He went home absorbed in the great idea. He had once in his younger days been fa- mous for his skill in debate. He had no fear of his power to deliver a mes- sage of life at the present crisis in his own. He at once spoke of the meet- ing to his wife. “Mary, what do you say? I know ev- ery minute is precious. I owe to you and these dear ones at home a very sacred duty, but no less, it seems to me, is my duty to the scciety where 1 have lived all these years, doing literal- ly nothing for its uplift toward God, who gave us all life and power. 1 feel as if he would put a message into my mouth that would prove a blessing to this community. It seems to me this special opportunity is providential.” “Robert,” replied his wife, smiling at him through happy tears, “it is the will of Ged. Do your duty as he makes it clear to you.” It had been an agitating week to the wife. She anticipated its close with a feeling akin to terror. What would the end be? She was compelled to say to Lerself that her husband was not insane, but the thought that he was really to be called out of the world in some mysterious manner at the end of the rapidly approaching Sunday had several times come over her with a power that threatened her ¢wn reason. Nevertheless the week sc far, in spite of its terror and agitation, had a sweet joy for her. Her Lusband had come back to her, the lover as hie once had been, only with the added tender- ness of all the years of their compan- fonship. She thanked the Father for it, and when the hour came for Rob- ert to go down to the meeting she dlessed him and prayed Lceaven to make his words to the people like the words of God. “Father, what do you want me to do? Shall I stay here?” asked George, avho had not stirred out of the house ali day. He had watched by Clara faithfully. She was stili in that mys- terious condition of unccnscicusness «which made her case so puzzling to the doctor. Mr. Hardy hesitated a ixoment, then said: “No, George. 1 weculd like to have you go with me. Alice can do all that is necessary. But let us all pray together now before we go out. The Lord is leading us mysteriously, but we shall some time know the reason why.” So in the room where Clara lay they all kneeled down except Will, who lay upon & lounge near his uncoascious sister. Mr. Hardy as he clasped his wife's hand in his own poured out bis soul in this petition: “Dear Lord, we know thou dost love us, even though we cannot always know why thou dost allow suifering and trouble, and we would thank thee for the things that cannot be destroy: ed, for the loves that canpot suffer death, for the wonderful promises of the life to coine. Only we have been so careless of the things that belong to thy kingdom. We have been so selfish and forgetful of the great needs and sufferings and sins of earth. Pardon us, gracious Redeemer. Pardon me, for 1 am the chief offender. Yea, Lord, even as the robber on the cross was welcomed into paradise, welcome thou me. But we pray for our dear ones. May they recover. Make this beloved one who now lies unknowing among us to come back into the universe of sense and sound, to know us and smile upon us again. “We say, ‘Thy will be done.” Grand wisdom, for thou knowest best. Ouly our hearts will ery out for help. and thou knowest our hearts better than any one else. Bless me this night as 1 stand before the people. This is no selfish prayer, dear Lord. I desire only thy glory; I pray only for thy kingdom. But thou hast appointed my days to live. Thou hast sent me the message, and 1 cannot help feeling the solemn burden and joy of it. “I will say to the people that thon art most important of all in this habi- tation of the flesh. And now bless us all. Give us new hearts. Make us to feel the true meaning of existence here. Reveal to us thy splendor. For- givé all the past and make impossible in the children the mistakes of the par- ent. Deliver us from evil, and thine shall lie the kingdom forever. Amen.” When Mr. Hardy and George reach. ed the town hall. they found a large crowd gathering. They had some difli- culty in gaining entrance. Mr. Hardy at once passed up to the platform, where thes chairman of the meeting greeted him and said he would expect him to maké some remarks during the evening. Robert sat down at one end of the platform and watched the hall fill with people, nearly all well known to him. There was an unusually large crowd of boys and young men, besides a large gathering of his own men from the shops, together with a great number of citizens and business men, a repre- sentative audience for the place, brought together under the influence of ‘he disaster and feeling somewhat the breaking downiof artificial social distinctions in the presence of the grim leveler Death, who had come so near to them the last few days. There were the usual opening exer- cises common to such public gather- ings. Several well known business men and two or three of the ministers, including Mr. Jones, made appropriate addresses. The attention of the great audience was not labored for, the oc- casion itself being enough to throw over the people the spell of subdued quiet. When the chairman announced that “Mr. Robert Hardy, our well known railroad manager, will now address us,” there was a movement of curiosi- ty and some surprise, and many a man leaned forward and wondered in his heart what the wealthy railroad man would have to say on such an occasion. He had never appeared as a speaker in public, and he passed generally ir Barton for the cold, selfish, haughty man he had always been. CHAPTER X. Mr. Hardy began in a low, clear tone: * “Men and Women of DBarton—To- night I am not the man you have known me these 25 years 1 have been among you. I am, by the grace of God, a new creature. As 1 stand here | have no greater desire in my heart than to say what may prove to Le a blessing to all my old townspeople and lo my employees and to these strong young men and boys. Within a few short days God has shown me the seli- ishness of a human being’s heart, and that heart was my own, and it is with feelings none of you can ever know that I look into your faces and say these words.” Robert paused a moment as if gath- ering himself up for the effort that fol- lowed, and the audience, startled with an unexpected emotion by the strange beginning, thrilled with excitement, as, lifting bis arm and raising his voice, the once cold and proud man contin- ued, his face and form glowing with the transfiguration of a new manhood: “There is but one supreme law in this world, and it is this: Love God and your neighbor with heart, mind, soul, strength. And there are but two things worth living for: The glory of God and the salvation of man. Tonight I, who look into eternity in a sense which I will not stop to explain, feel the bit- terness which comes from the knowl- edge that I have broken that law and have not lived for those things which alone are worth living for. “But God has sent me here tonight with a message to the people which my heart must deliver. It is a duty even more sacred in some ways than what I owe to my own kindred. I am aware that the hearts of the people are shock- ed into numbness by the recent horror. I know that more than one bleeding heart is in this house, and the shadow of the last enemy has fallen over many thresholds in our town. What! Did I not enter into the valley of the shad- ow of death myself as I stumbled over the ghastly ruins of that wreck, my soul torn in twain for the love of three of my own dear children? Do 1 not sympathize in full with all those who bitterly weep and lament and sit in blackness of horror this night? Yea, but, men of Barton, why is it that we are so moved, so stirred, so shocked, by the event of death when the far more awful event of life does not disturb us in the least? “We shudder with terror. we lose our accustomed pride or indifference, we speak in whispers, and we tread softly in the presence of the visiter who smites but once and then smites the body only. but in the awful pres- ence of the living image of God we go our ways careless, indifferent, cold. passionless, selfish. “I know whereof 1 speak, for I have walked through the world like that my- self. And yet death cannot be com- pared for one moment with life for majesty, for solemnity, for meaning, for power. There were 75 persons kill- ed in the accident. Dut in the papers this morning I read in the column next to that in which the accident was paraded in small type and in the brief- est of paragraphs the statement that a certain young man in this very town of ours had been arrested for forging his father's name on a check and was in the grasp of the law. “And every day in this town and in every town all over the world events like that and worse than that are of frequent occurrence. Nay, in this very town of ours more than 75 souls are at this very moment going down into a far blacker hell of destruction than the one down there under that fated bridge, and the community is not hor- rified over it. How many mass meet- ings have been held in this town with- in the last 25 years over the losses of character, the aeatn of purity. the de- struction of honesty? Yet they have outnumbered the victims of this late physical disaster a thousandfold. “And what does mere death do? It releases the spirit from its house of earth, but aside from that death does nothing to the person. But what does life do? Life does everything. It pre- pares for heaven or for hell. It starts impulses, molds character, fixes char- acter. Death has no kingdom without and. Death is only the last enemy of the many ecuemies that life knows. Death is a second; life is an eternity. O men, brothers, if, as I solemnly and truly believe, this is the last opportu- nity I shall have to speak to you in such large numbers, I desire you to remember, when I have vanished from your sight, that I spent nearly my last breath in an appeal to you to make the most of daily life, to glorify God and save men. “The greatest enemy of man is not death; it is selfishness. He sits on the throne of the éntire world. This very disaster which has filled the town with sorrow was due to selfishness. Let us see if that is not so. It has been prov- ed by investigation already made that the drunkenness of a track inspector was the cause of the accident. What was the cause of that drunkenness? The drinking habits of that inspector. How did he acquire them? In a sa- loon which we taxpayers allow to run on payment of a certain sum of money into our own treasury. “So, then, it was the greed or selfish- ness of the men of this town which lies at the bottom of this dreadful dis- aster. Who was to blame for the dis- aster? The track inspector? No. The saloon keeper who sold him the liquor? No. Who then? We ourselves, my brothers; we who licensed the selling of the stuff which turned a man’s brain into liquid fire and smote his judg- ment and reason with a brand from out the burning pit. “If I had stumbled upon the three corpses of my own children night be- fore last, I could have exclaimed in justice before the face of God, ‘I have murdered my own children,’ for I was one of the men of Barton to vote for the license which made possible the drunkenness of the man in whose care were placed hundreds of lives. “For what is the history of this case? Who was this wretched track in- spector? A man who, to my own knowledge, trembled before tempta- tion; who, on the testimony of the fore- man at the shops, was and always had been a sober man up to the time when we as a municipality voted to replace he system of no license with the sa- loon for the sake of .what we thought was a necessary revenue. This man had no great temptation to drink wliile the saloon was out of the way. Its very absence was his salvation. But its public open return confronted his appetite once more, and he yielded and fell. “Who says he was to blame? Who are the real criminals in the case? We ourselves, citizens; we who, for the greed of gain, for the saving of that which has destroyed more souls in hell than any other one thing, made possi- ble the causes which led to the grief and trouble of this hour. Would we not shrink in terror from the thought of lying in wait to kill a man? Would we not repel with holy horror the idea of murdering and maiming 75 people? We would say ‘Impossible! Yet when I am ushered at last into the majestic presence of Almighty God I feel con- vinced I shall see in his righteous countenance the sentence of our con- demnation just as certainly as if we had gone out in a body and by wicked craft had torn out the supporting tim- bers of that bridge just before the train thundered upon it, for did we not sanction by law a business which we know tempts men to break all the laws, which fills our jails and poor- houses, our reformatories and asylums, which breaks women’s hearts and beg- gars blessed homes and sends innocent children to thread the paths of shame and vagrancy, which brings paller into the face of the wife and tosses with the devil’s own glee a thousand vic- tims into perdition with every revolu- tion of this great planet about its greater sun? “Men of Barton, say what we will, we are the authors of this dreadful dis- aster. And if we sorrow as a com- munity we sorrow in reality for our own selfish act. And, oh, the selfish- ness of it! That clamoring greed for money! That burning thirst for more and more and more at the expense of every godlike quality, at the ruin of all that our mothers once prayed might belong to us as men and women! “What is it. ye merchants, ye busi- ness men, here tonight that ye struggle most over? The one great aim of your lives is to buy for as little as possible and sell for as much as possible. What care have ye for the poor. who work at worse than starvation wages, so long as ye can buy cheap and sell at large profits? What is the highest aim of us railroad men in the great whirl of commercial competition which seecthes and boils and surges about this earth lite another atmosphere, plainly visi- ble to the devils of other worlds? “What is our aim but to make money our god and power our throne? How much caie or love is there for flesh and blood at times when there is danger of losing almighty dollars? But, O Al- mighty Saviour, it was not for this that we were made! We know it was not. “To whom am I speaking? To my- self. God forbid that I should stand here to condemn you, being myself the chief of sinners for these 25 years. What have 1 done to bless this com- munity? [low much have I cared for the men in my employ? What differ- ence did it make to me that my exam- ple drove men away from the church of Christ and caused anguish to those few souls who were trying to redeem humanity? To my just shame I make answer that no one thing has driven the engine of my existence over ine track of its destiny except self. And. oh, for that church of Christ that 1 professed to believe in! How much have I done for that? How much. O fellow members (and I see many of you here tonight), how much have we done in the best cause ever known and the greatest organization ever found- ed? “We go to church after reading the Sunday morning paper, saturated through and through with the same things we have had poured into us ev- ery day of the week, as if we begrudg- ed the whole of one day out of seven. We criticise prayer and hymn and ser- mon, drop into the contribution box half the amount we paid during the week for a theater or concert ticket and then when anything goes wrong in the community or our children fall into vice scorn the church for weakness and the preacher for lack of ability. “Shame on us, men of Barton, mem- bers of the church of Christ, that we have so neglected our own church prayer meeting that out of a resident membership of more than 400, living in easy distance of the church, only GO have attended regularly and over 200 have been to that service occasionally. Yet we call ourselves disciples of Christ! We say we believe in his bless- ed teachings; we say we believe in prayer, and in the face of all these professions we turn our backs with in- difference on the very means of spir- itual growth and power which the church places within our reach. “If Christ were to come to the earth today, he would say unto us, ‘Woe un- to you, church members, hypocrites!” He would say unto us, ‘Woe unto you, young disciples in name, who have promised to love and serve me and then, ashamed of testifying before me, have broken promise and prayer and ridicule those who have kept their vows sacredly!” He would say to us men who have made money and kept it to ourselves: ‘Woe unto you, ye rich men, who dress softly and dine lux- uriously and live in palaces, while the poor cry aloud for judgment and the laborer sweats for the luxury of the idle! Woe unto you who speculate in flesh and blood and call no man broth- er unless he lives in as fine a house and has as much money in the bank! (CONTINUED NEXT WEEK.) Lightning on Wheels. If “Time is Money,” the New Chicago-Portland S‘Special” Saves the Traveling Public Millions a Year. : “Millions for an inch of time !”’ gasped England’s great virgin Queen, as her im- perious soul hung hovering on the border- line between two worlds. A clock-tick of time is all that divides life in full flush from pallid death. The fate of individuals and of empires often hangs upon a moment. ‘Time is money,’ is a Poor-Richard-ish condensation of all materialistic philosophy in three words. Never since ‘‘the evening and the morn- ing were the first day,” was time so valu- able as in this age of steam and electricity, of mighty undertakings, and gigantic ac- tivities. In all the world’s busy centers of trade and finance, minutes are bank- able wealth, and fortunes may de- pend upon a trifling difference in watches. If he is blessed ‘‘who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before,” how infinitely more worthy of blessing must be the agency that yields to men or nations two hours, or days, or years, or centuries of extra time for every one possessed be- fore! And this is just what the Oregon Rail- road & Navigation Compan y has done and is doing with its new and superb flyers be- tween Portland and Chicago, between ti » Northwest and the East. Take your pen- cil and do a little figuring. The fastest regular train that ever cross- ed the continent up to April 22nd, 1900, took 83 hours and 30 minutes to go from Portland to Chicago. Now, the magnifi- cent ‘‘Chicago-Portland Special’? makes the 2314-mile trip in 72 hours and 15 min- utes. That is a saving of 11} hours of time to every passenger. Say thas, includ- ing both east and westbound travel hy all routes, 400,000 people cross the continent in a year—and that is an under, rather than over, estimate. Theaggregate saving of time would be 4,500,000 hours. That is 513 years, 8 months, and 20 days—or, counting 10 hours as a business or working day, 1232 years, 10 months and 20 days— of time saved in a single year by one grand change of railroad schedule ! Nor is that all. It is scarcely a start in the marvelous mathematics. The 800,000 24-hour days give a total of 19,200,000 hours. Computing the working day, as before, at 10 hours, this would be 1,920,- 000 days, or 5230 years, 3 months and 10 days—according to orthodox chronology, nearly all time since the Creator leaned the wet-clay Adam up against the fence of Paradise to dry—saved to the busy, rush- ing public in one year of transcontinental travel ! And the saving is accomplished with every imaginable concomitant of comfort and convenience. An invalid, a lady or a child may now start upon the long trans- continental journey without a moment's fear or hesitation. It is simply a flying holiday without a jolt or a jar, and sur- rounded with all the accessories of luxur- ious ease, while the scenic grandeurs and glories of half a hemisphere are whirled before the traveling picnicker’s enchanted eyes. The scenery includes, in one vast, majestic panorama, all that is wild, sub- lime and beautiful in mountain and stream, crag, cataract and cascade, sky scraping forest, lonely desert and horizon- hounded plain. And the train would dumbfound the gor- geous old romancers of ‘‘The Arabian Nights.”” It is a whole city of palaces, with parlors and drawing rooms, slumber- chambers, banquet halls, cafes, barber shops, baths; libraries and writing rooms —all resplendent with gilding and carving and tapestry, and radiant asa thousand meteors with gas or electric lights—flying 40 miles an hour—swifter than any wind short of a cyclone—over spaces vaster than the known world of Haroun al Raschid and Aladdin, or Hesiod and Homer. From 120-ton engine to the last day coach, the whole train is first-class, and yet second class passengers are carried at second class rates. It is the model among all transcon- tinental trains — this ‘‘Chicago-Portland Special’ of the Oregon Railroad & Naviga- tion Company—and its time is unrivaled ! Think of 52 centuries saved in a single year! P. DONAN. ‘I guess that’ll do,’’ said William Jud- son, last year’s candidate for village Pres- ident, and consequently this year running for one of the trusteeships. ‘‘Most of them hidebound partisans would rather vote for Beelzebub than for a Democrat, anyway.’ “We're Beelzebubs for them, all right,’ put in the candidate for collector, begin- ning to see visions of many fees. And the visions became realities, for the scheme worked and the day after elec- tion saw the prohibitionists in the board of the republican village of Russellton. ‘‘Guess they can’t do much harm,’’ said Solomon Wallace, disdainfully sniffing the air on the piazza at the American house. “Town’s voted no license for everything ‘cept the hotels, and I guess they’ll have trouble shutting up the drug stores. If some empty offices satisfies ’em, all right. The first meeting of the reform hoard of trustees was a decided event. The wom- en’s temperance board, of which Mrs. Silas Long was president, sent a beautiful floral ‘‘tribute,’’ as the florist called it, in the shape of a star, with the words ‘‘At Last” in blue immortelles across the front. In addition, there was a delegation from the temperance band present, headed by Mrs. Long, to wish the new board God-speed in its work, and to present a written address embodying their hopes for the future of the cause of purity and light. The address having been presented, the delegates from the temperance board with- drew to go to the Central church, where that evening there was to be a special praise service for the hoard to return thanks for the victory that had been vouch- safed for them. Then Trustee Long arose, locked at his two co-workers, produced from an inside pocket a carefully written roll of manu- script, and said : “Mr. President—I offer the following resolution : “Whereas, It is a matter of common knowledge that the rum traffic is going on daily among us, in violation of the law ; and “Whereas, It is a matter of common knowledge that many places of business, especially the drug stores, are trafficking daily, sometimes on the strength of alleg- ed physicians’ certificates, and sometimes without, one such certificate having al- ready, according to common report, been used by forty-seven different people ; there- fore, ‘Resolved, That hereafter each week the druggists be compelled to furnish to the village clerk full lists of all quantities of liquor sold by them, in what quantity and for what purpose, such lists to be printed weekly in the Russellton Courier.” And Mr. Long sat down, modestly bow- ing to the applause of his conferees on the board. “Look here, Long,’’ began President Jackson, president by compromise, ‘‘that won’t do. You said before election that you would pass all our measures.” “That wasn’t saying we wouldn’t pass any of our own,” said Mr. Long, and the resolution was carried by the narrow ma- jority of the prohibition vote. The ante-election excitement was noth- ing to the storm the news of the passage of the resolution raised, though. Perhaps the internal seething of a volcano would furnish a better simile for the respectable citizens of the town, who had been in the habit of purchasing sundry remedies for the purpose of curing colds with great regularity, were afraid to give voice to their sentiments for fear of creating suspicion. And so Mr. Long went about his daily tasks, unmoved by the unspoken anathe- mas heaped upon his head and comforted in the knowledge that at last he had been enabled to strike a blow against the dead- ly rum traffic. One man in Russelton was untroubled, Bill Todd, who, with one or two similar shining lights of intemperance, posed as a horrible example, worried not a bit over the new law. Having spent somewhat more than half of the past fifteen years in the village lock-up for offenses growing out of his inordinate thirst, the mere printing of his name in the weekly Palladium had no terrors for him. On general principles, however, he shared in the general feeling against Mr. Long and, being of a decided- ly original mind, he decided upon revenge. “I'll make old Long sick,” he said, and he confided his plan to Mr. Jackson, presi- dent of the board, and his one friend in the village. Mr. Jackson lent an eager ear and therefore might have heen seen in one of the drug stores in earnest conversation with its proprietor. Two days after the conversation between the druggist and the merchant Tcdd’s old- est daughter opened the door of the shanty where Todd lived and hailed Mr. Long as he passed on his way to town. “*Pa’s awful sick,’’ she said, ‘‘and Jim- my’s gore to school and the doctor came this morning and said pa’d have to get his priseription. I'm all alone and I'd like to know if you would get it for me at Bow- yer’s drug store and bring it when you come along back for dinner.” “Why certainly.”” was Mr. Long’s hearty answer. Mr. Long was noted in town for his kindness and consideration for the want of others. ‘‘Is your pa much sick 2”? ‘No, not much, but the doctor said he’d have to have the medicine.” ‘‘Say,”” put in Mr. Long, asa horrible suspicion crossed his mind, ‘‘your pa ain't sick because of overindlugence in the worm that destroys, is he? Because if he is, you know that I'd let him die before I'd help him. That is. perhaps I wouldn't let him die, but I'd let him get mighty sick betore I’d help him get better.”’ If Mr. Long had had sharp ears he might have heard a chuckle from within, and if he had sharp eyes he might have seen the girl make a motion for silence with one hand, but in his innocence he saw nothing of the kind. Only the sick man was before his eyes and he took the prescription with- out fear. The druggist took the prescription, look- ed at it, yawned carelessly and said : ‘All right, Mr. Long, I'll have it for you when you start back for dinner. It'll take some time to mix.”’ When Mr. Long had gone he laughed out loud, then called his clerk, who like- wise laughed out loud. Then he went to the back room, poured one pint of a suspi- cious looking mixture into an innocent looking bottle, wrapped it in a paper and laid It aside for Mr. Long. The next week's issue of the Weekly Pal- ladium had his name standing at the head of its weekly list of purchasers at the drug store. Charles W. Long, ons pint of whiskey, on prescription for Bill Todd.” Mr. Long could never make a satisfactory explanation, and his infuriated co-workers in the prohibition party made matters so uncomfortable for him that in a fit of sud- den frenzy be *‘flopped’’ to the republican party. He now says the prohibitionists are a set of cranks, and haven’t any more right to win an election than a southern fire- eater.— Brooklyn Eaale. ——-Subseribe for the WATCHMAN. In Explanation. Yes, I'm the fam’ly baby, And oh, the day I came They did the greatest talking, A-finding me a name! For sister wanted Ethel, And brother Bess or Nan, While Auntie favored Winifred And grandma Hester Ann. They did the greatest talking ! But father, when "twas through, Just called me after mother, dear, And so I'm little Sue. —Judge. DEFEAT IN VICTORY. Politically Russellton was stirred from top to bottom. Around the fire in every grocery store, down at the blacksmith shop and in the office of the American house earnest groups of men discussed the situa- tion. “I never heard of such a thing,” said Solomon Wallace, by virtue of his years and the fact that he owned four farms, en- titled to express his opinion on any topic under the sun. “The idea that the Re- publican party of Russellton can’t have anybody to vote for at the village election. That there Frederick Hannan ought to he rode out of this town on a rail, that’s what he bad, and I’ll help,”’ and Mr Wallace thumped on the floor violently with his cane and glared ferociously at his auditors. *‘That’s right, that’s right, derned if it ain’t,”” said the proprietor of the American house, leaning over the desk and pounding on the register with emphasis. Mr. Bridger had learned from experience that cheerful agreement with the views expressed hy Solomon Wallace was quite sure to add to the profits of the bar before the daily even- Ing session of the wiseacres that nightly congregated in the hotel was over. : _ ““What excuse does Hannan give ?”’ put in another one of the charmed circle of graybeards. “Don’t give none, ’xcept that he clean forgot it and Bell says that he was so busy that day that he didn’t think nothing at all about it and Hod Wilson says there's no way to get around it. The nominations wan’ filed and the day’s past and we can Just vote for Democrats or not vote at all,’’ and Wallace paused for breath. ‘Might vote for Prohibitionists,’” put in aman behind the stove. ‘“They’ve nomi- nated the same old gang again, one year Long for trustee and Johnson for village clerk and next year Johnson for trustee and Long for village clerk and neither of ’em with more show for election than a Repub- lican in South Carolina.’ “Well, I'm goin’ home; I'm just clean sick, that’s what,’’ was the answer of Wal- lace, the ancient. “I’ve been a Republi- can for forty years, summer 'n’ winter,and I didn’t ever think that I'd have to vote for a dimmyerat 'r not vote at all.”’ ‘Guess I'll have to have a little soothin’ before I go,”’ he added, turning to Mr. Bridger, who in respOnse led the way through a narrow hall into the sample room of the American house, by which name the apartment devoted to the hotel bar was euphemistically known. The men thus cruelly left hehind look- ed longingly after the departing Croesus, but they saw nothing more inviting than a broad back and one by one they filed slowly out into the night. : Later in the evening Frederick Hannan, secretary of the village committee of the Republican party, dropped into the hotel to talk the matter over with Mr. Bridger. The last lounger had gone, and the proprietor of the American house was preparing to shut up for the night. Hannan was de- voutly thankful for the empty office. He had during the day been the recipient of so many frank expressions of opinion from his enraged fellow citizens that he shrank from meeting any more of them. “How d’ye come to do it, Fred?’ said Mr. Bridger, offering a very black and powerful-looking cigar from a fly-specked box. Mr. Hannan took one and the hox was returned to its hiding place under the counter. ‘‘Keep ’em for my friends,” add- ed Mr. Bridger, biting the end from one himself and feeling in his pocket for a match. “Lord only knows,’’ said the disconso- late Hannan. ‘‘You see the law says that the nominations for offices must be filed within ten days after making. Statute in such case made and provided.”” Mr. Han- nan was a justice of the peace and prided himself on his legal knowledge. “Well, the day after the nominations were made I had to go down to Edwardsville, long ©’ my brother's wife dying, and didn’t get back for nine days, though expecting every day there would be the last. Then ves- terday, when I did get back that dog case from Rodman come up, and I clean forgot all about it. And that is the whole story, ”’ and the politically-ruined Hannan puffed moodily at the cigar and gazed at the stove. “The boys are very mad about it, and that’s no mistake,’ was the comforting answer of the landlord. ‘‘Old Wallace was in here to-night sayin’ he'd help ride you out of town on a rail.”’ : ““He’s awfully set in his politics,” he added. ‘‘He’s voted the straight ticket for forty years now, and calculated to vote straight every election until he died. And now you’ve gone and broke his record for him.”’ Hannan’s only answer was a shudder as he thought of his impending fate. “I guess I'll be going,’’ he said. But to the hearts of Silas Long and his faithful associates the news which had so powerfully affected Solomon Wallace brought the first gleam of joy that had been theirs for long, long years. Year after year the Prohibition party in Russellton had with unfailing regularity nominated its candidates for the village offices, only to see with unfailing regularity their ticket hopelessly defeated. Yet they hung to their principles and consoled themselves with the thought that if they were fore- doomed to defeat victory was not less im- possible to them than to the candidates of the Democratic party. And now, by the merest chance, victory seemed at last to he within their grasp. With no Republican candidates, with none of the stalwart Re- publicans willing to vote for a Democrat under any considerations, why should not the Prohibitionists candidates win? On the same night that had brought forward the righteous anger of Solomon Wallace and the cold comfort of Hiram Bridger, the Prohibitionists met in the back room of Silas Long's harness shop. “This is the plan,” said Silas Long, suddenly developing into an astute polit- ical manager. ‘The election’s for a village President, four trustees, a clerk and a collector. What we want is power, and if we can elect three trustees we’ll bave it. We’ll let our can- didates for President, clerk and oue trustee withdraw and then substitute the men the Republicans name. The law 11 let us sub- stitute. We'll get three trustees and the collector and that’ll give us power in the board and the collector’s fees to Myron Hastings.” oe 3 ‘And those fellows can have the rest,” he added.
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers