would both be helplessly beyond the pale of the lodge, even though you had both taken the obligation a thousand times!"

As the ominous applause which followed died away, Brother John, half arising in his seat, in his seat, vehemently exclaimed,

"Mrs. Worshipful Master, I never told him to ask no such damn fool question!"

XXV

A QUESTION OF AVAILABILITY

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A POLITICAL BANQUET IN ATLANTA, GA. GENERAL GORDON PROPOSES THE DEMOCRACY OF ILLINOIS THE WRITER'S RESPONSE A DESIRE IN ILLINOIS TO NOMINATE THE HON. DAVID DAVIS FOR PRESIDENT.

A

BOUT the year of grace 1889, a number of distinguished statesmen were invited to attend a political banquet to be given by the local Democratic Association of the splendid city of Atlanta, Georgia. Among the guests were Representative Flower of New York and General Collins of Massachusetts; the chief guest of the occasion was the Hon. David B. Hill, then the Governor of New York. The banquet was under the immediate auspices of the lamented Gordon, and of Grady of glorious memory. The board literally groaned under the rarest viands, and Southern hospitality was at its zenith. It was, all in all, an occasion to live in memory. I was not one of the invited guests of the committee, but being in a neighboring city was invited by Mr. Grady to be present.

At the conclusion of the feast, a toast was proposed to "The Gallant Democracy of New York." Glasses were touched and the enthusiasm was unbounded. The toast was of course responded to by the distinguished Governor of the Empire State. He was at his best. His speech, splendid in thought and diction, was heard with breathless interest.

The keynote was struck, and speech after speech followed in the proper vein. There was no discordant note, the burden of every speech being the gallant Democracy and splendid statesmanship of the great State of New York.

When the distinguished guests had all spoken, the master of ceremonies, General Gordon, proposed a toast to "The Democracy of Illinois," and called upon me to respond. I

confessed that I was only an average Democrat from Illinois; that way out there we were content to be of the rank and file, and of course to follow the splendid leadership and the gallant Democracy of which we had heard so much. To vote for a New York candidate had by long usage become a fixed habit with us, in fact, we would hardly know how to go about voting for a candidate from any other State; and I then related an incident on the question of supporting the ticket, which I thought might be to the point.

In 1872, in the portion of Illinois in which I live, there was an earnest desire on the part of conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans, to elect the Hon. David Davis to the Presidency. He had been a Whig in early life, brought up in the school of Webster and Clay, and was later the devoted personal and political friend of Mr. Lincoln. An earnest Union man during the war, he had at its close favored the prompt restoration to the Southern people of all their rights under the Constitution. As a judge of the Supreme Court, he had rendered a decision in which human life was involved, in which he had declared the supremacy of the Federal Constitution in war as well as in peace. Believing that he would prove an acceptable candidate, I had gladly joined the movement to secure his nomination at the now historic convention which met at Cincinnati in May, 1872. For many weeks prior to the meeting of that convention, there was little talked of in central Illinois but the nomination of Judge Davis for President. Morning, noon, and night, "Davis, Davis, Davis," was the burden of our song.

He did not, as is well known, receive the nomination, that honor, of course, passing to a distinguished Democratic statesman of New York.

Two or three days before I was to leave my home for the Cincinnati convention, an old Democratic friend from an adjoining county came into my office. He was an old-timer in very truth. He was born in Tennessee, had when a mere boy fought under Jackson at Talladega, Tallapoosa, and New Orleans, had voted for him three times for the Presidency, and expected to join him when he died. He had lived in