When Mr. Taft came here on Thursday and I came here on Friday, Mr. Taft came here having lost the State of Illinois; I came here having lost the State of New Hampshire. [Laughter.] In Illinois Mr. Taft’s chief lieutenant had been Mr. Lorimer. [Hisses.] In New Hampshire my chief supporter, chief lieutenant, had been Gov. Bass. [Great applause.] And Mr. Taft came here to explain that he didn’t like Mr. Lorimer [laughter and applause], having kept his dislike strictly private and confidential [laughter] until Mr. Lorimer lost out in Illinois. [Laughter.] And I came here to say that, win or lose, I am with Gov. Bass every time, and that I count it the highest privilege to have had him as my champion, and I would rather lose with him than win with the forces allied against me. [Great applause and cries of “Bully.”] FOUGHT LORIMER IN ILLINOIS. Now, just one more moment about Mr. Lorimer. I know his record well. Mr. Taft was originally, a year and a quarter ago, against Mr. Lorimer, and at that time he requested me not to assault Mr. Lorimer in public for fear it would help Mr. Lorimer. [Laughter.] And accordingly I kept quiet for several months, until I became convinced that the assault against Mr. Lorimer was going on with such excessive secrecy [laughter] that neither Mr. Lorimer nor any of his friends knew that there was an assault at all. [Laughter.] And then I took up the cudgels that I had dropped and I attacked Mr. Lorimer again. [Applause.] And I didn’t attack him in Massachusetts after the Illinois primary; I attacked him in Illinois before the Illinois primary. [Applause.] I was informed before I went there that I ought not to attack Mr. Lorimer because he had many friends, some of whom “intended to vote for me,” and that I would alienate their support. And I answered to them that I would rather lose every delegate in Illinois than by silence connive at the wickedness of which Mr. Lorimer had been guilty. And I fought it out fair and square on that issue from one end of Illinois to the other. [A voice: “You did.”] And I won. [Applause.] And I got every delegate in Illinois excepting two, the two from the district which Mr. Lorimer carries in his waistcoat pocket, and those two are for Mr. Taft. And, friends, it would not have been possible for me to have supported Mr. Lorimer at all――to have acquiesced in his support of me; but if it had been, and I had been going to repudiate him, I would have repudiated him before the Illinois primary and not afterwards. [Applause.] THE MAN FOR THE BOSSES. I have got a couple of columns arranged parallel here, one containing a dozen of my representative supporters and the other containing the dozen foremost supporters of Mr. Taft.