There were times indeed when the galleries sought to howl down those who were taking part in the convention, and this was notably the case during a very courageous speech by Mr. Roosevelt. I may mention, in passing, that the country then received the first revelation of that immense pluck and vigor which have since carried Mr. Roosevelt through so many political conflicts, borne him through all the dangers of the Santiago campaign, placed him in the governor's chair of the State of New York and in the Vice-Presidency of the United States, leading to the Presidency, which he holds as I revise these lines. At the Chicago Convention, though he was in a small minority, nothing daunted him. As he stood upon a bench and addressed the president, there came from the galleries on all sides a howl and yell, ``Sit down! sit down!'' with whistling and cat-calls. All to no purpose; the mob might as well have tried to whistle down a bronze statue. Roosevelt, slight in build as he then was, was greater than all that crowd combined. He stood quietly through it all, defied the mob, and finally obliged them to listen to him. Toward the end of the convention this mob showed itself even worse than before. It became evident that large parts of the galleries were packed in the interest of the local candidate for the Vice-Presidency, General Logan, and this mass of onlookers did their best to put down all delegates supporting any other. No more undemocratic system was ever devised. The tendency of this ``wigwam'' plan of holding great meetings or conventions is to station a vast mob of sensation- seeking men and women in the galleries between the delegates and the country at large. The inevitable consequence is that the ``fog-horns'' of a convention play the most ef- fective part, and that they seek mainly the applause of the galleries. The country at large is for the moment forgotten. The controlling influence is the mob, mainly from the city where the convention is held. The whole thing is a monstrous abuse. Attention has been called to it by thinking Democrats as well as by Republicans, who have seen in it a sign of deterioration which has produced many unfortunate consequences and will produce more. It is the old story of the French Convention overawed by a gallery mob and mistaking the mob whimsies of a city for the sober judgment of the country. One result of it the whole nation saw when, in more recent years, a youthful member of Congress, with no training to fit him for executive duties, was suddenly, by the applause of such a mob, imposed upon the Democratic National Convention as a candidate for the Presidency. Those who recall the way in which ``the boy orator of the Platte'' became the Democratic candidate for the Chief Magistracy over seventy millions of people, on account of a few half-mawkish, half- blasphemous phrases in a convention speech, can bear witness to the necessity of a reform in this particular--a