“I was knocking about late one summer at that period, and had made many friends around St. Paul and Minneapolis, some of whom were State officials, and I had heard much talk of the struggle there was to be in the next Legislature over the election of a Senator. Two men were in the race, and as they were both popular the contest was likely to be a close one. Party questions did not enter in, for the State was strongly Republican, and no Democrat stood a show. But which of the two Republicans would carry the Legislature was a matter of great doubt, and I saw bets made on the issue as early as the first of September. As the time of election drew near, it was evident that the choice for Senator was going to govern the nomination of candidates for the Legislature, and as both the Senatorial aspirants were long of head as well as long of purse they were using all the influence they had in the county conventions which were to be held early in October. “Right there was where the importance of the lumber industry came in. The money on which the lumbermen in the upper counties lived came to them mostly through Minneapolis and St. Anthony, and the perfectly legitimate business relations between them and the business men of those two cities naturally gave the latter much influence among the former. There was a rollicking, happy-go-lucky man in Minneapolis whom everybody called Doc Martin, for no reason that I could discover except that he wasn’t a doctor. He was part owner of a saw-mill, and spent the most of each winter in the woods with his men. He was credited with being as influential as any one there was, among voters, but he had a rival in another man named Gilmartin, who was a logger himself, but had for a dozen seasons been foreman of one gang or another. Martin was a rich man, but Gilmartin was seldom flush, excepting in the spring, when he had drawn his winter’s pay. These two men were known to be strong partisans, one favoring one of the would-be Senators, and the other the other, and it was generally thought that they would both go electioneering when the county conventions were held. “The week before that was to happen I was one of a party who drove from Minneapolis to a road-house on the Fort Snelling road near the Minnehaha Falls, partly for the enjoyment of the moonlight and partly for a game supper such as the house was famous for providing. Martin was one of the party, and as there were two or three other high rollers with us, I had made up my mind that it would be daybreak before we would get back.