Rankin retired amid a volley of hand-claps, which the rotund judge, advancing to the front of the stage, buttoning his frock coat about him, thought were meant for him. He bowed ponderously, and then, with one hand on the table beside him, began the platitudinous speech of the permanent chairman. The people bore with him in that divine patience to which the American public has schooled itself under this oft-recurring ordeal, and even gave him some perfunctory applause. But the quality of the applause was spontaneous only when he reached the place where he said: "I now have the very great honor and the very great pleasure of introducing to you your next congressman, the Honorable Jerome B. Garwood." Jerry arose at the sound of his own name and, advancing to the front of the stage, stood there calm and composed until the applause died away; stood there calm and composed until the silence came and deepened. He looked over the whole audience, at the galleries even, and then his eye traveled unerringly to the spot where his own sat. He looked at his mother, gazing up at him through her dim spectacles, at Dade who smiled, at Mr. Harkness who was stern, at last at Emily. Their eyes met, and as Emily's fell she heard his voice in low, musical modulation: "Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen." And his last speech of the campaign began. Whenever in Grand Prairie they discuss Jerry Garwood's oratory, they shake their heads and say that he made the speech of his life that last night before election. XIX