The 13th District: A Story of a CandidateWhitlock, Brand
General
The 13th District: A Story of a Candidate
Whitlock, Brand
Didactic fiction; Elections -- Fiction; Political campaigns -- Fiction; Political fiction; Social problems -- Fiction
He was really a fine looking man, was Garwood, as he threw his
shoulders back, and gave his head that old determined toss, finer
looking then as a congressman than he had been as a mere candidate
for Congress a year and a half before. Perhaps it was because he
had grown stouter, perhaps it was the finer manner of a man of the
world he had learned in Washington, perhaps it was his well-groomed
appearance, for his long black coat had a gloss of richness rather
than the shine of poverty, his trousers were creased and fitted neatly
over his low shoes, his white waistcoat curved gracefully over the
paunch of prosperousness, his shirt, as a student of clothes might have
noticed, was made with the collar and cuffs attached--the easy way to
be marked for a gentleman--while the wide Panama hat he wore had the
distinguishing effect of having been bought somewhere else. But more
than all, it was the atmosphere of official position which enveloped
him--and of which he was thoroughly conscious--that spread a spell over
the observer. No one would ever call him Jerry now, or ever again,
unless, perhaps, in the heat of his campaign for reëlection. Of his
face, it may be said that it was fuller and redder; the mouth, clean
shaven, had taken on new lines, but they were hardly as pleasing as
the old ones had been in the days before.
And so he made his dignified progress up to the court house. He had
intended, on coming down, to go to his office where young Enright,
lately admitted, was holding forth with a bright new sign under
Garwood's old one, but it occurred to him that it would benefit him to
reassert his relation to the bar of Polk County by appearing in court
on term day, and sitting or standing about. Perhaps Judge Bickerstaff
would invite him to sit beside him on the bench. He remembered that
that was what the judge used to do whenever General Bancroft came home
from Washington.
He had been bowing to acquaintances all the way down town with his old
amiable smile, seeking to disarm it of a new quality of reservation
that had lately entered into it, but now, in the cool dark tunnels
they called corridors, he met men face to face, and all the way along,
and even up the steep and winding stairs that curved after a colonial
pattern to the upper story, he must pause to take their hands, and
carefully, and distinctly, according to the training he had given his
memory in this respect, call them by name; more often than not by their
given names. When he left them, they felt a glow of pleasure, though
they were all the while conscious that something was lacking in this
apparent heartiness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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