The Candidate: A Political RomanceAltsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
General
The Candidate: A Political Romance
Altsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
Political campaigns -- Fiction; Political fiction
There Harley watched the fine Western audience come into the theatre and
find seats, with some noise but no disorder, a noise merely of men
calling each other by name, and commenting in advance on what Jimmy
Grayson would say. The other correspondents entered one by one--all
except Hobart, and took their seats on the stage. Sylvia and Mrs.
Grayson were with some ladies in a box. Harley looked for Hobart, and
two or three times he saw him near the main entrance of the building.
Once he was talking with a brown and longish-haired youth, and Harley,
by casual inquiry, learned that it was Metzger, the cowboy. A man not
greatly different in appearance, to whom Hobart spoke occasionally, was
Thorpe, the tramp miner, and yet another, a tall fellow with a bulging
underlip, Harley learned, was Williams, the third witness.
Evidently the witnesses would attend Jimmy Grayson's meeting, which was
natural, however, as every body in Grayville was sure to come, and
Harley also surmised that Hobart had taken upon himself the task of
instructing them as to the methods, the manner, and the greatness of the
candidate. He had done such a thing himself, upon occasion, the Western
interest in Jimmy Grayson being so great that often appeals were made to
the correspondents for information about him more detailed than the
newspapers gave.
Harley studied the faces of the three witnesses as attentively as the
distance and the light would admit, but they remained near the door,
evidently intending to stand there, back to the wall, a plan sometimes
adopted by those who may wish to slip out quietly before a speech is
finished. Harley, the trained observer, saw that Hobart, without their
knowledge, was shepherding them as the shepherd gently makes his sheep
converge upon a common spot.
The correspondent could draw no inference from the faces of the three
men, which were all of usual Western types, without anything special to
distinguish them, and his attention turned to the audience. He had
received an intimation that Jimmy Grayson intended to deliver that
evening a speech of unusual edge and weight. He would indict the other
party in the most direct and forcible manner, pointing out that its sins
were moral as well as political, but that a day of reckoning would come,
when those who profited by such evil courses must pay the forfeit; it
was a part of the law of nature, which was also the law of retribution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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