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
Grayson looked in surprise at Harley, but he caught the appealing look
on the face of the correspondent. He liked Harley, and he knew that he
could trust him. He knew, moreover, that what Harley had written in the
note must be true.
Grayson did not hesitate, and, nodding slightly to Harley, turned and
faced the crowd, like a soldier prepared for his last and desperate
charge. His eyes sought those of the little man, his target, looking up
at him. Then he fixed Plover with his gaze and began.
They still tell in the West of Jimmy Grayson's speech at Weeping Water,
as the veterans tell of Pickett's rush in the flame and the smoke up
Cemetery Hill. He had gone on the stage a half-dead man. He had already
been speaking nineteen hours that day. His eyes were red and swollen
with train dust, prairie dust, and lack of sleep. Every bone in him
ached. Every word stung his throat as it came, and his tongue was like a
hot ember in his mouth. Deep lines ran away from his eyes.
But Jimmy Grayson was inspired that night on the black prairie. The
words leaped in livid flame from his lips. Never was his speech more
free and bold, and always his burning eyes looked into those of Plover
and held him.
Closer and closer pressed the crowd. The darkness still rolled up,
thicker and blacker than ever. Grayson's shoulders sank away, and only
his face was visible now. The wind rose again, and whistled around the
little town and shrieked far out on the lonely prairie. But above it
rose the voice of Grayson, mellow, inspiring, and flowing full and free.
Harley looked and listened, and his admiration grew and grew. "I don't
agree with all he says," he thought, "but, my God! how well he says it."
Then he cowered in the lee of a little building, that he might shelter
himself from the bitter wind that was searching him to the marrow.
Time passed. The speaker never faltered. A half-hour, an hour, and his
voice was still full and mellow, nor had a soul left the crowd. Grayson
himself seemed to feel a new access of strength from some hidden source,
and his form expanded as he denounced the Trusts and the Robber Barons,
and all the other iniquities that he felt it his duty to impale, but he
never took his eyes from Plover; to him he was now talking with a force
and directness that he had not equalled before. Time went on, and, as if
half remembering some resolution, Plover's hand stole towards the
little old silver watch that he carried in the left-hand pocket of his
waistcoat. But just at that critical moment Grayson uttered the magical
name, Wall Street, and Plover's hand fell back to his side with a jerk.
Then Grayson rose to his best, and tore Wall Street to tatters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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