The wool-grower of Ohio, the home of the popular McKinley, added sorrow to the cup held to the lips of the would-be aristocrats. He no longer felt bound to bow his head before the advantages held out by the party of wealth. He preferred to take a little less for his wool, and a little more respect for himself, his wife, and children in the social world, where every landmark of equality was being washed away by the tide of aristocratic tendencies. The bewildered Republican leaders gazed with terror upon the transmogrified weapons with which they had waged war. The sword of steel, when held by the hand clad in a golden gauntlet, had become a weapon of straw. They murmured to one another: “If these weapons have failed us, in what shall we seek safety?” Consternation was in the council of the great of that party who, for more than a quarter of a century, had controlled the legislation of the Republic, and by whom was created, in the minds of the people, the errors of social distinction and “caste” that have crept into the country. The Republicans, assembled at their headquarters, became more bewildered at each new piece of evidence of the disapprobation and rejection of those doctrines, the understanding of which they deemed such conclusive argument to the minds of the people. The oncoming storm had no centre. It was blowing in all directions of the Union. Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, even manufacturing Pennsylvania, were sending a horrible howling of destructive wind, which would sweep away all their carefully-prepared barriers. At the Democratic headquarters, no less was the degree of wonder stamped, though with joyous imprint, upon the faces of the party leaders. Could it be possible that Illinois had cast the majority of its vote for the leaders of the Democratic party, those standard-bearers against whom so much had been said to prejudice the mind of that great Soldier State, the home of Lincoln, the birthplace of the Republican party and of the Grand Army of the Republic? It was hard for the most hopeful to realize. Had the vaunted undoing of the Democratic party in the State of Indiana, the increase of the manufactures, and the personal popularity of a President, one of Indiana’s chosen sons, been proved false and groundless? Had the negroes in Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia joined the Democratic “Common People,” in spite of the promised covenant of their salvation, The Force Bill, and added to the majorities in those Southern States? Connecticut--much-protected Connecticut; could it be possible that she would increase the few hundred majority accorded to the Democratic candidate four years ago?