It was but ten days to the meeting of the Democratic state convention, and they were coming together divided in opinion, and at sea as to their policy, with a united militant Farmers’ Alliance demanding the uprooting of the foundations of the economic world, and a hundred thousand negro voters grinning at this opportunity to strike their white foes, while McLeod stood in the background smiling over the certainty of his triumph. CHAPTER XVIII--THE WAYS OF BOSTON WHEN Helen Lowell reached Boston from her visit with Sallie Worth, she found her father in the midst of his political campaign. The Hon. Everett Lowell was the representative of Congress from the Boston Highlands district. His home was an old fashioned white Colonial house built during the American Revolution. He was not a man of great wealth, but well-to-do, a successful politician, enthusiastic student, a graduate of Harvard, and he had always made a specialty of championing the cause of the “freedmen.” He was a chronic proposer of a military force bill for the South. His family was one of the proudest in America. He had a family tree five hundred years old--an unbroken line of unconquerable men who held liberty dearer than life. He believed in the heritage of good honest blood as he believed in blooded horses. His home was furnished in perfect taste, with beautiful old rosewood and mahogany stuff that had both character and history. On the walls hung the stately portraits of his ancestors representative of three hundred years of American life. He never confused his political theories about the abstract rights of the African with his personal choice of associates or his pride in his Anglo-Saxon blood. With him politics was one thing, society another. His pet hobby, which combined in one his philanthropic ideals and his practical politics, was of late a patronage he had extended to young George Harris, the bright mulatto son of Eliza and George Harris whose dramatic slave history had made their son famous at Harvard. This young negro was a speaker of fair ability and was accompanying Lowell on his campaign tours of the district, making speeches for his patron, who had obtained for him a clerk’s position in the United States Custom House. Harris was quite a drawing card at these meetings. He had a natural aptitude for politics; modest, affable, handsome, and almost white, he was a fine argument in himself to support Lowell’s political theories, who used him for all he was worth as he had at the previous election. Harris had become a familiar figure at Lowell’s home in the spacious library, where he had the free use of the books, and frequently he dined with the family, when there at dinner time hard at work on some political speech or some study for a piece of music.