“When Mr. Kern was the nominee for vice-president on the Democratic ticket he was frequently alluded to by Republican papers as ‘Alfalfa John.’ But there are only a few people who know that Mr. Kern himself was the originator of the term. We landed at the Auditorium Hotel in Chicago direct from Denver and Mr. Kern gave audience to a large number of reporters, and among them several ‘sob sisters’ (which is the craft name for women journalists). One of these, a piquant little creature with fluffy hair from _The Chicago Tribune_, startled the nominee for vice-president by suddenly asking: “‘Mr. Kern, what is the actual color of your whiskers?’ “‘I really don’t know,’ replied Mr. Kern in all seriousness, ‘I have never seen them, except in a mirror, and you know how deceptive looking glasses are after one has past forty years. Down in Kokomo, Indiana, the boys call them alfalfa.’ “The next morning a splendid word portrait of Mr. Kern appeared in _The Tribune_ in which he was portrayed as ‘Alfalfa John,’ and the name clung to him all through the campaign. “To write the full story of campaigning with John W. Kern would be to write many pages of political history. Ambitious perhaps he was, but I have known many instances where he smothered his own ambitions to advance the interest of his own political party. He never was called that he did not answer, and he never was asked to go that he failed. I have known him, tired and weary and racked with pain, to crawl from his bed at three o’clock in the morning and ride miles that he might address children at a country school house, who were anxious to hear him. All through his political campaigns, strenuous as some of them were, his kindly disposition, his inexplicable sweetness of manner, was never ruffled. I never knew him to say a cross word, even in his most impatient moments, and the blare of bands and the pomp of political parades he never forgot his home. At Denver, when his nomination for vice-president was assured, when statesmen were trying to grasp his hand, and a platoon of newspaper men were climbing over each other to get a word with him, Mr. Kern turned to me: “‘Won’t you please telegraph the good news to Mrs. Kern,’ he said. “‘Certainly, but what shall I say?’ “‘I don’t need to tell you how happy I am, or what word to send to my wife--you have a wife at home--just tell my wife what you would say to your wife under the same circumstances.’ “That was John W. Kern, honest, trusting, with faith in his friends, and with the picture of his home ever before him. The newspaper fraternity lost a good friend when Death ushered John W. Kern through the Gates of Life.