the rather fancy price paid for it by the commissioners. He succeeded in making the “McGill machine” an issue in the campaign, the bone of hot contention, and every one who was not indignant over the purchase was laughing about it. IV The “paramount issue” in the campaign of 1876 was reform. It swept the country like a tidal wave. It made logical and inevitable the nomination of Samuel J. Tilden, the great reform governor of New York for the presidency by the Democrats. It played havoc with the ambitions of several worthy men in Indiana who had been guilty of petty extravagances in office but whose personal probity was no protection against the hysteria of the hour which pilloried them as unworthy of public favor and erased their names from the party tickets. It was the year that the Republicans thought they were disgracing Godlove S. Orth, as honorable a man as ever lived, by removing him from the head of their ticket when they were only shaming themselves; and the Democrats assumed that they were advertising their virtue by driving from their judicial ticket such honorable men and able jurists as Judges Buskirk, Downey and Pettit, when they were only exposing their weakness. There was, in those days, ample justification for the cry of reform, and we have seen that before he had attained his majority Mr. Kern had been strongly impressed with the necessity of it, but, like many good movements, it went to extremes, and we shall see that the young Kokomo leader shared in this weakness with many others.