There was just one occasion during Mr. Kern’s visit to Lincoln when he might have discussed the vice-presidency with Mr. Bryan. Soon after the latter’s arrival at the hotel he held a conference with Kern and Lamb in the former’s room at the Lincoln Hotel, and after a time Mr. Lamb retired, leaving the two men who were destined to be on the ticket together alone. I have satisfied myself that the vice-presidency was not a subject of discussion by appealing to Mr. Bryan, who informs me that he was in no way instrumental in determining the action of the convention on the vice-presidency. “There was no plan for his nomination,” he says. “His availability was discussed and it was known that he was of the inner circle of my friends, but I did not attempt to select a running mate.” This is important as disproving not only the claim that he dictated the nomination of Mr. Kern but the report that he exerted himself to persuade others to accept the nomination before Kern was selected. Mr. Kern left Lincoln for Denver with no new reason for assuming that he would play any other part in the convention than that of chairman of the Indiana delegation and advocate of a thoroughly progressive platform. On reaching Denver, however, he found that his was among the half-dozen names most insistently mentioned for the vice-presidency and himself the subject of disconcerting notoriety. From the moment he was lined up at the Denver railway station for a series of snapshots he was not permitted to forget for a moment that an unsought honor might be thrust upon him. Before the convention had been called to order some impetuous Hoosiers had hung Kern lithographs in the hotel lobbies, and his first interview on his arrival was in the nature of a disclaimer of any designs on the nomination. Before he retired the first night he found himself at a dinner given for Indiana people at the Savoy Hotel converted into a “boom” dinner in his behalf, and this did not escape the keen eye of the press. On the following day the Illinois delegation, which had stopped at Lincoln, arrived with the message that “Kern’s nomination would be satisfactory to Bryan,” and Willis J. Abbott, described as having charge of publicity work for the Commoner, and fresh from Lincoln, declared in an interview to which many attached significance that “Mr. Bryan thinks a great deal of John W. Kern.” If these incidents caused Mr. Kern any concern he did not show it in any way. He threw himself into the preliminary work of the convention with but one object in view--to make certain the adoption of a platform that would be in complete harmony with Mr. Bryan’s views. At the time of the fight over the seating of the Guffy delegation from Pennsylvania, which became bitter, he failed to disclose the timidity or “discretion” of a candidate, by going in among the delegations on the floor and urging them to vote against the seating of the delegation of the Standard Oil