If Mr. Tibbles would spend most of his time out of the state during the campaign, and let the _Independent_ support the fusion ticket, all of whose nominees except three were Populists, Mr. Bryan on his part would agree to go to Arizona or Colorado and get sick. He would continue to keep sick until the close of the campaign, so sick that he would not be able to make any political speeches at all. An exception was made in regard to Indiana. It was said that Mr. Bryan had promised to make three speeches in Indiana in support of his old personal friend who was running for Governor in that state, but it was further stipulated that these three speeches should not be political speeches, but repetitions of Mr. Bryan’s lecture on “Ideals.” Mr. Bryan went to Arizona and sent home a letter saying that he was worse and would not be able to deliver any political speeches during the campaign. That letter was printed in the Lincoln daily papers and was shown to Mr. Tibbles as proof that Mr. Bryan was keeping his contract. The chairman of the Democratic State Committee went to New York, saw Parker, Sheehan, Belmont, Tom Taggart and the rest of the band of financial and political pirates. He came home with money for campaign expenses. Then Mr. Bryan hired a special train and started out speech-making in Nebraska and in other states. The surprising rapidity with which his lung healed has never been equaled in all the history of medicine. But when the votes were counted it was learned that wherever Mr. Bryan spoke, whether from the rear end of his car, on a platform by the railway side, or in theatre or hall, a tidal wave of Republican votes followed him, although he pleaded with his Democratic hearers to be “regular.” Hundreds of thousands of Democrats listened to this man, who for eight years had been denouncing Wall Street and all its ways, and was now consorting with the most disreputable part of Wall Street, urging them to vote to keep it in power. Humiliated, sad at heart, their idol carrying the banner of the enemy, in the enemy’s ranks, they turned their backs in scorn upon Mr. Bryan, went to the polls and voted the Republican ticket. If they were to have Wall Street and plutocracy, they wanted the old, genuine article, not “something just as good.” The fusionists declared that wherever Watson or Tibbles spoke they made votes for Roosevelt. They did not make one Roosevelt vote where Bryan made a thousand. Mr. Berge—George Washington Berge—received a large vote for Governor. That was because Mickey, the Republican, who was running for re-election, was cordially hated by the whole Republican Party. Thirty thousand Republicans voted for Berge, and then he was defeated. But Berge is a fusionist. He wants office, and especially the office of Governor of Nebraska.