As to his patience, no better witnesses to its enduring qualities need be asked than the newspaper correspondents who form a corps of watchful guardians upon his footsteps. Many are the questions, some of them impertinent, that are asked him, and during a campaign, the presence of the press representatives, unobtrusive as they are, really destroys whatever privacy remained to him. And yet through it all, his courtesy is ever gentle, his good nature unfailing, his temper always under such control as to seem to be an absent quantity in his make-up. Lincoln, the city of his residence, has always been dominated by the Republican party, and so great has been the preponderance of that political organization that Mr. Bryan has never been able to carry it in any of his campaigns. Mr. Bryan came to Lincoln a young man, and entered into a very brisk competition with a number of other young lawyers, most of them Republicans. None of these have risen above the political level of county leaders, nor have they found fame or other reward at the bar. The rapid flight of Mr. Bryan and his pre-eminence has engendered in their breasts a bitterness of partisanship, accentuated and multiplied by their personal jealousies, that has found its vent in mean and malicious assaults upon his political integrity and attempted belittlings of his abilities. This influence has in the past over-ridden a local pride that would have justified an endorsement at least of his Presidential candidacy, and added flame to the fires of partisanship that particularly distinguishes the city. These two facts form the solution to a mystery that has seemingly vexed a great many good people in America, who do not understand the local conditions. Mr. Bryan seems, too, to have pitched his tent in the most rabidly Republican section of the city, as evidenced by the elaborate display of McKinley pictures in the front windows of the houses of his neighbors, who are as lacking in good taste as in civic pride. None of these elaborate attempts at incivility have ever ruffled his temper, nor have they caused him to retaliate with the weapons he so well knows how to use. The fact is, he has many warm friends among the Republicans of the city. His old law partner has long been a Republican leader, and is now president of the State Senate. This year he has espoused Mr. Bryan’s cause.