Early in July the Democratic National convention assembled in Chicago. Mr. Bryan, who had attended the St. Louis convention as editor-in-chief of the Omaha _World-Herald_, was here present as a delegate-at-large from Nebraska. Since the expiration of his second congressional term he had been active and unwearying in the fight to capture the convention for free silver. As editor of the _World-Herald_ he had contributed numerous utterances that were widely quoted by the silver press, and much of his time had been devoted to delivering speeches and lectures in the interests of bimetallism in almost every section of the country. He came to Chicago fresh from a Fourth of July debate at the Crete, Neb., Chautauqua, with Hon. John P. Irish, of California, Cleveland’s collector of the port at San Francisco. Except a few intimate friends in Nebraska, who knew Bryan’s capacities and ambitions, no man dreamed of the possibility of his nomination for the presidency. There were available, tried, and time-honored silver leaders, men who had been fighting the white metal’s battles for a score of years, notable among whom were Richard P. Bland, of Missouri, and Henry M. Teller, of Colorado. One of these, it was generally believed, would be chosen to lead the forlorn hopes of a regenerated but disrupted democracy. Mr. Bryan’s nomination was the spontaneous tribute of the convention to those qualities that since have made him not famous only, but well-beloved. These qualities are honesty, courage, frankness, and sincerity. They had veritable life in every line and paragraph of his great speech defending the free silver plank of the platform, delivered in reply to the crafty-wise David B. Hill, of New York. Hill, skilled and experienced practical politician, had pleaded with the convention that it pay the usual tribute at the shrine of Janus. He had begged that the _ignus fatuus_ “international bimetallism” be used to lure the friends of silver into voting the Democratic ticket. Nurtured and trained in the same school of politics as William McKinley,—the school whose graduates had for many years dominated all party conventions,—Hill started back in affright from the prospect of going before the people on a platform that was straightforward and unequivocal, with its various planks capable of but one construction. Mr. Bryan’s speech was as bold and ringing as the platform which he spoke to defend, with its plank, written by himself, and twice utilized in Nebraska, demanding “the free and unlimited coinage of both gold and silver at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation.”