,
and we believe it will appeal to the intelligence and sober judgment of
the state. It is replete with modesty and wisdom."

Mr. Watling was introduced by Mr. Bering of the State Supreme Court (a
candidate for re-election), who spoke with deliberation, with owl-like
impressiveness. He didn't believe in judges meddling in politics, but
this was an unusual occasion. (Loud applause.) Most unusual. He had
come here as a man, as an American, to pay his tribute to another man, a
long-time friend, whom he thought to stand somewhat aside and above
mere party strife, to represent values not merely political.... So
accommodating and flexible is the human mind, so "practical" may it
become through dealing with men and affairs, that in listening to Judge
Bering I was able to ignore the little anomalies such a situation might
have suggested to the theorist, to the mere student of the institutions
of democracy. The friendly glasses of rye and water Mr. Bering had
taken in Monahan's saloon, the cases he had "arranged" for the firm of
Watling, Fowndes and Ripon were forgotten. Forgotten, too, when Theodore
Watling stood up and men began, to throw their hats in the air,--were
the cavilling charges of Mr. Lawler's Pilot that, far from the office
seeking the man, our candidate had spent over a hundred thousand dollars
of his own money, to say nothing of the contributions of Mr. Scherer,
Mr. Dickinson and the Railroad! If I had been troubled with any weak,
ethical doubts, Mr. Watling would have dispelled them; he had red blood
in his veins, a creed in which he believed, a rare power of expressing
himself in plain, everyday language that was often colloquial, but
never--as the saying goes--"cheap." The dinner-pail predicament was
real to him. He would present a policy of our opponents charmingly, even
persuasively, and then add, after a moment's pause: "There is only one
objection to this, my friends--that it doesn't work." It was all in the
way he said it, of course. The audience would go wild with approval,
and shouts of "that's right" could be heard here and there. Then he
proceeded to show why it didn't work. He had the faculty of bringing
his lessons home, the imagination to put himself into the daily life of
those who listened to him,--the life of the storekeeper, the clerk, of
the labourer and of the house-wife. The effect of this can scarcely
be overestimated. For the American hugs the delusion that there are no
class distinctions,