that there are good tacticians who deprecate the use of skirmish lines
and the desultory fire of the musketry of small talk. They would advance
in grim silence and open at once with the crushing fire of their biggest
guns.

But such fighting is not for me. I should lose half the joy of the
battle, and kill off my adversary before I had begun to like him! It
wouldn't do, it wouldn't do at all.

"It's a warm day," observes my opponent, and I take a sure measure of
his fighting form. I rather like the look of his eye.

"I never saw the corn ripening better," I observe, and let him feel a
little of the cunning of the arrangement of my forces.

There is much in the tone of the voice, the cut of the words, the turn
of a phrase. I can be your servant with a "Yes sir," or your master with
a "No sir."

Thus we warm up to one another--a little at a time--we mass our forces,
each sees the white of his adversary's eyes. I can even see my
opponent--with some joy--trotting up his reserves, having found the
opposition stronger than he at first supposed.

"I hear," said Mr. Caldwell, finally, with a smile intended to be
disarming, "that you are opposing my reelection."

Boom! the cannon's opening roar!

"Well," I replied, also smiling, and not to be outdone in the directness
of my thrust, "I have told a few of my friends that I thought Mr.
Gaylord would represent us better in Congress than you have done."

Boom! the fight is on!

"You are a Republican, aren't you, Mr. Grayson?"

It was the inevitable next stroke. When he found that I was a doubtful
follower of him personally, he marshalled the Authority of the
Institution which he represented.

"I have voted the Republican ticket," I said, "but I confess that
recently I have not been able to distinguish Republicans from
Democrats--and I've had my doubts," said I, "whether there is any real
Republican party left to vote with."

I cannot well describe the expression on his face, nor indeed, now that
the battle was on, horsemen, footmen, and big guns, shall I attempt to
chronicle every stroke and counter-stroke of that great conflict.

This much is certain: there was something universal and primal about the
battle waged this quiet afternoon on my porch between Mr. Caldwell and
me; it was the primal struggle between the leader and the follower;
between the representative and the represented. And it is a never-ending
conflict. When the leader gains a small advantage the p