"Lone Star March" wherewith he so disquieted the
public present of the next concert in the White House grounds. Or I
might hark back to the campaign of '92, when together we struggled
against national politics as evinced in the city of New York; I might
repaint that election night when, with one hundred thousand whirling
dervishes of democracy in Madison Square, dancing dances, and singing
songs of victory, we undertook through the hubbub to send from the
"Twenty-third street telegraph office" half-hourly bulletins to our
papers in the West; how you, accompanied of the dignified Richard
Bright, went often to the Fifth Avenue Hotel; and how at last you
dictated your bulletins--a sort of triumphant blank verse, they
were--as Homeric of spirit as lofty of phrase--to me, who caught them
as they came from your lips, losing none of their fire, and so
flashed them all burning into Texas, far away. But of what avail
would be such recount? Distance separates us and time has come
between. Those are the old years, these are the new, with newer
years beyond. Life like a sea is filling from rivers of experience.
Forgetfulness rises as a tide and creeps upward to drown within us
those stories of the days that were. And because this is true, it
comes to me that you as a memory must stand tallest in the midst of
my regard. For of you I find within me no forgetfulness. I have met
others; they came, they tarried, they departed. They came again; and
on this second encounter the recollection of their existences smote
upon me as a surprise. I had forgotten them as though they had not
been. But such is not your tale. Drawn on the plates of memory, as
with a tool of diamond, I carry you both in broadest outline and in
each least of shade; and there hangs no picture in the gallery of
hours gone, to which I turn with more of pleasure and of good. Nor
am I alone in my recollection. Do I pass through the Fifth Avenue
Hotel on my way to the Hoffman, that vandyked dispenser leans
pleasantly across his counter, to ask with deepest interest: "Do you
hear from the Old Man now?" Or am I belated in Shanley's, a beaming
ring of waiters--if it be not an hour overrun of custom--will
half-circle my table, and the boldest, "Pat," will question timidly,
yet with a kindly Galway warmth: "How's the Old Man?" Old Man! That
is your title: at once dignified and affectionate; and by it you come
often to be referred to along Broadway these ten years