rticular issue because it sounded like a vote-maker, but none of
them represented the least divergence from his course as a whole,
which has always been honestly bent in a certain plain direction. He
never hesitated to be in a minority and never dodged a fight. He is an
innocent theorist, who frequently goes wrong because of the simplicity
of his mental processes; but he acts upon his theories, right or
wrong, with an intrepidity and a whole-hearted courage in which the
ordinary man sees the qualities he himself would like to have, and
dreams he has. His mind is not broad, but it is strong; he is always
sure he is right, and always ready to fight for his beliefs, and he
keeps his hold upon his followers because he is not below them, and
not much above them, and because they know he is honest and sincere.

In 1906, the Democratic Party, picking itself out of the wreckage of
Parker's defeat, was yearning to reunite. "Big business," assaulted
and bruised and banged about by President Roosevelt, was ready to come
into line. Roosevelt or his candidate could be defeated in 1908 only
by Democratic harmony. Bryan was abroad, traveling, and somehow his
distant figure looked less appalling than the near-by figure in the
White House. The East did not ask him to recant his radicalism, but
only not to talk about it. He arrived in New York, and business went
to hear him make a harmony speech. If he made it, business would
support him for President. He made the speech; he declared for
Government ownership of railroads. Business, roaring with pain, fell
back into the Republican arms, and Bryan was defeated for President.
No, Bryan is not an opportunist--not in things that really matter.

William Bayard Hale once accurately described him as "essentially a
preacher, a high-class exhorter, a glorified circuit rider." There are
vast spaces of our country still populated by men and women of the
old-fashioned kind; Chesterton describes them as "full of stale
culture and ancestral simplicity." They are the descendants of the
Puritans--intellectually, at any rate--they look askance on cards,
dancing, and the stage; they are the kind of folks who peopled the
Mississippi Valley in Lincoln's day and Massachusetts in John
Hancock's. Bryan does not talk down to that type for votes; he is that
type. Colonel George Harvey, with sarcastic intent, alleged that Bryan
became a white-ribboner after hearing a little girl recite "The Lips
That Touch Liquor