The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Candidate, by Joseph Alexander Altsheler

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Title: The Candidate
A Political Romance

Author: Joseph Alexander Altsheler

Release Date: April 22, 2008 [EBook #25132]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE CANDIDATE

A POLITICAL ROMANCE

BY

JOSEPH A. ALTSHELER

HARPER & BROTHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON

Copyright, 1905, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

THE CANDIDATE

I

THE NOMINEE

The huge convention-hall still rang with the thunders of applause, and
most of the delegates were on their feet shouting or waving their hats,
when Harley slipped from his desk and made his way quietly to the little
side-door leading from the stage. It was all over now but the noise;
after a long and desperate fight Grayson, a young lawyer, with little
more than a local reputation, had been nominated by his party for the
Presidency of the United States, and Harley, alert, eager, and fond of
dramatic effects, intended to be the first who should tell him the
surprising fact.

He paused a moment, with his hand on the door, and, looking out upon the
hall with its multitude of hot, excited faces, ran quickly over the
events of the last three or four days. Ten thousand people had sat
there, hour after hour, waiting for the result, and now the result had
come. The rival parties had entered their conventions, full of doubt and
apprehension. There was a singular dearth of great men; the old ones
were all dead or disabled, and the new ones had not appeared; the nation
was conscious, too, of a new feeling, and all were bound to recognize
it; the sense of dependency upon the Old World in certain matters which
applied to the mental state rather than anything material was almost
gone; the democracy had grown more democratic and the republic was more
republican; within the nation itself the West