lot in behalf of our candidate will be a vote of confidence in the
ability of the plain people of this country to adopt the best
educational methods without the patronizing dictation of aboard of
specialists nurtured on foreign and uninspiring theories of instruction.
A ballot against Miss Luella Bailey, the competent and cultivated lady
whose name adds strength and distinction to our ticket, and who has been
needlessly and wantonly opposed by those who should be her proud
friends, will signify a willingness to renounce one of our most precious
liberties--the free man's right to choose those who are to impart to his
children mastery of knowledge and love of country. I take my stand
to-night as the resolute enemy of this aristocratic and un-American
suggestion, and urge you, on the eve of election, to devote your
energies to overwhelming beneath the shower of your fearless ballots
this insult to the intelligence of the voters of Benham, and this menace
to our free and successful institutions, which, under the guidance of
the God of our fathers, we purpose to keep perpetually progressive and
undefiled."

A salvo of enthusiasm greeted Mr. Lyons as he concluded. His speeches
were apt to cause those whom he addressed to feel that they were no
common campaign utterances, but eloquent expressions of principle and
conviction, clothed in memorable language, as, indeed, they were. He was
fond of giving a moral or patriotic flavor to what he said in public,
for he entertained both a profound reverence for high moral ideas and an
abiding faith in the superiority of everything American. He had arrayed
himself on the threshold of his legal career as a friend and champion of
the mass of the people--the plain and sovereign people, as he was apt to
style them in public. His first and considerable successes had been as
the counsel for plaintiffs before juries in accident cases against large
corporations, and he had thought of himself with complete sincerity as a
plain man, contesting for human rights before the bar of justice, by the
sheer might of his sonorous voice and diligent brain. His political
development had been on the same side. Latterly the situation had become
a little puzzling, though to a man of straightforward intentions, like
himself, not fundamentally embarrassing. That is, the last four or five
years had altered both the character of his practice and his
circumstances, so that instead of fighting corporations he was now