au Co., Ill., a member of the
Republican party.

My father was a physician, and I had all the diseases of the time
and place free of charge.

Nothing further happened to me until, in the summer of 1896, I left
the Republican party to follow the Peerless Leader to defeat.

In 1900 I returned to the Republican party to accept a position in
the Census Bureau, at Washington, D.C. This position I filled for
some months in a way highly satisfactory to the Government in power.
It is particularly gratifying to me to remember that one evening,
after I had worked unusually hard at the Census Office, the late
President McKinley himself nodded and smiled to me as I passed
through the White House grounds on my way home from toil. He had
heard of my work that day, I had no doubt, and this was his way of
showing me how greatly he appreciated it.

Nevertheless, shortly after President McKinley paid this public
tribute to the honesty, efficiency and importance of my work in the
Census Office, I left the Republican party again, and accepted a
position as reporter on a Washington paper.

Upon entering the newspaper business all the troubles of my earlier
years disappeared as if by magic, and I have lived the contented,
peaceful, unworried life of the average newspaper man ever since.

There is little more to tell. In 1916 I again returned to the
Republican party. This time it was for the express purpose of voting
against Mr. Wilson. Then Mr. Hughes was nominated, and I left the
Republican party again.

This is the outline of my life in its relation to the times in which
I live. For the benefit of those whose curiosity extends to more
particular details, I add a careful pen-picture of myself.

It seems more modest, somehow, to put it in the third person:

Height, 5 feet 101/2 inches; hair, dove-coloured; scar on little
finger of left hand; has assured carriage, walking boldly into good
hotels and mixing with patrons on terms of equality; weight, 200
pounds; face slightly asymmetrical, but not definitely criminal in
type; loathes Japanese art, but likes beefsteak and onions; wears
No. 8 shoe; fond of Francis Thompson's poems; inside seam of
trousers, 32 inches; imitates cats, dogs and barnyard animals for
the amusement of young children; eyetooth in right side of upper jaw
missing;