or instance, now, there was Mr. William Jennings Bryan. The Bryan
appetite, as I remarked to the doctor, is one of the chief landmarks of
Mr. Bryan's home city of Lincoln, Nebraska. They take the sight-seeing
tourists around to have a look at it, the first thing.

To observe Mr. Bryan breakfasting on the morning when a national
Democratic convention is in session is a sight worth seeing. A double
order of cantaloupes on the half shell, a derby hat full of oatmeal, a
rosary of sausages, and about as many flapjacks as would be required to
tessellate the floor of a fair-sized reception hall is nothing at all for
him. And when he has concluded his meal he gets briskly up and strolls
around to the convention hall and makes a better speech and a longer one
and a louder pile than anybody. Naturally, time, the insatiable remodeler,
has worked some outward changes in Mr. Bryan since the brave old days of
the cross of gold. His hair, chafed by the constant pressure of the halo,
has retreated up and ever up his scalp until the forehead extends clear
over and down upon the sunset slope. The little fine wrinkles are thickly
smocked at the corners of the eagle eyes that flashed so fiercely at the
cringing plutocrats.

But his bearing is just as graceful and his voice just as silvery and as
strong as when in '96 he advocated free silver to save the race, or when
he advocated anti-expansion in the Philippines, or government ownership
of the railroads, or a policy of nonpreparedness for war when Germany
first began acting up--Grover Cleveland Bergdoll felt the same way about
it and so did Ma Bergdoll;--and I, for one, have no doubt that Mr. Bryan
will be just as supple, mentally and physically, three years hence when,
if he runs true to form, he will be advocating yet another of that series
of those immemorial Jeffersonian principles of the fathers, which he
thinks up, to order, right out of his own head, when a campaign impends.
Mr. Bryan knows how to play the political game--none better; but he
certainly does have a large discard. That, however, is aside from the main
issue.

The point I sought to bring out there in the office of my friend Doctor
So-and-so was that Mr. Bryan, to my knowledge, ate what he craved and all
that he craved, yet did not become obese. When the occasion demanded he
could be amply bellicose, but the accent was not upon the first two
syllables.

I cited similar cases further to buttress my position. I told hi