to say,
to have printed at his own expense a few placards announcing his coming,
which he would then carry to the town selected for his address and
personally nail up. When the hour came, a crowd, as I am told, was never
wanting. Citizens and farmers of both parties for miles about usually
came to hear him.

Personally I never knew how towering his figure had been in the past, or
how truly he had been admired, until one day I drifted in upon a lone
bachelor who occupied a hut some fifteen miles from the patriarch's home
and who was rather noted in the community at the time that I was there
for his love of seclusion and indifference to current events. He had not
visited the nearest neighboring village in something like five years,
and had not been to the moderate-sized county seat in ten. Naturally he
treasured memories of his younger days and more varied activity.

"I don't know," he said to me one day, in discussing modern statesmen
and political fame in general, "but getting up in politics is a queer
game. I can't understand it. Men that you'd think ought to get up don't
seem to. It doesn't seem to be real greatness that helps 'em along."

"What makes you say that?" I asked.

"Well, there used to be a man over here at Danville that I always
thought would get up, and yet he didn't. He was the finest orator I ever
heard."

"Who was he?" I asked.

"Arch White," he said quietly. "He was really a great man. He was a good
man. Why, many's the time I've driven fifteen miles to hear him. I used
to like to go into Danville just for that reason. He used to be around
there, and sometimes he'd talk a little. He could stir a fellow up."

"Oratory alone won't make a statesman," I ventured, more to draw him out
than to object.

"Oh, I know," he answered, "but White was a good man. The
plainest-spoken fellow I ever heard. He seemed to be able to tell us
just what was the matter with us, or at least I thought so. He always
seemed a wonderful speaker to me. I've seen as many as two thousand
people up at High Hill hollerin' over what he was saying until you could
hear them for miles."

"Why didn't he get up, then, do you suppose?" I now asked on my part.

"I dunno," he answered. "Guess he was too honest, maybe. It's sometimes
that way in politics, you know. He was a mighty determined man, and one
that would talk out in convention, whatever happened. Whenever they got
to twisting things too much and doing what wasn't just ho