Page:Famous Living Americans, with Portraits.djvu/80

 WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN 61 years of many famous men. The hero worship, the wildly extravagant play of the imagination, the fantastic pictures of dramatic incident, that make the first American biographies so delightfully inaccurate, have no place in the biography of to-day. In this practical age truth and science are syn- onymous, and the writer must paint his hero as he is. Mr. Bryan attended the public school, but during this time exhibited no unusual precocity. Since his parents enjoyed average prosperity, the children grew up under the stimu- lating and wholesome influence of three good meals a day, and so knew nothing of poverty as a personal experience. From the public school young Bryan went to Jacksonville, Illinois, to enter Illinois College. Here he made an excellent record and was graduated with highest honors in 1881. Two years later he received his degree from the Chicago Union College of Law. The following year his ahna mater conferred upon him the Master's degree. In 1883 the traditional shingle was hung out in Jackson- ville. The next year occurred the marriage of the young at- torney to Mary Elizabeth Baird. She had been a student at Jacksonville Academy and was a young woman of excep- tional mental power and of rare social graces. She proved a worthy companion and helpmeet, sharing the obscurity of these first years with the same womanly dignity with which she has since shared the distinctions of fame. Mr. Bryan waited for clients. But there seemed to be no place for him among the hosts of old and established lawyers and the young and ambitious attorneys. Perhaps it was the old story of the prophet in his own country. However this may be, in 1888 he followed the historic advice of Horace Greeley and **went Wesf to Lincoln, Nebraska. Here he won both friends and clients, and soon was recognized as a man of unusual character, poise, and magnetic power. In 1890 he was nominated as the Democratic candidate for Con- gress, an honor conferred because the district was overwhelm- ingly Republican and good politics dictated the nomination of a man strong enough to bring out the full party vote. To the surprise of everyone with the possible exception of the young