Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/105

 qualified to go out on the stump in the campaign that autumn and speak in behalf of the Democratic ticket. It was fun to drive out over Sangamon County in those soft autumn evenings, over the soft roads,—though if it rained they became too soft,—and to speak in schoolhouses to the little audiences of farmers, or of miners, on the iniquities of the tariff. If we had been a little more devoted to principle, perhaps, than we were to party, we might better have spoken of the iniquities of that Democratic minority in the Senate which had just completed its betrayal of us all and helped to perpetrate those iniquities, but when you belong to a party you are presumed to adjust yourself to what your representatives do, and to make the best of what generally is a pretty bad bargain. The bargain of those senators had been particularly bad, and so, instead of speaking in the tones of righteous indignation, we had to adopt the milder accents of apology and explanation, and it was difficult to explain to some of those audiences. There was more or less heckling, and now and then impromptu little debates, and sometimes when the meeting was done, and we started on the long ride back to town, we would find that the nuts had been removed from the axles of our carriage-wheels. Perhaps that argument was as good as any we had made, and it could not matter much anyway, since partizan speeches never convince anybody, and if they could, if they could do anything but deepen and intensify prejudice, whole batteries of the world's best orators in that year could not have overcome the vicious effects of that high be