Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/117

 the verge of the House, and began to talk with him. I had the story a good while afterwards from one of the whips, who, it seemed, knew all that had gone on that night. The lobbyist of course knew about the man, knew especially about his necessities, as lobbyists do; and he began to talk to the old fellow about them—about his poverty and his children, and he used the old argument which has been employed so long and so successfully with the rural members of all our legislatures, and has been the source of so much evil in our city governments, that is, the argument that the bill concerned only Chicago, and that the folks down home would neither know nor care how he voted on it, and then—how much two thousand dollars would mean to him. As the lobbyist talked, there were various eyes that looked at him, waiting for a sign; they needed only a few votes then, and the roll-call was being delayed by one pretense and another, and the clock on the wall, inexorably ticking toward the hour of that legislature's dissolution, was turned back. The old fellow listened and stroked his chin, and then presently, when the lobbyist had done, he turned his old blue eyes on him and said:

"I reckon you're right: I'm poor, and I've got a big family. And you're right, too, when you say my people won't know nor care: they won't; they don't know nor care a damn; they won't send me back here, of course. And God knows what's to come of my wife and my children; I am going home to them to-morrow and on Monday I'm going to hunt me a job in the harvest-field; I reckon I'll die