Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/252

 own beloved weapons of violence and force of arms. On Sundays he went fishing.

Perhaps at the time of which I am thinking, if not very specifically writing, there was more of this Monday spirit of reform than is usual. In the first place, much is expected of a new official and because he does not promptly work those miracles which are confidently expected whether he was foolish enough to promise them or not, he is so generally complained of that it may be set down as an axiom of practical politics that any elected official, in the executive branch of the government, could be recalled at any time during the first year of his incumbency of his office. Just then, too, there had been elected to the governorship a gentleman who had been very deeply devoted to the interests of the Methodist Church, the strongest denomination numerically in Ohio—the first governor of Ohio, indeed, was a Methodist preacher—and because of that fact and because of the use in his inaugural message of the magic phrase "law and order," it was at once announced in the most sensational manner of the sensational press that, unless all the sumptuary laws in Ohio were drastically enforced, all the mayors of the cities would be removed. Governor Pattison had been elected as a Democrat, and during his campaign Tom Johnson and I had supported him, and it was while we were in Columbus at his inauguration that this sensation was exploited in the newspapers. I remember how Tom Johnson received it when one of his coterie brought the extra editions into the hotel and pointed out to him the dreadful predictions