Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/371

 early morning in search of the elusive and ineffable light of dawn as it spread over the earth and stole through the greenwoods at Barbizon, or as Manet, or Monet, or any other man who never knew appreciation in his lifetime. And Jones and all like him are brothers of those incomparable artists; they are not kin in any way to the world's politicians.

And then so many of the old guard were dead. A strange and tragic fate had pursued us, overtaking, one after another, our very best—Jones, first of all, and then Oren Dunham, E. B. Southard, Dad McCullough, Franklin Macomber, Lyman Wachenheimer, Dr. Donnelly, William H. Maher. These brave, true souls were literally burned out in the fires of that fierce and relentless conflict, and then there came that soft autumn night when seven of our young men in a launch were run down by a freighter on Maumee Bay and drowned, every one of them.

I shall never forget Johnson Thurston as he sat in my office during that last campaign, recalling these men who had been to him as comrades in arms, and, what affected him more sorely, the fact that in our overabundant political success the ideals that had beckoned them on had become blurred in the vision of those who came after them. I detected him in the act of drawing his handkerchief furtively from his pocket, and hastily pressing it to his eyes, as he stammered something in apology for his emotion

Thus there came the irresistible conviction that the work of the politician was not for me. There