Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/375

 I had visions of our little caravan, out on the country roads of Ohio, going from town to town, and of our standing up in the car and speaking to the crowds of farmers who had come into the town to hear us, or having come for their Saturday marketing, would pause while we told them of the needs of cities. I had always believed that if the farmers could only be brought to understand the cities they would not be so obdurate with us, but would enlarge our opportunities of self-expression and self-government. I could fancy myself standing up and leaning over the side of the car and talking to them, while they stood there in their drab garments, their faces drawn in mental concentration, looking at us out of eyes around which were little wrinkles of suspicion, wondering what designs we had upon them; at first they would stand afar off, perhaps on the other side of the street, as they used to do when we went out to speak to them in the judicial campaigns; but then presently they would draw a little closer, until at last they crowded about the car, staying on to the end, and then perhaps even vouchsafing us the conservative approval of scattered applause. Or I would dramatize Baker as speaking, while I sat there utterly charmed with his manner, his clear and polished expression, and envied him his ability to speak with such surprising fluency, such ease and grace, as if the fact of putting words together so that they would form clear, logical and related sentences were nothing at all, and wondering why it was that every one that heard was not instantly converted to his plan, whatever it