Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/48

 though not enough to keep him continually in his seat in the House of Representatives.

He served for several alternate terms, the interims being filled by some orthodox nonentity, who was so speedily forgotten that there must have been an impression that for years our district was represented by this one man.

I had heard of him with that dim sense of his position which a boy has of any public character, but I had a real vivid conception of him after that Fourth of July when, during a citizens' celebration which must have been so far patriotic as to forget, for a time, partizanism, and to remember patriotism sufficiently to include the Democrats, I saw him conducted to the platform by our distinguished citizen, David R. Locke, whom the world knew as "Petroleum V. Nasby."

He delivered a patriotic oration, and anyone,—even though he were but a wondering boy quite by chance in attendance, standing on the outskirts of the crowd, following some whim which for a while kept him from his sports,—anyone who ever heard Frank Hurd deliver an oration never forgot it afterward.

I have no idea now what it was he said, perhaps I had as little then, but his black hair, his handsome face, his beautiful voice, and the majestic music of his rolling phrases were wholly and completely charming. He was explicitly an orator, a student of the great art, and he formed his orations on the ancient Greek models, writing them out with exordium, proposition, and peroration, and while he