Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/50

 talk about the tariff, we sat in the big leather chairs while he discoursed simply on the subject. It was the first at several of these conversations, or lessons, which we had in the big leather chairs in the lobby of the old Boody House, and it was not long until I was able, with a solemn pride, to announce at home that I was a Free-Trader and a Democrat.

It could hardly have been worse had I announced that I had been visiting Ingersoll, and was an atheist. Cleveland was president, and in time he sent his famous tariff reform message to Congress, and though I could not vote, I was preparing to give him my moral support, to wear his badge, and even, if I could do no more, to refuse to march in the Republican processions with the club of young men and boys organized in our neighborhood.

For the first time in my life I went on my vacation trip to Urbana that summer with reluctance, for the first time in my life I shrank from seeing my grandfather. The wide front door opened, and from the heat without to the dark and cool interior of the hall I stepped; I prolonged the preliminaries, I went through the familiar apartments, and out into the garden to see how it grew that summer, and down to the stable to see the horses; but the inevitable hour drew on, and at last, with all the trivial things said, all the personal questions asked, we sat in the living-room, cool in the half-light produced by its drawn shades, the soft air of summer blowing through it, the odd old Nuremberg furniture, the painting of the Nuremberg castle presented