Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/66

 he was detailed to accompany Thomas B. Reed, Speaker of the Billion Dollar Congress, he should have been so fascinated by the whiskers of the Illinois farmers who crowded about the rear platform of the Speaker's train, that he devoted half a column to a description of those adornments which long was celebrated as a classic in the traditions of Chicago reporters, to be recalled by them as they would recall, for instance, certain of the sayings of the late Joseph Medill.

Mr. Medill, of course, moved in an element far above that which was natural to the reporters, and the figure of the great editor of the Tribune filled the imagination completely. I used to like his low-tariff editorials, though they became high-tariff editorials during national campaigns, the rate of percentage of protection rising like a thermometer in the heat of political excitement,—a tendency the rate invariably reveals the nearer its objective is approached.

Mr. Medill, as was well known, was not an admirer of President Harrison, and there came down into our world an evidence of the fact in a story which Mr. Frank Brooks, a political writer on the Tribune, told us. It was at the time that President Harrison made one of those speaking tours which, beginning with President Johnson's "swing around the circle," have grown increasingly familiar to those of the electorate who observe their presidents and rush to the railway station to hear them speaking as they flash by. His managing editor had assigned Mr. Brooks to go to Galesburg, catch the