Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/201

 who had their plants in the western part of the ward. Fortunately my opponent, a shrewd and capable little shoemaker named James E. Romig beat me by a majority of four hundred and three. I won his eternal good will by writing him a letter of congratulation which gave him a novel experience. Henry Reed had his appetite whetted by these experiences and he went again to the Presidential Convention of 1884. His great-grandfather, Joseph Reed, had been Adjutant-General of the Continental Army. He was a nice, lovely, literary gentleman, of over-refined tastes who skimmed the surface of life like a butterfly and never comprehended its depths. He married a daughter of John Edgar Thomson, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and lost her fortune; he became a judge of Court of Common Pleas No. 3 and found the world too rough and crude for him; all men were fond of him and he died early. In Chicago he met a Hoosier and tried to convert him.

“Who are you for, anyway?” inquired the delegate, who was inclined to be profane.

“Benjamin Harrison,” answered Reed.

“Ben Harrison, oh, hell!" said the Hoosier. “Why, suppose we nominate Ben Harrison, and then you meet a fellow and he says to you: ‘Ben Harrison is a very nice kind of a man,’ and you say to him, '‘Yes, Ben Harrison is a very nice kind of a man; that's all there's to it. ” ’ But suppose we nominate Jim Blaine. Then you meet a man and he says to you: ‘Jim Blaine, he's a God damned thief.’ You up and say to him: ‘You're a God damned liar.’ Then there is something in it.” In this campaign I prepared a paper giving reasons why the Independents should support the nomination of Blaine, and we succeeded in having it signed by most of the men of representative character, among them including Barker, Wolfe, Mitchell, Blankenburg, Lewis Emery, Jr., Perot and others, but excluding MacVeagh and Lea, in every county in the state and published. Had the same Rh