Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/360



All had the feeling that they were participating in an event of solemnity. Lane, aided by David Martin and Henry F. Walton, tried to persuade me, but the die was cast. My last chance of completing the current of my life, as I had chosen it for myself, had departed forever. Never for an instant have I since regretted the decision. To have accepted the nomination would have been to have done not a wrong but a weak thing, and it remains a satisfaction to me to know that, when tested again, as I had been in youth when most of my friends went home and left me to go alone to Gettysburg, the inherited instincts which constitute character were not found wanting.

Walton besought me to let him have the scrap of paper from which I had read. He framed it and hung it in his home. A good speaker, stout and agreeable, he had participated in many campaigns; a good lawyer, he had a considerable practice; he had several times been speaker of the House, and now is prothonotary of the courts of common pleas in Philadelphia. When the bill for an appropriation to build a fire-proof building for the Historical Society of Pennsylvania was under consideration, he had come to me and said it would be passed or not as I wished, and it was passed. After my declination had been received, John P. Elkin was nominated without opposition. These events, which I saw from the inside, have been narrated in detail partly because they illustrate the character and methods of Quay, who Senator Thomas C. Platt of New 344