Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/388

 Penrose, Thomas J. Stewart and Clayton McMichael all made speeches, and it was an affair remembered with pleasure.

On the 17th Knox was elected a member of the United States Senate by the legislature by a vote of 223 to 23, confirming my selection by the largest majority ever given for that office in the state. He is a small man with a clean face who knows exactly what he wants to do under all circumstances and does it, unemotional, wasting no time seeking for popularity and perhaps a little too self-contained. The North American and the Philadelphia Record printed a yarn of the ordinary character that $500,000 were paid in order that he might be made the senator. When I first suggested him I had had no communication with him whatever, and he did not even know that I had him in mind. While on this subject it is just as well to give the statement of the secretary of the commonwealth, Robert McAfee. In an interview in the Pittsburgh Leader, January 22, 1905, he said:

“I was summoned to the executive mansion about nine o'clock in the evening of June 8th, by the governor. On arriving there I found Senator Penrose and Insurance Commissioner Durham closeted with him. I first advised the governor that I had personal confirmation of the fact that Mr. George T. Oliver had declined the offer of an appointment to the Senate. A further discussion on the matter of candidates was taken up, and the governor promptly said that after looking over the state he was of the opinion that Attorney General Philander C. Knox, of President Roosevelt's Cabinet, was the proper man for the place.”

About this time my attention was called to the case of Katie Edwards, convicted of murder, committed under unusual circumstances. She and her husband, with a family of children, lived in Berks County. They were coarse, vulgar and ignorant, and the surroundings were all in 372