Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/450

 foot, every man and took the review from a barouche. There was little comment on the method.

In September came the effort to overthrow Penrose as the state leader, of which I had forewarned him and Durham two years before, and, much to my surprise, it came in the shape of an attack upon the capitol and the moneys expended in its erection and equipment, over which I had supposed everybody was happy. It is not my purpose here to do more than make a few general statements upon the subject. I made a thorough study of the whole matter in my Desecration and Profanation of the Pennsylvania State Capitol, published in 1911 and never answered, to which the reader is referred. Edwin S. Stuart had been nominated by the Republicans as their candidate for governor, and to comprehend the situation which resulted, it is absolutely necessary to have a measure of his characteristics. Forty years before, when he was an errand boy for Leary and I was a notary public, we had gone out into the country together to take the testimony of a witness, and we had known each other well ever since. Big, good-hearted, upright and kindly, his disposition was to be pleasing to everybody with whom he was brought into contact. His life-long training as a merchant was such as to lead him to give to everybody just what they wanted or thought they wanted. This disposition and this training united to make him entirely unfit for executive office, where the object ought always to be to advance the public welfare, with force, if need be, rather than to be agreeable to individuals, who often must be overruled. To expect him to resist public clamor would be to look for something of which he was utterly incapable. As governor, his main thought was to avoid responsibility and at the end of his term to escape unsinged. His administration was, therefore, altogether colorless, without a single achievement which made any impression on the state and, therefore, he left office with the approval of everybody except those who 432