The Henchman | Page 2

a mask of comedy. Yet, all said,
the Yankee blood cropped out in face and limb and speech--particularly
in speech; the folk of the Demijohn District did not employ the dialect
of Hosea Biglow, nor a variant of it, but the insistent drawling R to be
heard on every second lip was of no doubtful lineage.
The victor, who sat with folded arms as the perfunctory motion was
seconded and carried, was bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh.
Not a few there could recall his sturdy grandfather, a pioneer of

Massachusetts birth, and everybody remembered his spendthrift father
who had squandered the substance of three generations in drink. The
man's own story was an open page which needed no thumbing of the
Tuscarora County history to find. Born under the administration of
Buchanan, the lad's palm was callous with work by the surrender of
Lee, and it knew no softening till his seventeenth year; yet somehow he
got the marrow from the common schools, and in good time won a
competitive scholarship in a narrow little sectarian college which
boastfully called itself a university. Here he acquired two wholesome
things: a perception that the college is but the beginning of education,
and a lasting disgust with bigotry of every stripe. There followed some
years of school-mastering by day and law-book drudgery by night,
whose end was his admission to the bar and a partnership with the man
sitting by his side. Then politics drew him, and, step by step, through
rough and ready service at the polls, in town caucus, county convention,
what not, he secured his footing and finally a seat in the lower house of
the State Legislature. In politics a hobby is often a useful piece of
property, and Shelby, who had a hobby, rode it to success; it made him
a marked man in the first month of his term, it gave him a popular title,
it compelled his renomination and reflection. Nowadays chairmen
always introduced him as the "Champion of Canals," and even at this
moment the catchword with cries of "speech" greeted him from every
quarter of the dingy convention hall. He unfleshed his strong teeth in a
wide-mouthed smile, rose, squared his shoulders, and walked alertly
down an aisle to the platform. Brought thus into the open, under the
yellow glare of a gas-light chandelier, he showed for a simply clad,
businesslike person, with a well-set head and a shaven jaw, whose
firmness a cushion of superfluous flesh could not disguise.
"Thank you, boys," he said.
The offhand fashion of address provoked a fresh demonstration which
the nominee acknowledged with a good-humored nod. His eye
sauntered over the delegates, and with a shrewd twinkle halted on the
dejected group which had fought his nomination.
"This happy occasion reminds me of a Tuscarora County story," he

began, with a little drawl; "the story of Tired Tinkham's election as
overseer of highways at Noah's Basin--a pioneer classic which some of
you have doubtless heard. It happened in the early days of Noah's Basin,
when that interesting village contained perhaps a score less people than
walk its changeless streets to-day. Tired Tinkham was the local Rip
Van Winkle--the children's friend and labor's foe. No one could whittle
green willow whistles in the springtime like Tired Tinkham, or fashion
bows and arrows with such fascinating skill. Like Rip also he drank
whenever a drink was forthcoming, but unlike Rip he did not hunt.
Minks, coons, and squirrels were plentiful, with here and there a deer or
bear, but Tired Tinkham was too weary to hunt. He fished; fished day
in and day out in the canal basin, which gives the place its name; fished
till the packet captains came to know him and point him out as a fixture
in the scenery. But, lazy as he was, Tired Tinkham didn't monopolize
all the laziness in Noah's Basin. In one particular laziness was epidemic,
even among the otherwise industrious, and it took the form of shirking
the road tax. No roads were wretcheder than theirs; nobody cared less
than they. In his personal view of life Tired Tinkham was a fit exponent
of the local theory of public duty, and some village humorist
accordingly hit upon the idea of nominating him for overseer of
highways. Tired Tinkham looked more than commonly fatigued at the
suggestion, but did not put the crown away. His election was
unanimous. Then Noah's Basin woke up. The jubilee bonfires were
scarcely ashes before Tired Tinkham delivered at the corner grocery
what he called his inaugural address. 'I cal'late I know why I wuz
'lected; he said. 'T' loaf 'n' let ye loaf. I cal'late ye've mistook suthin'.
Ye'll work.' And work Noah's Basin did as it had never worked before."
Shelby noted