The Henchman | Page 3

that the anecdote won even a thin-lipped grin from the
hostile camp.
"The Tired Tinkhams aren't so rare in politics," he went on. "We
sometimes put them in the White House. Americans have a way of
growing up to their responsibilities, and perhaps even I shall prove
another sort of man than I've been ticketed." His tone quickened
suddenly, and his glance fastened on the defeated anew. "I should count
this honor less had it fallen as a ripe fruit falls, the prize of the first

comer. We've had our battle; we wear our scars; no battle worth the
name is without its scars; but I assume to speak for every man present
when I say that the blows we give and take do not rankle to the
prejudice of the common cause. Our quarrels are wholly in the family,
where speech is free, for it is a fundamental article of our party creed
that the will of the majority should prevail. The will of the majority
made plain, it is our healthy custom to strip off our coats, and go to
work: The party, not the individual, is of moment;--the historic party of
our fathers, the party of the living present, the party of the future whose
bounds no man may set."
As he dropped into his seat, Shelby added a foot-note.
"If that didn't jam their duty down those soreheads' throats," he told
Bowers, "I'll take another guess."
CHAPTER II
Meanwhile the nominee's fortunes and traits of character underwent
dissection in his own town at the first autumn assembly of the Culture
Club which, as always, met with Mrs. Hilliard. There were two
profound reasons for this constancy to Mrs. Hilliard,--her house
boasted the largest double parlors in New Babylon, and her husband
had a billiard table. The intimate association of billiards with the
pursuit of sweetness and light may at first seem grotesque, but Mrs.
Hilliard proved it to be not without warrant in sound philosophy; by her
simple formula billiards stood to culture as the Salvation Army to the
decorous body of the Church Militant, both alliances resting on the
basic truth that some souls will prick ears only to the beating of
tom-toms.
Theory aside, the fact was not to be blinked that she knew how to clash
cymbals to the unregenerate and drum up in the name of culture such a
varied company as no other woman could muster short of a silver
wedding. In the winning of the cultivated, Mrs. Hilliard took no pride.
They lent their countenance to any educational project, and she owned
to herself that given a like cause any capable woman with double

parlors could have them for the asking. It was rather in the hooking of
men of the stamp of the Hon. Seneca Bowers and her own husband that
she gloried, for in their candid souls they styled great Shakespeare rot
and voted Ibsen and Tolstoi sheer bedlamites at large. While mind met
mind below stairs these honest gentlemen contentedly knocked the
balls about the green, smoked hospitable Joe Hilliard's cigars, and
sampled the choicest liquors of his sideboard. By such diplomacy every
important walk in the town's life came to have its representative in what
in her heart of hearts Mrs. Hilliard called her salon.
The first autumn meeting should have gladdened the hostess. Her house
had never lighted to better advantage; everybody admired the new
decorations; she herself felt no impulse to quarrel either with nature or
her dressmaker; the programme had run with consummate
smoothness,--Volney Sprague, the editor of the Tuscarora County
Whig, reading a scholarly paper on Shakespeare's anachronisms, and
his fast friend Bernard Graves leading the discussion in his usual clever
way; furthermore, the ices which had been ordered for this very special
occasion had proved everything that ices should be. Yet Mrs. Hilliard
was dissatisfied.
"The club positively loses a vital something of its individuality when
Mr. Bowers and Mr. Shelby are absent," said she.
Mrs. Bowers, a large placid personage of indefinite waist-line,
remarked that nothing except politics could have dragged her husband
away.
"What a pity that the Hon. Seneca had to miss your anachronisms,
Volney," murmured Bernard Graves, who was a personable young
gentleman of thirty.
"And Shelby," queried the editor, "hasn't that choice spirit your pity
too?"
Mrs. Hilliard caught nothing of their sarcasm save Shelby's name.
"I miss his criticism," she declared. "It's so practical."

The editor fell to polishing his eye-glasses for lack of a reply.
"And so helpful," pursued the lady. "He has the faculty of ending a
tangled discussion with a word."
"The dear man usually changes the subject," muttered the editor
savagely under cover of an amiable platitude put forth by Mrs. Bowers.
"Or fogs it round with one of his Tuscarora yarns," dropped Graves.