udicrous is the first feature to strike the
stranger. A great empty store, running the whole length of the ground
floor of one of the monster ten, twenty, or what you will storied
buildings, was appropriated for the purpose. The bare walls were draped
with stars and stripes, and innumerable portraits of McKinley and Hobart
confronted you on every side. In the centre was a roughly-constructed
platform; on this a piano and seats for the orators. At 12.30 sharp (the
business lunch hour) a crowd surged in; bankers, brokers, dry goods
merchants, clerks, messengers, and office-boys, straight from the Quick
Lunch Counters--a great institution there--filling every corner of the
hall. An attendant carried the inevitable pitcher of ice water to the
orators' table; a "Professor" hastily seated himself at the piano and
played a few bars; a solemn-faced quartette took its position in front
of the rostrum, and the meeting was opened.

[Illustration: THE POLITICAL QUARTETTE.]

The campaign songsters had taken a leaf from the Salvation Army, and
appropriated all popular airs for political purposes. Praises of Sound
Money and Protection were sung to the air of "Just tell them that you
saw me," and denunciations of Bryan, Free Silver, and all things
Democratic to the tune of "Her golden hair was hanging down her back!"
The quartette aroused the greatest enthusiasm. An aged Republican seated
immediately in front of the platform, who had voted every Republican
ticket since Lincoln was elected, waved his stick over his head, and the
crowd responded with cheers and encores. The quartette retired, the
chairman advanced, motioned with his hand for silence, and announced the
name of the first orator of the occasion, who happened to be a
clergyman--a tiresome, platitudinous person. Somehow, clergymen on the
platform can never divest themselves of their pulpit manner. They bring
an air of pews and Sabbath into secular things. The minister denounced
Bryan and Democracy in the same tones he used in declaiming against Agag
and the Amalekites on Sunday. At last he brought his political sermon to
a close, and the quartette again came to the front, sang a few more
political adaptations of popular songs, and the chairman announced the
next speaker, a smart young lawyer of the Hebrew persuasion. After him,
more songs and more speakers of all kinds, and at half-past one the
meeting came to an abrupt conclusion. The crowd vanished like magic, the
hall was