th the yellow-backed rattlesnakes that made their dens
in the limestone cliffs), and in their snowballing took sides with
these mysterious words as shibboleths.

In truth, many of these Democrats were very thoughtful men--old-line
Jeffersonians, who held to a principle of liberty. Others had been born
Democrats a half-century ago, and had never been able to make any
change. They continued the habit of being Democrats, just as they
continued the habit of wearing fuzzy old plug hats, of old-fashioned
shapes, and long, polished frock coats. Then there were a few of that
perpetually cross-grained class who will never agree with anybody else
if they can help it. They belonged to the Democracy because the
Democrats were in the minority, and considered it wrong to belong to a
majority, anyhow. Of this sort were men like Colonel Peavy and old Judd
Colwell.

The Colonel had been nominated for treasurer and Colwell for sheriff on
the Democratic ticket year after year, and each year the leaders of the
party had prophesied decided gains, but they did not come. The State
remained apparently hopelessly Republican. The forces which were really
preparing for change were too far below the surface for these old-line
politicians to understand and measure.

As a matter of fact, the schools and debating clubs and newspapers were
preparing the whole country for a political revolution. Radicals were
everywhere being educated. Men like Radbourn, who still remained
nominally a Republican, and a host of other young men and progressive
men were becoming disabused of the protective idea, and were ready for
a revolt. There needed but a change of leadership to make a change of
the relation of parties and of party names.

The Grange, which was still non-partisan, seemed not destined to play a
very strong part in politics, though it was still at work wresting some
advanced forms of legislation from one or the other of the old parties.

But the deeper change was one which Judge Brown and a few of the
progressive men had only just dimly perceived. The war and the issues
of the war were slowly drawing off. The militant was being lost in the
problems of the industrial. Each year a larger mass of people
practically said, "The issues of to-day are not the issues of
twenty-five years ago. The bloody shirt is an anachronism."

Here and there a young man coming to maturity caught the spirit of the
new era, and turned away from the talk of the solid South