ather, and most of the girls she
had known in college were of Republican antecedents; but she liked to
call herself an independent.

"You'd better not be a Democrat, Sylvia," Mrs. Owen warned her. "I
suffered a good deal in my husband's lifetime from being one. There are
still people in this town who think a Democrat's the same as a Rebel or
a Copperhead. It ain't hardly respectable yet, being a Democrat, and if
they don't all of 'em shut up about the 'fathers' and the Constitution,
I'm going to move to Mexico where it's all run by niggers."

Sylvia had singled out several figures in the drama enacting below for
special attention. The chairman had interested her by reason of his
attitude of scrupulous fairness, in which she now saw the transparent
irony; the banalities of the temporary chairman had touched her humor;
she watched him for the rest of the morning with a kind of awe that any
one could he so dull, so timorous, and yet be chosen to address nearly
two thousand American citizens on an occasion of importance. She was
unable to reconcile Thatcher's bald head, ruddy neck, and heavy
shoulders with Marian's description of the rich man's son, who dreamed
of heroes and played at carpentry. Dan's speech had not been without its
thrill for her, and she now realized its significance. It had been a
part of a trick, and in spite of herself she could not share the
admiration Colonel Ramsay was expressing for Harwood's share in it. He
was immeasurably superior to the majority of those about him in the
crowded hall; he was a man of education, a college man, and she had just
experienced in her own life that consecration, as by an apostolic
laying-on of hands, by which a college confers its honors and imposes
its obligations upon those who have enjoyed its ministry. Yet Harwood,
who had not struck her as weak or frivolous, had lent himself to-day to
a bit of cheap claptrap merely to humble one man for the glorification
of another. Bassett she had sincerely liked in their one meeting at
Waupegan; and yet this was of his plotting and Harwood was his
mouthpiece and tool. It did not seem fair to take advantage of such
supreme stupidity as Thatcher's supporters had manifested. Her
disappointment in Harwood--and it was quite that--was part of her
general disappointment in the methods by which men transacted the
serious business of governing themselves.

Harwood was conscious that he was one of the chief figures in the
convention;