e last session a bill aimed at
the legitimate profits of a great surface railway system, which he
withdrew for no reason of public record. Can you make affidavit that
the subsequent sale of a block of that same railway's stock by your
business associate was without relevance, Mr. Shelby?

"We refuse to support a candidate, be his nomination unimpeachable, his
intellectual honesty unchallenged, his legislative record without
stain, who, posing as the champion of our canals, nevertheless lends
himself, through connivance at fraudulent contracts and the appointment
of needless officials, to the squandering of the moneys set apart for
their use. We invite you to disprove your complicity in the wasting of
the state's millions, Mr. Shelby.

"We refuse, lastly, to support a candidate, be his nomination as
unsullied as his personal integrity, and his legislative career as free
from 'strikes' as his advocacy of our pirate-infested waterways is
disinterested, who is yet so slavishly the henchman of his party
machine that no measure it may propose is too unsavory to enlist his
Dugald Dalgetty loyalty. By your closed lips you countenance the
land-jobbing steal which your great state Boss failed by the merest
fluke to saddle upon the River and Harbor Bill passed by the last
Congress, and purposes to press anew;--dare you vote against your
owner, Mr. Shelby?"

To all of which, reiterated and emphasized in pamphlet, broadside,
poster, and stump speech, Shelby said publicly never a word, professing
himself a believer in the policy of dignified silence. He touched the
matter after an impersonal fashion with Bowers, however, as they read
the onslaught.

"Give me the liquor habit, the tobacco habit, the opium habit, singly
or all together," said he, "but preserve me from the vice of rhetoric."

Bowers had not this fine detachment.

"I don't wish to nose into your private concerns, Ross," he began, with
visible embarrassment, "but this third count implicates me. I'd like
to ask whether that stock I sold for you in Wall Street last winter was
yours by--by--"

"By bona fide purchase?" whipped in Shelby. "Yes, sir; out and out.
Do you think me as big a fool as this dream-chaser pretends I am?"

"No, no."

"Nobody should know better than you why that bill was introduced. You
brought it to me from the Boss. Those railway people forgot that their
party can't run campaigns on wind, and in his own way he jogged their
memory. I