e press in the light of a
business trip to his old home. For forty-eight hours his leisurely
progress with his private secretary escaped remark. Then the
newspapers upset his apple-cart. Shelby had become too interesting a
figure for the role of Haroun-al-Raschid, and the paragraphers rang
astonishing changes on his adventures at the few points where he had
succeeded in making observations unrecognized. What he saw thereafter
was accompanied by the click of cameras and the fatuity of local
bigwigs brimming with eagerness to tie their fortunes to the car of the
coming man.

At New Babylon, where he became the guest of the Hon. Seneca Bowers,
the minute espionage upon his doings ceased, and Shelby felt less a
personage than at any time since his inauguration. The town was proud
of him, but too faithful to its ancestral reserve to tell him so.
People who had called him "Ross" all his days addressed him in this
fashion still; and the Widow Weatherwax calmly imposed an audience in
the matter of her last will and testament, which the new-fledged
lawyer, William Irons, had bungled, and spiced the renewal of their
relations with her old-time candor and a full chronicle of the past,
present, and probable scandal of the county. In little ways, however,
the governor perceived what close-mouthed Tuscarora really felt. They
had hung a crayon portrait of him in the court-house, and the Pioneer
Association, which was about to hold its annual picnic beside Ontario,
asked him to deliver the address.

Shelby accepted the invitation, and, saturated as he was with the
homespun history of his county, excelled himself. But he did something
more than retell a familiar tale. A product of this life, he
nevertheless saw it from the outside and in its wide relations, and the
canal-begotten civilization, which was his immediate theme, led
irresistibly to the vast economic problem that lay near his heart, and
to a suddenly formulated plan for its solution. By one of those
inspirations of the moment which public speakers know, yet dare not
count upon, the vexing details of his summer's drudgery shifted and
rearranged themselves into a coherent pattern and policy whose
fulfilment should place the historic waterway, not merely abreast of
the age, but bulwarked for the future. It was a significant utterance
which carried far. Shelby could give no copies of his speech to the
press, since the speech had largely shaped itself in the making;