m a
considerable of an invalid and I don't keep the run of things as I used
to. You see, I live with my daughter, and you know how women folks are,
fretting lest things should make you sick, and my girl she worries so,
me reading the papers. Fact is I got a shock once, an awful shock"--he
shivered involuntarily and his dim eyes clouded--"and it worried her
seeing me read. Hadn't ought to; it don't worry Jenny here, who often
gets me a paper, quiet like; but you know how it is with women--it's
easier giving them their head a little--and so I don't see many papers,
and I kinder dropped off. It seems queer, but I don't exactly sense it
about this McKinley. Is he running against Blaine or jest for vice?"

The girl, under some feminine pretext of dropping and reaching for her
handkerchief, threw upward a glance of appeal at the interlocutor.
Hurriedly she stepped into the conversation. "My grandfather read a
false report about--about Mr. Blaine's sickness, and he was not well at
the time, and it brought on a bad attack."

"I understand," said the listener, with a grave nod of his head and
movement of his eyes in the girl's direction.

"But about McKinley?" the old man persisted.

"He's for vice-president," the girl announced, her eyes fixed on the
hesitating man from Canton. I have often admired the intrepid fashion in
which a woman will put her conscience at a moral hedge, while a man of
no finer spiritual fiber will be straining his eyes to find a hole
through which he can crawl.

"McKinley is not opposed to Blaine, is he?" she asked the man.

"The Republican party has no name that is more loved than that of James
G. Blaine," said the man, gravely.

"That's so, that's so!" the old partisan assented eagerly; "to my mind
he's the logical candidate."

The Canton man nodded, and asked if he had ever seen Blaine.

"Once, only once. I was on a delegation sent to wait on him and ask him
to our town to speak--he was in Cincinnati. I held out my hand when my
turn came, and the chairman nearly knocked the breath out of me by
saying, 'Here's the man gave more to our campaign fund and worked harder
than any man in the county, and we all worked hard for you, too.' Well,
Mr. Blaine looked at me. You know the intent way he looks. He has the
most wonderful eyes; look right at you and seem to bore into you like a
gimlet. I felt as if he was looking right down into my soul, and I tell
you I was glad, for I choked up so I couldn't