to go its way, never doubting what
that way would be. The opposing candidates never felt that the place
was worthy of consideration, for as the Chairman of the Central
Committee said, holding up his hand with the fingers close together:
"What's the use of wasting any speakers down there? We've got 'em just
like that."

It was all very different with Mr. Lane.

"Gentlemen," he said to the campaign managers, "that black district
must not be ignored. Those people go one way because they are never
invited to go another."

"Oh, I tell you now, Lane," said his closest friend, "it'll be a waste
of material to send anybody down there. They simply go like a flock of
sheep, and nothing is going to turn them."

"What's the matter with the bellwether?" said Lane sententiously.

"That's just exactly what _is_ the matter. Their bellwether is an old
deacon named Isham Swift, and you couldn't turn him with a
forty-horsepower crank."

"There's nothing like trying."

"There are many things very similar to failing, but none so bad."

"I'm willing to take the risk."

"Well, all right; but whom will you send? We can't waste a good man."

"I'll go myself."

"What, you?"

"Yes, I."

"Why, you'd be the laughing-stock of the State."

"All right; put me down for that office if I never reach the
gubernatorial chair."

"Say, Lane, what was the name of that Spanish fellow who went out to
fight windmills, and all that sort of thing?"

"Never mind, Widner; you may be a good political hustler, but you're
dead bad on your classics," said Lane laughingly.

So they put him down for a speech in Little Africa, because he himself
desired it.

Widner had not lied to him about Deacon Swift, as he found when he
tried to get the old man to preside at the meeting. The Deacon refused
with indignation at the very idea. But others were more acquiescent,
and Mount Moriah church was hired at a rental that made the Rev.
Ebenezer Clay and all his Trustees rub their hands with glee and think
well of the candidate. Also they looked at their shiny coats and
thought of new suits.

There was much indignation expressed that Mount Moriah should have
lent herself to such a cause, and there were murmurs even among the
congregation where the Rev. Ebenezer Clay was usually an unquestioned
autocrat. But, because Eve was the mother of all of us and the thing
was so new, there was a great crowd on the night of the meeting. The
Rev. Ebenezer Clay presided.