Bab Bab 7 · Williams, who was addicted to the wearing of jeans. The Democrats

sagaciously accepted the challenge, made 'honest blue jeans' the

battle-cry, and defeated Benjamin Harrison, the 'kid-glove' candidate of

the Republicans. Harmless demagoguery this or bad judgment on the part

of the Republicans; and yet I dare say that if the sartorial issue

should again become acute in our politics the banner of bifurcated jeans

would triumph now as then. A Hoosier statesman who to-day occupies high

office once explained to me his refusal of sugar for his coffee by

remarking that he didn't like to waste sugar that way; he wanted to keep

it for his lettuce. I do not urge sugared lettuce as symbolizing our

higher provincialism, but mayonnaise may be poison to men who are

nevertheless competent to construe and administer law.

It is much more significant that we are all thinking about the same

things at the same time, than that Farnam Street, Omaha, and Fifth

Avenue, New York, should vibrate to the same shade of necktie. The

distribution of periodicals is so managed that California and Maine cut

the leaves of their magazines on the same day. Rural free delivery has

hitched the farmer's wagon to the telegraph office, and you can't buy

his wife's butter now until he has scanned the produce market in his

newspaper. This immediacy of contact does not alter the provincial point

of view. New York and Texas, Oregon and Florida, will continue to see

things at different angles, and it is for the good of all of us that

this is so. We have no national political, social, or intellectual

centre. There is no 'season' in New York, as in London, during which all

persons distinguished in any of these particulars meet on common ground.

Washington is our nearest approach to such a meeting-place, but it

offers only short vistas. We of the country visit Boston for the

symphony, or New York for the opera, or Washington to view the

government machine at work, but nowhere do interesting people

representative of all our ninety millions ever assemble under one roof.

All our capitals are, as Lowell put it, 'fractional,' and we shall

hardly have a centre while our country is so nearly a continent.

Nothing in our political system could be wiser than our dispersion into

provinces. Sweep from the map the lines that divide the states and we

should huddle like sheep suddenly deprived of the protection of known

walls and flung upon the open prairie. State lines and local pride are

in themselves a pledge of stability. The elasticity of our system makes

possible a variety of governmental experiments by which the whole

country profits. We should all rejoice that the parochial mind is so

open, so eager, so earnest, so tolerant. Even the most buckramed

conservative on the Eastern coastline, scornful of the political

follies of our far-lying provinces, must view with some interest the

dallyings of Oregon with the Referendum, and of Des Moines with the

Commission System. If Milwaukee wishes to try Socialism, the rest of us

need not complain. Democracy will cease to be democracy when all its

problems are solved and everybody votes the same ticket.

States that produce the most cranks are prodigal of the corn that pays

the dividends on the railroads the cranks despise. Indiana's amiable

feeling toward New York is not altered by her sister's rejection or

acceptance of the direct primary, a benevolent device of noblest

intention, under which, not long ago, in my own commonwealth, my fellow

citizens expressed their distrust of me with unmistakable emphasis. It

is no great matter, but in open convention also I have perished by the

sword. Nothing can thwart the chastening hand of a righteous people.

All passes; humor alone is the touchstone of democracy. I search the

newspapers daily for tidings of Kansas, and in the ways of Oklahoma I

find delight. The Emporia _Gazette_ is quite as patriotic as the

Springfield _Republican_ or the New York _Post_, and to my own taste,

far less depressing. I subscribed for a year to the Charleston _News and

Courier_, and was saddened by the tameness of its sentiments; for I

remember (it must have been in 1884) the shrinking horror with which I

saw daily in the Indiana Republican organ a quotation from Wade Hampton

to the effect that 'these are the same principles for which Lee and

Jackson fought four years on Virginia's soil.' Most of us are

entertained when Colonel Watterson rises to speak for Kentucky and

invokes the star-eyed goddess. When we call the roll of the states, if

Malvolio answer for any, let us suffer him in tolerance and rejoice in

his yellow stockings. 'God give them wisdom that have it; and those that

are fools, let them use their talents.'

Every community has its dissenters, protestants, kickers, cranks, the

more the merrier. I early formed a high resolve to strive for membership

in this execrated company. George W. Julian,--one of the noblest of

Hoosiers,--who had been the Free-Soil candidate for Vice-President in

1852, a delegate to the first Republican convention, five times a member

of Congress, a supporter of Greeley's candidacy, and a Democrat in the

consulship of Cleveland, was a familiar figure in our streets. In 1884 I

was dusting law-books in an office where mugwumpery flourished, and

where the iniquities of the tariff, Matthew Arnold's theological

opinions, and the writings of Darwin, Spencer, and Huxley were discussed

at intervals in the day's business.