Chapter V: Part 5

Destiny is the subterfuge of the invertebrate, who, lacking the courage to oppose error, seeks some plausible excuse for supporting it. Washington said that the destiny of the Republican form of government was deeply, if not finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the American people. How different Washington’s definition of destiny from the Republican definition! The Republicans say that this nation is in the hands of destiny; Washington believed that not only the destiny of our own nation but the destiny of the Republican form of government throughout the world was entrusted to American hands. Immeasurable responsibility! The destiny of this Republic is in the hands of its own people, and upon the success of the experiment here rests the hope of humanity. No exterior force can disturb this Republic, and no foreign influence should be permitted to change its course. What the future has in store for this nation no one has authority to declare, but each individual has his own idea of the nation’s mission, and he owes it to his country as well as to himself to contribute as best he may to the fulfilment of that mission.

Mr. Chairman, and Gentlemen of the Committee: I can never fully discharge the debt of gratitude which I owe to my countrymen for the honors which they have so generously bestowed upon me; but, sirs, whether it be my lot to occupy the high office for which the convention has named me, or to spend the remainder of my days in private life, it shall be my constant ambition and my controlling purpose to aid in realizing the high ideals of those whose wisdom and courage and sacrifices brought this Republic into existence.

I can conceive of a national destiny surpassing the glories of the present and the past—a destiny which meets the responsibilities of to-day and measures up to the possibilities of the future. Behold a republic, resting securely upon the foundation stones quarried by Revolutionary patriots from the mountain of eternal truth—a republic applying in practice and proclaiming to the world the self-evident proposition, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed with inalienable rights; that governments are instituted among men to secure these rights; and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Behold a republic in which civil and religious liberty stimulate all to earnest endeavor, and in which the law restrains every hand uplifted for a neighbor’s injury—a republic in which every citizen is a sovereign but in which no one cares to wear a crown. Behold a republic standing erect while empires all around are bowed beneath the weight of their own armaments—a republic whose flag is loved while other flags are only feared. Behold a republic increasing in population, in wealth, in strength and in influence, solving the problems of civilization and hastening the coming of an universal brotherhood—a republic which shakes thrones and dissolves aristocracies by its silent example and gives light and inspiration to those who sit in darkness. Behold a republic gradually but surely becoming the supreme moral factor in the world’s progress and the accepted arbiter of the world’s disputes—a republic whose history, like the path of the just, “is as the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”

BRYAN: THE MAN

The firm hold which Mr. Bryan has over the confidence, esteem, and love of his followers was strikingly proven in the dark days that followed November, 1896. It is certain that no other public man of his time could have been the candidate of the Democratic party on the Chicago platform, suffered that severe reversal, and yet retained, undisputed and undisturbed, the acknowledged leadership of the party. Whoso learns why it was that Mr. Bryan stood stronger in defeat then he was before has found the key to the man’s greatness. Certainly it was not that he was a great and eloquent orator. For the orator, while always assured a hearing and a place under the lime-light, is still far from the actual leadership of his party. It was not because of the views which he entertained on public questions, for they were those of scores of other well known and able men. It was not because of his honesty and sincerity alone, any more than of his undoubted courage or his clean and upright personality and blameless home life. These, while all real qualifications, were not essentials. Each and all of them were marked characteristics of other notable public men, although it is doubtful if any possessed them all alike in the same degree as Bryan. But there were other and rarer qualities, the most important, his cheerful and contagious optimism and his intensity of character, which spoke in his every act and utterance. His optimism is an unwavering faith in the ways and ends of the Creator; a firm and abiding belief that “He doeth all things well.” The verse from Ella Wheeler Wilcox with which Mr. Bryan closes his “First Battle” well illustrates this phase of his character:

“Let those who have failed take courage;
Tho’ the enemy seems to have won,
Tho’ his ranks are strong, if he be in the wrong
The battle is not yet done;
For sure as the morning follows
The darkest hour of the night,
No question is ever settled
Until it is settled right.”

It is this inspiring belief, planted on a foundation so deep and so secure that no storm can shake it, that leaves Mr. Bryan as hopeful, confident, and serene in the darkest hour of defeat as his opponent can possibly be with the paeans of victory ringing in his ears. It is a rare trait, this superb optimism. It wins, instinctively, the hearts and affections of men, only to inspire them to heroic effort under the most adverse surroundings. But its strongest feature is its effect on the possessor. For when that discouragement which comes from failure, and the inertia which discouragement brings in its train, is eliminated from a strong man’s composition he becomes a god, with the power and greatness of the immortals. The scope of his vision is broadened, his mental horizon enlarges, fear and weakness are banished from his heart, and his might becomes irresistible as he battles for the right as he sees the right. So Mr. Bryan’s optimism has made him a strong, self-poised, cheerful, happy man, whose confidence and good spirits are contagious and whose following increases as his reverses multiply.

His second marked characteristic, his intensity, is one even rarer than the first. The extent to which it is his it is most difficult to make clear. It may, perhaps, be best done by illustration drawn from the writer’s personal experience.

One Saturday, toward the end of the 1899 campaign, Mr. Bryan was speeding across southern Nebraska from east to west on a special train. Every half or quarter hour stops were made at stations along the route, and Mr. Bryan would hastily emerge from his car, make his way, generally unassisted, to a nearby platform, and speak for from ten minutes to an hour to the crowds assembled to hear him. It was most fatiguing work and done by a thoroughly worn-out man. For Mr. Bryan had for two weeks been constantly traveling by train and carriage, speaking from two to a dozen times daily, eating at irregular intervals, and sleeping not more than four or five hours out of each twenty-four. As a natural result his face was drawn and haggard, his muscles frequently twitching, and under his eyes were great black hollows. Yet at every stopping point, when he rose to face his fellow Nebraskans, the worn look would give way, the deep-set eyes would lighten with the fires of a holy zeal, and, in a voice that rang out clear and strong and passionate he pleaded for the preservation of the Republic and its ideals, inviolate and intact. The train was running on schedule time, of course, and at each stopping point it was necessary for the engineer to toot his whistle and ring his bell, not once, but continuously, in order to tear Mr. Bryan away from his audience when the alloted time had expired. Then the indefatigable campaigner, shaking scores of outstretched hands as he ran, would hasten to his car, and the train would speed along to the next stopping place. Mr. Bryan would no sooner enter his car than he dropped his head on a pillow and slept until a tap on the shoulder awoke him, and he rushed out to make another speech, generally differing in form from any made that day or any previous day, though the substance of all was, of course, largely the same. Once, as the train was screaming along between stations Mr. Bryan called the writer to his state-room, where he lay at rest. He raised his head from the pillow as I entered, and started to speak. What words of suggestion or advice were on his tongue I shall never know, for, in the middle of his first sentence the tired head fell back, the lustrous eyes were closed, and his heavy breathing alone told that life remained in the man’s worn and exhausted frame as he lay there fast asleep.

Late in the afternoon of that same day Mr. Bryan’s dinner was brought him on the train, and he ate—as he slept—between stations. His traveling companions, it may be observed, had eaten hearty meals at a town long passed, dining in leisure while Mr. Bryan, standing with bared head on a wind-swept platform, with a scorching sun beating down upon him, addressed five thousand or more wildly cheering people. As he sat in his little compartment, hastily munching his food, there were with him Mr. Joseph A. Altsheler, of the New York _World_, and the writer, representing the Omaha _World-Herald_. One of us chanced to mention some interruption made at the last meeting, where a shrewd Republican partisan had raised a point which Mr. Bryan’s ready repartee had quickly, if not efficiently, disposed of. As soon as the matter was mentioned Mr. Bryan turned from the tray on which were his fried chicken, cold slaw, and coffee. And there, his eyes glowing like lakes of molten metal, his expressive features all in play, in the voice of one who addressed a multitude, he took up that Republican’s sophism and analyzed it for the benefit of us twain. Such was the concentrated and awful intensity of the man that it thrilled me to the core, and, under that burning gaze and vibrant, moving voice, in such an unusual entourage, I trembled with an emotion I could not name.

It was near midnight of that day when the train reached Benkelman, in far western Nebraska, where the last speech was to be delivered. The warm day had been succeeded by a night that was almost bitter cold, and, as we alighted from the train, tired, sleepy, and hungry, the cold, fierce wind from the mountains swooped down on us, and pierced us through and through. At that late hour, and in that semi-arid, scantily populated country, there were patiently waiting, wrapped in their great coats, nearly fifteen hundred people, most of whom had driven from twenty to one hundred miles “to hear Bryan speak.”

In the course of that day Mr. Bryan had already spoken sixteen times. To do this he had risen before five o’clock in the morning and had traveled over two hundred miles. At Benkelman, it was agreed, he should speak not longer than fifteen minutes, and go to bed.

The speaker’s stand was at the principal street intersection of the village. It was gaily decorated with flags and bunting, and lighted by flaring gas jets. The piercing mountain wind swooped down on it like a wolf on the fold. Up on this eminence the worn and wearied campaigner, half dead from want of sleep and his constant exertions, was hurried. Shrill volleys of cheers and yells rose to the heavens. There was a moment’s silence. Then, on the cold air, there fell the deep, melodious, serene voice of the orator, in words of earnest protest and warning, in a magnificent plea for the Republic. For ten or twelve minutes we, who were his traveling companions, remained; and though our eyes were heavy and our senses dulled, though we shivered from the cold even as we trembled with exhaustion, the splendid enthusiasm of that hardy little band of frontiersmen warmed our hearts, and we cheered with them. But, in a few minutes, tired nature called loud to us, and we plodded to the hotel, a block and a half away. We sat for a half hour about the blazing fire, absorbing the grateful warmth. Through the closed doors and windows there came to us, ever and anon, the rich and powerful voice of the orator down the street, punctuated by the wild yells of applause that came from the delighted men of the sand-hills. Again we retreated,—this time to our bed chambers. My teeth chattered like castanets as I disrobed. And now I could plainly hear the orator’s voice,—sometimes his very words,—words that thrilled and pulsated with the life of an animate thing. I pulled the blankets and comforters close about me, and fell into the sleep of utter exhaustion. The next morning we learned that, for just one hour and three quarters Mr. Bryan had stood in that bitter, piercing wind, under the inscrutable stars of midnight on the prairie, and preached the gospel of democracy. Do you gather, now, what I mean in saying that Mr. Bryan’s intensity is something most difficult to describe? It is something that knows not fear, nor hunger, nor exhaustion; that keeps him moving on,—ever and steadily on toward the goal, unswerved and unhindered by those hardships, trials, and obstacles that check the course of other men, or cause them to turn into broader and easier paths.

It is this intensity of character and purpose that makes heroes and martyrs. It also makes fanatics. But Mr. Bryan is no fanatic; his stubborn determination and unyielding purpose is tempered with mental equipoise, good judgment, and common sense.

The first impression one receives of Bryan as a man, and the last one to fade, is that of his reckless sincerity. Right or wrong, he is honest; he is of such a nature that he can not be otherwise; and all things for good or evil, for success or defeat, must subordinate themselves to his personal conception of duty. He possesses all those qualities common to all great men, and some that but very few great men can claim. He has few friends among the rich men of the nation, and is a stranger to fashionable “society;” but he is loved and trusted by the millions who follow him with a devotion such as no other American has won. At his home or abroad, among his children or with his neighbors, or on his well-kept farm, may be found a kindly, upright, debt-paying, unassuming citizen, full of a gentle rollicking humor, a man without an impure thought or act, a profoundly religious Presbyterian, a man who does not smoke, yet who does not hesitate, on occasion, to offer cigars to his friends; who will sit hour after hour in tobacco-laden air, sharing in the conversation of those whose mouths are chimneys for the time. He never drinks wine or liquor, yet he never flaunted a phylactery, or called names when the clink of glasses was heard. In all things a temperate and abstemious man, yet, such is his toleration that there is nothing oppressive about his being better than most of us.

In personal appearance as well as mental gifts, Mr. Bryan is highly favored. Before uttering a word, his magnetic influence wins for him the favor of his audience. Simple is his delivery and bearing. “As he stands before his listeners,” said Mr. R. L. Metcalfe, in a book published four years ago: “he presents a bold and striking picture; intelligence is stamped on every feature; he commences in the soft, pleasant tone, instantly riveting your attention upon him. Your eyes are fastened upon the orator. As he moves, you in spirit move with him; as he advances to his climax his audience advances with him. In perfect harmony orator and audience travel over the path of thought, until the climax is reached, and then, as the last tone of the deep, rich, melodious voice of the orator is uttered with a dramatic force, there breaks forth the full, earnest applause that marks the approval of those who listen. The hand of the orator is raised; instantly perfect silence follows. The sweet tones of the marvelous voice are again heard within the enclosure, no matter how vast.

“There is much in Mr. Bryan’s oratory that recalls to us many of our noted speakers of long ago. Search his speeches through, whether in Congress, before the convention, or on the stump, and you will find them absolutely free from personalities. No audience ever sat within the sound of his voice and caught a word that would appeal to the lower passions of anger, hate, or revenge. He is always the master of himself.”

The directness, simplicity, and purity of Mr. Bryan’s style as an orator and the loftiness and beauty of his sentiment are well shown in the appended excerpt from one of his Congressional speeches on “Money,” in which occurs his famous apostrophe to Thomas Jefferson:

“There are wrongs to be righted; there are evils to be eradicated; there is injustice to be removed; there is good to be secured for those who toil and wait. In this fight for equal laws we can not fail, for right is mighty and will in time triumph over all obstacles. Even if our eyes do not behold success, we know that our labor is not in vain, and we can lay down our weapons, happy in the promise given by Bryant to the soldier:

‘Yea, though thou lie upon the dust,
When they who help thee flee in fear
Die full of hope and manly trust
Like those who fall in battle here.
Another hand by sword shall yield;
Another hand the standard wave;
Till from the trumpet’s mouth is pealed
The blast of triumph o’er the grave.’

“Let us, then, with the courage of Andrew Jackson, apply to present conditions the principles taught by Thomas Jefferson—Thomas Jefferson, the greatest constructive statesman whom the world has ever known; the greatest warrior who ever battled for human liberty. He quarried from the mountain of eternal truth the four pillars upon whose strength all popular government must rest. In the Declaration of American Independence, he proclaimed the principles with which there is, without which there can not be, ‘a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.’ When he declared that ‘all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,’ he declared all that lies between the alpha and omega of the Democracy.

“Alexander ‘wept for other worlds to conquer,’ after he had carried his victorious banner throughout the then known world. Napoleon ‘rearranged the map of Europe with his sword’ amid the lamentations of those by whose blood he was exalted; but when these and other military heroes are forgotten and their achievements disappear in the cycle’s sweep of years, children will still lisp the name of Jefferson, and freedom will ascribe due praise to him who filled the kneeling subject’s heart with hope and bade him stand erect—a sovereign among his peers.”

In all of his rapid utterances and unpremeditated sentences one would fail to detect the slightest lapse from good English; not only good, but admirable. His talk is not that of a pedant,—far from it; but he does speak like a cultivated, well-read man; like a polished man of letters, but not so polished as to leave nothing but the gloss apparent. You may search his numerous speeches, lectures, and addresses without finding the slightest “_lapsus linguae_,” and all without sterility or banality. In his speeches he shows a very remarkable versatility. “He will talk along in a colloquial manner,” says Mr. Metcalfe, “making you laugh or stirring your heartstrings with his pathos as he wills, and suddenly he will throw forth his periods in language that makes one involuntarily suspect of plagiarism from Milton or the prophets. Simplest words are chosen, and they are formed in short, pithy sentences. No word is used solely for its sound; the mere jingle of words has no place in the mental workshop of our orator. To him words are the servants of thought, and take their real beauty from the thought that blazes through them. His style is as pure and captivating as that of Irving or Addison, and not dissimilar to either. But style with him, as with those two great masters, is valued not for itself, but because it conveys in the most pleasing manner the thoughts which he would have others know.

“Mr. Bryan is not averse to the employment of the thoughts of others wherever they add force and attractiveness to the argument in hand. Accordingly, we find his speeches interspersed with quotations from some of the best writers in both prose and poetry, but in each instance the quotation has a natural fitness for the place in which it is found. There are some productions which pass for oratory that are mere mechanisms—the offspring of minds cold and plodding without a ray of genius to illumine their path. The work of genius springs spontaneously from the depths of the heart ruled by purity.”

In the preparation of his deliverances Mr. Bryan reads widely and extensively, exhausting all the available sources of information. By carefully and thoroughly acquainting himself with every possible phase of his subject, by viewing it in all lights, he prepares himself not only to prove the correctness of his own position, but to meet every objection that may be offered against him.

In the diction of his speech the most acceptable language is chosen, and so clear and simple do the most profound thoughts appear when they come fresh-coined from his brain, that men have no difficulty in comprehending them in all their force.

But it takes more than good English to make a great public man, though good language is one of the most essential features of the part. An instance that is told will illustrate one of his other qualifications. On his arrival in a large city in the East, he had been taken for a drive, and a number of people were waiting for him when he alighted on his return. All the American people seem to consider it a duty to shake hands with a public man, and these were there for that purpose. Among them was a faded woman, apparently having worked out her hopes and ambitions; while her face showed refinement and intellectuality, her hands were gnarled by years of labor. As the candidate stepped from the gay carriage, he was at once encircled by a throng of local dignitaries, who successfully monopolized his attention, to the hopeless exclusion of the woman, who was thoughtlessly jostled aside.

Mr. Bryan, glancing quickly about, saw her turning away, her disappointment shown in her worn face, and, maneuvering about, he delicately managed to bring himself in front of her, and, as he saw her face light with pleasure, he extended his hands and murmured a few words of pleasant meaning to her and passed on.

It is extremely doubtful if, among the public men of all time, there has lived one more abounding in a superb vitality, or possessing so magnificent a physique as Mr. Bryan. In his case, as in that of most men of profound mentality, the powerful mind is found with powerful muscles and a strong constitution to back it in its contests. His massively moulded frame, capable of enduring the severest hardships and nerve-racking strains, is the result of a clean, strong ancestry and pure and temperate living in the life-giving atmosphere of the great West.

Altogether Mr. Bryan is a good specimen of an American. He is, for example, neat in his dress, but his apparel is the least obtrusive part of him. He is frank, companionable, courteous without subserviency, aggressive without boorish insistence, well poised, witty and yet cleanly minded, learned without conceit. And he loves his family above all else on earth. At one place a hasty departure from a hotel had to be made to catch a train, and one of the party took Mr. Bryan’s coat by mistake. The discovery was made as soon as the garment was put on, and to ascertain to whom it belonged the wearer put his hands in the pocket to see if any article might be found that would serve for identification. There were only two things found, and those were photographs of Mr. Bryan’s family. He had evidently put them where he could find them most readily.

One can not help but remember the marvelous campaign Bryan made four years ago. A terrible campaign for mind and body; no one who traveled with him will ever forget it. As for Bryan himself—though, needless to say, he worked harder, thought more, and shouldered an infinitely heavier responsibility than all the newspaper reporters who kept constantly in his wake—he was least fatigued of all. Hoarse and husky he certainly did become toward the end—speaking from the rear end of a train to open air crowds of thousands, a dozen times a day, and at the top of his voice. But Bryan, upon a physique of the most vigorous and massive kind, inspired by a stupendous vitality, which should keep him in good condition for sixty years to come, had superimposed a brain of the healthiest, keenest, and most capable sort. In addition he had a colossal firmness, and an unmitigable will; he had thorough belief in the goodness of his cause, and in himself as its champion; and finally he understood the people, loved them, was in touch with them, and won their confidence to an extent and to a degree of enthusiasm that can not be paralleled in modern times. Had some of the qualities above named been less in him, or more, he might have been a broader statesman; but he would not have been so mighty and formidable a leader of men.

Other men are admired or feared, or can spend money, or swing a machine; but Bryan is personally trusted as no other man is, and as he deserves to be. “Bryan is a man standing plumb on his own feet, other candidates have been propped on their feet by other persons. Which will last the longer? No man can count on the ultimate triumph of his cause, or even know how strong or how weak it is, unless he comes out flat-footed and tells the people exactly what it contemplates and requires. He must show the seamy side as well as the smooth one; else, when the seamy side shows itself (as it is certain to do) the people will leap to the conclusion that the fabric is seamy on both sides, and the reaction will sweep it out of existence. McKinley, in laboring to make the people believe that his policy is all sweetness, honor, and virtue, is preventing himself from discovering how abhorrent it really is to the desires and wishes of the people.”

Bryan’s method is just the opposite of President McKinley’s. The only criticism to be passed on him is that he is too uncompromisingly outspoken and sincere. He says things that make his own party friends and managers shudder. He never strives for popularity except in so far as it may be consistent with truth and right. He does not want to please any one who can not be pleased with facts and realities. Bryan, in short, from the standpoint of mere policy, always puts his ugly foot forward, always turns his seamy side, always says “If you don’t have me this way, I am not to be had at all.”

HOME LIFE

A very wholesome theory that a man’s home is his castle and that the sanctuary of private life is one that must be respected has no application in America to a public man. The fact that few public men quarrel with the general idea upon this subject proves that it has its basis in sound judgment and honest desire for greater intimacy rather than in impertinent curiosity.

In the case of Mr. Bryan he has never quarreled with this widely held theory. For ten years he has been in the glare of publicity. From the night, a decade ago, when he discomfited the champion of Republican politics in the opening debate of his first congressional campaign, a light has been constantly turned upon him and from him to his home life. That he has come out from under this strong scrutiny a more commanding figure, viewed either from the standpoint of the wise statesman or the typical head of an American family, is a statement that will meet with no attempt at refutation.

On the first day of October next Mr. Bryan will have been married sixteen years. The ceremony was the culmination of a courtship extending over a period of four years, a wooing that had its inspiration in the atmosphere of school life, and which was continued during the years when he was a diligent student of the law and a struggling young attorney with the unblighted courage and the indomitable energy that have come to be such marked characteristics of the man. They first met at a reception given in the parlors of the Presbyterian Academy at Jacksonville, Ill., to the young men of Illinois College. Mrs. Bryan, then Mary Baird, was a student at the Academy, and Mr. Bryan was in attendance at the College. There was little of romance attached to either their meeting or their courtship. Both were young, he twenty, she nineteen. Some sentimentalist has told that she was first attracted to him by hearing him recite some school book classics. The fact is that some friend pointed her out to Mr. Bryan as a girl he “ought to meet.” And mutual friends introduced them.

Miss Baird was born at Perry, Ill., on the seventeenth day of June, 1861. Her father was a merchant, one of a firm that conducted a general store in that town. His employment gave Mr. Baird, naturally a studious man, much leisure, and this he improved by reading. His daughter inherited his taste for literature and it has abided with her. The invalidism of her mother prevented her from finishing the course she had begun at Monticello Seminary, at Godfrey, Ill., but later she was able to attend the academy at Jacksonville, from which she graduated with first honors of her class.

The young couple began their married life in a little home of their own in Jacksonville. With the prudent care that has always distinguished both of them, they postponed their happiness until he had secured a practice sufficient to support them and until they were able to have a roof-tree of their own. Three years after their marriage Mr. Bryan came west on a business trip for a client. At Lincoln he met an old friend and classmate, A. R. Talbot. Talbot had made an excellent beginning in the West, and he suggested to Bryan that he locate at Lincoln and join his law firm. Mr. Bryan said little at the time. A few months after his return, however, he wrote to Mr. Talbot and asked him if he was in earnest in making the proposition. Mr. Talbot replied that he was, and outlined the prospects in the West, then the center of a vast speculation in lands and town lots. Mr. Bryan had been enchanted with the city of Lincoln when he first saw it, and he had simply waited until he could talk it over with his wife.

In this sentiment lies the keynote of the perfect sympathy that has been so marked a characteristic of their wedded life. Mr. Bryan came first, his wife and his young daughter remaining in Jacksonville until he had become settled. They then joined him. They immediately began the erection of a modest home in Lincoln, buying a building lot on D street, and upon it erected the home he now occupies, at No. 1625. The money was furnished by Mr. Baird, but has long since been paid. Three children have been born to them, Ruth, now nearly fifteen, William, aged eleven, and Grace, aged nine. The first named is now a registered student at the seminary at Godfrey, where the mother first began her college career.

Even the most casual visitor to the Bryan residence is impressed with the distinctive home atmosphere of the place. Mrs. Bryan, as its presiding genius, has stamped upon it the impress of her individuality, no less marked in that sphere than her husband’s in his. The house itself is little more than a cottage, although it boasts of a second story and a cupola. Outwardly its lines are a little more impressive than when it was first built. This can be traced to the addition within the past year of a many-columned porch, stretching across its entire front and bending in a graceful curve to a point midway of the rear. With its paneled roof and the electric lights, its cosy corners and inviting arm chairs, it is an enticing retreat, and here the Bryan family spend most of their waking hours in the summer months.

There is no ostentation displayed in the furnishings of the Bryan residence. The parlor is the parlor of the well-to-do middle class. The sitting room is simply furnished, but home-like and inviting. The library is the workshop and no unnecessary tools are lying about. On the walls hang large portraits of Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln, and steel engravings of Benton, Webster, and Calhoun. They are inexpensive pictures, but typical of the ideals of the occupants of the room. Another picture shows Henry Clay, addressing his colleagues in the United States Senate. The artist’s perspective was sadly at fault, but it was not the art, but the subject, that attracted Mr. Bryan. The library is an extensive one, but unique in its character. Fiction and the classics find very little room. In their places are histories, orations, works on political economy, lives and speeches of famous men, who have helped build the nation of the past, dissertations and addresses upon the hundred and one questions that have vexed and still perplex the modern school of statesmanship. Upon few of these has any dust accumulated, and upon all of them are the unmistakable signs of frequent usage.

The characteristic that strikes the visitor most is the _bon homme_, the _camaraderie_, of the household. A wholesome sympathy seems to be the bond that unites all members. Neither the father nor the mother is a strict disciplinarian. They do not believe in tyrannizing over their children. They believe in encouraging their respective bents, and in guiding them in the right channels, rather than in forcing in the ways hallowed by tradition. Mrs. Bryan is essentially a home body; her husband and children are her chiefest, but not her only cares. She is a mentor to them all. Miss Ruth is much like her father in temperament. She is quick and impulsive, warm-hearted and generous. Her popularity among her girl friends is attested by the number that throng her lawn every evening. William is a sturdy youth in build, and, boy-like, more self assertive than his sisters. As his father is a typical American man, so is the youth a typical American boy, fun-loving and possessed of a harmless mischievousness that often disturbs the young girls who are his older sister’s confidantes. Grace, the youngest, is delicate in health, and her father’s favorite. It is to him she goes with her childish troubles, sure of the sympathy that never fails her.

Mr. Bryan takes great pride in his household, and he bends every energy to the end that the bonds of mutual confidence and love, the elements so essential in a perfect home, may be strengthened and cemented. Every hour that he can give to them he gladly spares. For four years he has had no other office, no other working place, than in this home. After the campaign of 1896 he gave up, to all intents and purposes, his down town office, and has spent his time at home. His office is now in his library, an inviting room opening off the parlor on one side, and the sitting room on the other. His work is performed on a big flat-topped desk that occupies a goodly share of the floor space. Here he is surrounded by book-cases and statuettes, by curious mementoes, ink stands, canes, a hundred and one articles that admirers in all sections and climes of the country have sent him. Most of these have been gathered together in a glass-covered compartment that separates the two big book-cases.

Mr. Bryan finds that his best work is done with his wife as his counselor and guide. She has a place on one side of the big desk, he on the other. She is no less indefatigable as a worker than he. She finds time between her consultations with him, when an important work is on hand, to care for her household, and to direct the work of the one domestic employed. Mrs. Bryan’s thorough understanding and appreciation of every detail of his labors make her companionship and aid almost indispensable. Together they have gone over the details of his campaigns in the past years, and with him she still plans for the future. What he writes, she either passes upon or assists in its production. Her self-poise, marred by no self-consciousness, but marked by a quiet dignity, is one of her remarkable possessions. Perhaps the best delineation of the characteristics of this woman, remarkable in many ways, is furnished by the eminent novelist, Julian Hawthorne, who spent some time at the Bryan home during the past summer. Of her he said, “Mrs. Bryan is as unusual a woman as her husband is a man, but she is so unobtrusive that few people have much idea of her true character. I had the opportunity to learn something of her during the campaign of ‘96, and I well recollect her admirable bearing at the great meeting in Madison Square Garden, when she was recognized and greeted on entering her box by more than ten thousand people. It was a tremendous ordeal for a woman to undergo. But she sustained herself with steadiness and self-possession, remarkable in any woman, but more than remarkable in her, who had always lived in quiet domestic ways, occupied with her husband, her children, and her household duties. She is a woman of great courage and unshakable faith, of exceptional intellect, also, nourished with adequate education. She possesses the coolness of judgment which must often have served him well in times of doubt. She is not led away by imagination or hope, but sees things as they are, and resolutely faces facts. Should the decrees of Providence see fit to place her in a position of the first lady of the land, I should have no fear that she would discharge her duties irreproachably. A true American woman, she is such as you may always be glad to match against the great dames of the old world. The dominant expression of her face is penetration, combined with a gentle composure. But there is the sparkle of demure humor in her eyes, and she can use speech as the most delicate of rapiers when she chooses. It is easy to know her as an acquaintance, but I surmise that no one really knows her except her husband, and probably she will be able continually to discover new resources and depths even to him. She is a good woman, with strong religious convictions, and she regards Bryan’s political aspirations from that point of view. If it is the will of God that he shall reach the highest place among his countrymen she will accept the mission with good will and confidence. But should he be defeated she will welcome the life of obscurity with unshaken equanimity, believing that the councils of the Almighty are unsearchable, but faithful. If she be destined to higher things, the example to the nation, irrespective of party, of such a wife and such a mother as she is, can not but be beneficial. If not, ‘Those also serve who only stand and wait.’”

Sociability is one of the graces that attach to her naturally. The number of visitors to her husband is so large and his amiability so great, that if Mrs. Bryan did not maintain a watchfulness over them they would consume all of his hours. This guardianship of his time has imbued her with a little more sternness than is her nature, but at the same time has endowed her with shrewdness of discernment that enables her to gauge every one’s errand with astonishing accuracy. The true democracy of the man is shown in his earnest desire that even the lowest of his callers shall be received with the same consideration bestowed upon the great ones, and no visitor ever leaves the Bryan home, even though he may not have gained his wish, without the consciousness of the gentle courtesy and a full-souled welcome.

But Mrs. Bryan is in no sense a society woman. She is of a turn of mind too serious and too well poised to enable her to find enjoyment in the frivolities and vanities that go to make up so much of the life of the society woman. She likes to meet with her friends and talk with them, and she misses no opportunity to indulge in this pleasure. Club and church work take up much of her leisure. She has been active for years in the work of the Nebraska state federation of women’s clubs. She can write, and frequently does, for newspapers and periodicals. She can also speak and speak well, but this she does rarely. Her range of information is as varied as that of her husband, and she knows the ins and outs of politics as well as she does the theories of good government, and the vagaries of the different schools of political economy. For years Mrs. Bryan’s father has resided with them. Now he is sightless and infirm, but his hours are cheered and his burden lightened by the loving care of his daughter.

The passing years have dealt very gently with Mrs. Bryan. She is above the average in height, but her figure is matronly. Her face is pale, but there is no pallor, the graceful curves of youth have softened in outline, but in manner she has gained the dignity that does not hint of reserve. Mrs. Bryan is always well dressed, the unobtrusiveness and appropriateness of her garments marking the taste of the wearer. Her gowns are usually of one color, relieved here and there by the bright tints women love.

“Mrs. Bryan’s whole life has been one of study,” says Miss Wright, of Lincoln, a friend of the family. “Long before she could read she knew the names of all the bugs her little hoe turned up in the garden. In her early life the doctor said she must be kept out of doors. Luckily she did not like indoor life. All day long she tagged her father, and they played together in the garden. By the time she was old enough for books she was kin to everything they told about. She idealized the earth and its generating and regenerating character. From a weak child she has grown to be a strong woman with rare power of endurance and concentration. She and her father would sit on the porch at night and study the skies, and the Greek and Norse stories of the stars were repeated until she had committed all of them to memory. He told her how far away they were and what a speck the world would look if it could be seen from Venus. The idea of the immensity of the Universe and the relation of the world to the solar system seldom enters the mind of a child, but with Mary Baird, it was the most interesting story that could be told. Early star-gazing and her father’s influence trained her to think of things abstractly, nakedly, and without the impediments of custom and fashion. During her first days in school, her text-books were distasteful, as they were new, but she studied them nevertheless, and soon was at the head of her class. This habit of study has clung to her ever since.”

Social dissipation is unknown in the Bryan household. Since Miss Ruth has grown to the dignity of young womanhood, and has gathered about her a bevy of young friends, an added gaiety has been given. She has had her little parties, but her parents receive rarely, and then but informally. The Bryans have several carriages and horses, and in these they find their chief amusement. Once in a while Mr. and Mrs. Bryan are seen at the theatres, but only at the best plays. Mr. Bryan has grown much stouter in late years, and has taken to frequent horseback rides as both an exercise and a pleasure. His favorite animal is a Kentucky bred saddle horse. It was presented him by ex-Governor W. J. Stone, of Missouri, and in compliment to its donor, Mr. Bryan has named it “Governor.”

The figure of W. J. Bryan on horseback is a familiar one in the city of Lincoln, a city where horseback riding has never been in vogue. Governor is a coal-black, high-spirited animal, and prances and pirouettes with nervousness at every halt. Mr. Bryan’s favorite ride is to his farm, four miles east of the city. Here, on a thirty-acre tract, he has for several years been making experiments in farming, or rather in endeavoring to discover whether he has forgotten the lessons instilled into his mind by his agricultural experiences in youth. Mr. Bryan insists that he is not a farmer, but an agriculturalist, and defines the difference tersely in this wise: “You see, a farmer is a man who makes his money in the country, and spends it in the town. The agriculturalist makes his money in town and spends it in the country.”

Mr. Bryan has no intention of taking up the life of a farmer. Ten years ago, in the boom days of Lincoln, he purchased a five-acre tract close to the suburb of Normal. He had driven out east of the city one day, and at the top of a hill stopped to rest his horse. As he sat in his carriage the splendid panorama of field and house and tree unrolled before him. He was enchanted. Then and there he resolved to build a permanent home upon that spot some day. The original five acres cost him a good round sum, but his later purchases, made now and then, have been at greatly reduced figures. The buildings upon the farm are largely temporary in character. The house is a small one of five rooms, and shelters the man who does the real work on the place. Mr. Bryan has found much pleasure and recreation during the summer at the farm. During the planting season and in the weeks that followed, he made a visit daily and spent several hours “puttering” about, directing things here and bearing a hand there himself, at the harder tasks. In the rural atmosphere, away from the conventions of the city, he threw aside every care and every burden. His ordinary clothing was cast aside for the habiliments that distinguish the farmer at work. Mr. Bryan confesses to a weakness for high-top boots, in which his trouser ends can be hidden,—and then to work.

The one singular thing about everything that this man does is that he is at all times able to preserve his dignity. There is nothing selfconscious about that dignity. In the West, that sort is dangerous to attempt. Simplicity is the dominant note in his character, his manners, his talk, his walk. His amiability is inexhaustible, his patience unending. If a delegation of Democrats passing through Lincoln do not have time to go out and see Mr. Bryan, Mr. Bryan finds time to ride down to the depot and see them. He has, since his nomination, made several speeches from horseback, to boisterous but zealous delegations, and always with the old charm and effect.

As to his patience, no better witnesses to its enduring qualities need be asked than the newspaper correspondents who form a corps of watchful guardians upon his footsteps. Many are the questions, some of them impertinent, that are asked him, and during a campaign, the presence of the press representatives, unobtrusive as they are, really destroys whatever privacy remained to him. And yet through it all, his courtesy is ever gentle, his good nature unfailing, his temper always under such control as to seem to be an absent quantity in his make-up.

Lincoln, the city of his residence, has always been dominated by the Republican party, and so great has been the preponderance of that political organization that Mr. Bryan has never been able to carry it in any of his campaigns. Mr. Bryan came to Lincoln a young man, and entered into a very brisk competition with a number of other young lawyers, most of them Republicans. None of these have risen above the political level of county leaders, nor have they found fame or other reward at the bar. The rapid flight of Mr. Bryan and his pre-eminence has engendered in their breasts a bitterness of partisanship, accentuated and multiplied by their personal jealousies, that has found its vent in mean and malicious assaults upon his political integrity and attempted belittlings of his abilities. This influence has in the past over-ridden a local pride that would have justified an endorsement at least of his Presidential candidacy, and added flame to the fires of partisanship that particularly distinguishes the city. These two facts form the solution to a mystery that has seemingly vexed a great many good people in America, who do not understand the local conditions. Mr. Bryan seems, too, to have pitched his tent in the most rabidly Republican section of the city, as evidenced by the elaborate display of McKinley pictures in the front windows of the houses of his neighbors, who are as lacking in good taste as in civic pride.

None of these elaborate attempts at incivility have ever ruffled his temper, nor have they caused him to retaliate with the weapons he so well knows how to use. The fact is, he has many warm friends among the Republicans of the city. His old law partner has long been a Republican leader, and is now president of the State Senate. This year he has espoused Mr. Bryan’s cause.

It has been said that the home of Mr. and Mrs. Bryan is a typical one. It is more than a type; it is an ideal. The simplicity of the life his family leads, the wholesomeness of the atmosphere, the absence of affectation, the presence of a democracy that includes courtesy, gentleness, amiability, and cordiality invariably impresses one. The home life of a man is the mirror of his character; and in its limpid depths one sees the secret springs of thought and reads the heart aright. That that of Mr. Bryan reflects with truthful fidelity is a fact within the knowledge of all who know the man and revere the woman. The words he himself used in describing the beautiful home life of a friend who had been called across the river apply with equal fitness to his own:

“He found his inspiration at his fireside, and approached his ideal of the domestic life. He and his faithful wife, who was both his help-mate and companion, inhabited as tenants in common that sacred spot called home, and needed no court to define their relative rights and duties. The invisible walls which shut in that home and shut out all else had their foundation upon the earth and their battlements in the skies. No force could break them down, no poisoned arrows could cross their top, and at the gates thereof love and confidence stood ever upon guard.”

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Transcriber's note:

1. Silently corrected typographical errors.

2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.

3. One instance of unpaired double quotation marks could not be
corrected.