The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 7
Election Eve in 1910 was a memorable occasion for me. I shall never forget the mass meeting in the old Opera House on State Street. Shortly afterward, this theatre burned to the ground, but I cherish still the memory of the hall in which the last meeting I attended was a town rally for my beloved editor, Ohio's Republican candidate for Governor!
I do not remember that I told anybody where I was going that night. I only know I went along, in all haste, after the dinner dishes had been cleared away, out the back door and down to the Opera House. The theatre was comparatively small, accommodating perhaps seven or eight hundred people, but fully twice as many it seemed to me had crowded in, jamming the narrow aisles and standing wherever there was an available spot for a human being to balance himself. I pushed my way up through the stuffy crowds to the balcony and managed to find a seat onto which I climbed. I took a deep breath. From my post I could see every corner of the stage. The whole theatre was decorated, and even the boxes were beflagged. Two or three dozen people stood or sat in a semi-circle at the back of the stage—the more favored few.
The multitude—it seemed a multitude to me—cheered and whistled and suddenly the applause grew to a deafening roar as the audience rose as in a body to greet the hero of the hour. I bent eagerly forward, my heart in my throat, as he advanced to the edge of the platform and bowed. How dear he was! After comparative quiet was regained, he began his address, in his deep silvery voice, the voice I loved years afterward to listen to across the dinner-table or in more intimate surroundings . . .
Out on the street great flags floated in the cool breeze and telephone posts and store windows were draped effectively in the American colors. The throngs of people stood about expectantly. I wondered if my father had attended the meeting and whether I had been missed at home . . . then down the street in an open carriage with seats facing each other rode the Republican candidate, his wife and a couple of intimate friends. The entire carriage was a mass of red, white and blue; even the horses seemed to sense the importance and enthusiasm of the occasion, and lifted high their beflagged heads as they stepped mincingly along through the cheering lines of people.
Still smiling and bowing and occasionally raising a hand to wave to the people, the editor stood throughout the entire procession, head bared, acknowledging this tribute of the home folks who loved him. . . .
Loved him? Yes. But who of men can essay an explanation of that instinct of the American voter who can hypocritically hail a candidate one day and the following day betray him at the polls?
As I look back upon that election, a state-wide land-slide for the Democrats, putting Judson Harmon in the Governor's chair, I do not feel as I felt then, saddened beyond words, for events have been witness to the fact that nothing can prevent those who are predestined from "coming into their own."
(These two episodes, the one of the meeting with Mr. Harding when I carried the pail of milk, and the political mass meeting, I have quoted in substance from an autobiography which I wrote in 1921 at Columbia as one of our class assignments. I took this manuscript down to the White House at that time and Mr. Harding read it, expressing in a letter to me his interest and praising me for having received an "A" on it at Columbia, however cautioning me as usual very lovingly against treading compositionally upon what he thought seemed to be "dangerous ground." The whimsical expression in his face when we used to discuss his earlier political activities often led me to feel that he had felt far from the hero I had pictured him, and perhaps more like the disillusioned candidate his friends reported him to be after that election, driven by ambitious admirers into a field he would fain have avoided.)