The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1899-11-01
SIX TORCHES THE LIGHT.
NEVER DID BRYAN SHOW SUCH
FIRE AND yIGoR.
ALL OF HIS HEARERS WERE sPELLB0UND
Raw Winds Cut Them to the Bone, the Lights
FIickered and Went Out, but the
People S aged on in The
Darkness.
Especial to The World.)

Holedregc, Neb., October 29.-This
morning William j. Bryan made no
speech, but took his well-earncd rest,
the first he has had in three weeks.
However, he spent this period of com
parative idleness ON a train that was
moving at the rate of forty miles an
hour
The first week of his campaign in
Nebraska did not end last night until
midnight. His seventeenth and last
speech of the day was made at Benkel
man, Il little town in the cattle region,
with the Kansas border but three miles
away on the south and Colorado almost
III sight ON the west.
The Bryan train was due at 8 p. m,
but did not arrive until nearly 10. About
1,500 people had gathered there and
they waited patiently until he came. Fiji
teen hundred is large crowd for the
Benkelman country, which is within the
area of limited rainfall and very thinly
settled Some of the people had come
seventy miles, many of them being
drawn from Colorado. At least half
had ridden in from distant ranches,
whose only inhabitants are the COW
boys.
Twelve or fifteen years ago Benkle-
man was one of the tough towns Of
the border. The cowboys used to ride
in firing their pistols, and they would
hold turbulent sway for TWO or three
days until they grew tired or their mon
ely was spent. But all that has passed
and while the cowboy is still pictures
que in appearance he no more rides
down the streets of Benkleman pump
ing bullets from his six-shooter
A little stage had been erected for
Mr.. Bryan in the middle OF the main
street of the town, and it was after
10 o'clock when he began his speech.
The crowd was packed closely around
him, forming in the night solid dark
mass, touched here and there with spots
of color where the gay neckerchiefs OF
the cowboys or the bright dresses OF
the women cleaned.
A half-dozen torches held alofi
around the Bryan stage formed a single
column of light there, while the peo-
pie around it and the little town OH
the bare plain were almost invisible.
1t was thought that Mr.. Bryan, with
record Of sixteen speeches and three
hundred miles of travel already behind
him since his start that morning, would
speak only twenty or thirty minutes.
Instead he spoke an hour and three
quarters. He was pale and very tired
when he went on the stand. but some
thing in the crowd or the occasion or
something in himself seemed to inspire
him, for in no other speech that day
did he show so much vigor or fire.
His eyes began to flash with the pas
sion that he undoubtedly felt. His
voice grew louder, and every word that
he said could be heard distinctly more
than a hundred yards away.
The crowd pressed more closely around
the speaker. The night, after day
of hot sunshine, had become intensely
cold. A raw wind blew down from
the bleak hills and cut 10 the bone. 1t
whistled and moaned among the streets
of the little town, and formed an ac-
compartment to the speakers voice
The torches suffered in the wind,
and lone newspaper man crouched in
the shelter of an old shed from the cut
ting wind but the people paid no at
tention to it,
SPEAKING ONLY TO DARKNESS.
Two or three of the lights died out,
and the people became invisible. Only
the pale face of the speaker, with the
lights beside him, could be seen, and ap-
rarently Mr.. Bryan was standing in the
air and speaking only to the darkness.
OF all the strange scenes in the Ne
braska campaign this was the strangest.
The speaker went ON. The half h0Gr
was passed, and then the hour, and
midnight was approaching. So far as
the World correspondent could see, not
a single person in the crowd had LEFT,
although the wind was rising higher
and higher and the cold was increasing.
1t was nearly midnight at BenkeIman
and 2 o'clock in the morning ut New
York when Mr.. Bryan closed and his
friends dragged him away to bed. The
crowd was still there, every man and
woman who had been in it when Mr.
Bryan begun, and they let him. go with
reluctance.