Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1909-02-19
A Senator Foes.

TO buy him off.
An old wheel horse called on Sena-
tor Hardman In a careless way and
talked about the lieutenant governor
ship and what would naturally follow
1t. Lieutenant governors a come to
be presidents. The senator nodded his
head in the affirmative, but did not rise
to the bait. The old wheel horse limited
at the financial obligations the ring
would be under II a certain new sena-
tor went straight" and Hardman
opened the door and held 1t open until
the other had passed out.
The ring employed a bureau to hunt
up Hardman's record, and there was
gnashIng of teeth when the report
came back that all was clear. There
was not even the robbery of a henroost
In his boyhood days ON which to found
a charge against him. He had once
been engaged to be married, and 1t was
whispered that the girl had learned
something against his character and
broken the engagement. A detective
was sent west to hunt up the female
and offer her a thousand dollars to ex-
pose the senator, but the officer was
too late. She had married a butcher
two weeks before he found her, and
the husband threw the sleuth out.
A female lobbyist tried to throw her
charms about the senator, and a pitfall
was nicely arranged, but he glided over
it and escaped. 1t was at length real
lied that the battle must be fought out
knee to knee, and the ring girded up its
loins for the combat. Hardman was
hunting up facts and statistics for a
telling speech against rings and graft
ers. He worked quietly, but faithfully,
and he finally gathered such a mass of
evidence in favor of the stand that he
had taken from the first that his n
mics became alarmed and desperate.
When the senator's notes were at last
completed he put them In the form of a
speech. and the copy vas given to a
female typist to be transposed into
print. There was no fear of trickery in
that. 1t did not seem to Hartman that
a young woman who was seeking to
support a widowed mother could prove
Tecreant to her trust. Nevertheless in
the last two hours the manuscript was
left with her she sold him out for
money and turned everything owe to
the enemy. The ring shouted In glee.
He was baked. The statistics that had
been dug up out of the past would new
err see daylight. The senator's facts
and figures and denunciations had van
1shed into thin air. The speech that
was to be the effort of his life would
remain undeliyered He had promised
much, but he would be unable to de-
liver the goods and his downfall would
follow.
Hartman could not go over the
ground again. The ring had made that
flp5ssfbre. WITHOUT his statistics IFS
speech would not amount to more thar
general denunciatlon. No trust or cor
poration cared for that. They had been
denounced for years and years, and yet
their dividends were growing all the
time. A few hundred dollars had
bought the honesty of a trusted girl
and drawn the sting of an honest
tor, and the ring spoke of 1t as an in
terposition of Providence.
Three days more and had all gone
well the senator would have been
ready to open his batteries. He sat in
his room of an evening with his head
on his hand and knew that he was a
beaten and ~vanquished man. He had
promised much, and he could do moth
ing. At the end of his term the people
would want him no longer. AS he sat
<b,.a II, his IIftaruaoc Tho door opapn1
and a girl stood before him. He had
to look at her twice before he recog-
nized her as the typist who had sold
him out. He did not upbraid her. There
was no scowl on his face as he re-
garded her and waited for her to speak.
'They lied to me-" she finally said.
"Yes?'
'Mother was i'll, and we were in 9th
er trouble, and II didn't think a
speech amounted to so very much
that is, l thought you could easily
make up another"
"Yes? Two or three hundred dollars
seemed a great sum to you. If men
sell their honesty, why shouldn't wom-
emp
"But mother died, sirl" sobbed the
girl. 81 wanted to get her to the hos
pital, but she-she died!"
81 am sorry for that. 1 believe her
death leaves you alone in the world?"
"Y-yes, sir. I'd have brought it SOON
er only there was the funeral, and /
thought 1t was only just a speech.
Was 1t to be a great speech?"
swell / hoped So"
4But mother said 1t was ard that we
shouldn't use a penny of the money
and that I'd done very wrong. She
said 1 must get it back and give up
che money, and here is the copy"
"The speech!" exclaimed the senator
as he reached her side. 'You don't tell
me that you have got the speech back!"
A'This is it, sir"
sand whara-Whprav-