Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1913-09-12

Y "a cane, smoking his cigar,
IA ~ and talking politics. IN
-&zsZA der the broad brim of
h, black SLOUGH hat his hair
ell in silver wisps almost to his
rhoulders. and the long mustache,
Grooming like a Georgian's at the cor
nors of his mouth, was as white as
-. hair. save at the spot where his
cigar had tinged it yellow.
There was not politician of either
ortv between Dunleith and Cairo
pbo was not proud to bend over the
aid fellows chair, take his thin hand
and say: Hello, Colonel, what's new
A. notifies -. The colonel had an in
variable reply: I'm out of politics,
and don't know anything. What do
Won bear?" Sometimes, If the passing
DoIitician happened to be of the old
day the colonel would take him by
tbe arm, and they would saunter away
N the bar. If the politician came from
northern Illinois, the colonel would
would take rye; if from southern Il
I1inois the colonel would take bour-
non. such was his idea of etiquette.
Though never would he take drink
before breakfast, for a drink before
breakfast, he told Carroll, was a
hack log in the fire that would burn
the liyelong day.
Carroll was the staff OF the colonel's
cid age. The two would sit by the
hour while the old man talked of the
Nineteenth Illinois cavalry, of Lin
coin and Douglas, of David Davis and
Elijah Haines, Of state and national
conventions, in the days when he had
made and unmade congressman, gov
ernors and senators, ruling his party
In the state, Carroll shrewdlY thought,
vith a discipline as rigid as that with
which he had welded the Nineteenth
illinois into fighting regiment.
To those who knew the veterans
History, his love for the boy was
tcuching. The story is too long to
tell now, but its essential motif must
always be the ingratitude of ST War
Ken. The colonel had picked Warren
up in the old Fifteenth district, sent
aim to congress, and finally made a
United States senator of him. War
rem, developing quickly as a politician,
had turned around, defeated the col
onel for reelection as chairman Of the
state executive committee, a posi-
ti0n he had held for sixteen years,
had frozen him out of the Arizona
deal, and somehow caused the colo
nePs only son to go wrong out there
IN Tucson. The boys mother had
died; Of a broken heart, they said.
Since then a decade had passed, a
decade which the colonel had spent in
the grim lonesomeness of crowded
hotel. He never mentioned Warren's
name. Ii he heard it, he clenched his
bony fists so tightly that the knuckles
Showed white. Once year, perhaps,
bin the springtime, when the state
central committee met, he got out his
white Waistcoat and was invited up to
the ordinary to make speech on the
state Of the party, and once year, in
the summertime, he attended re-
union of his regiment, now decimated
TO squadron of tottering old men,
whom the colonel called boys"
Spring came, rolling up from the
muddy Ohio, showering it's apple bios
SONS in the orchards of Egypt,
Sprinkling with purple flowers the
prairies of central Illinois, and finally
flooding with tardy sunshine the cold
waters Of Lake Michigan. 1t WIS the
year the legislature that chose War
renS successor in the senate was to
be elected. and when the senator
came home from Washington he found
us fences in sad repair.
The senator was not in pleasant
mood. There was opposition to his re-
election, and while his machine ig-
nored it, and while George r. Baldwin,
the lawyer who watched the interests
oI certain big corporations during the
sessions Of the legislature, said it was
out sporadic demonstration of sore
headS, back numbers and labor skates,
II was spreading, as the picturesque
politicians from the corn lands OF
central illinois would say. like a
prairie fire. Jacksonville, where the
standard of revolt had first been
raised, was in Morgan, the colonePs
nome county, and so it came to pass
eh@t the detection was laid to the
Vaccinations of the colonel himself.
and yet, as the politicians who were
Always dropping into Chicago to cor
rect their reckonings, paused an in
slant by the leather chair, the old
"Alte head would slowly sway from
side to side, and the old man would
say.
NO, I'm out of politics"
II Carroll had not conceived the
IDEA Of running for Office, perhaps the
colonel would have remained out OF
politics, but the boy, after week OF
dreaming, dramatized himself as max
ing a speech in the state senate cham
DER at Springfield. The colonel. as q
man duty is, advised him to keep
out OF politics, and yet within an hour
sIter Carroll shyly confessed his am
oltlon, the fever awoke in the old fell