Abbeville progress. (Abbeville, Vermilion Parish, La.) 1913-1944, 1913-09-13

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49, der the broad brim Of
his black SLOUGH hat his hair
fell in silver wisps almost to his
shoulders, and the long mustache,
dropping like Georgian's at the cor
ners Of his mouth, was as white as
his hair, save at the spot where his
cigar had tinged it yellow.
There was not a politician OF either
party between Dunleith and Cairo
who was not proud to bend over the
old fellows chair, take his thin hand
and say: Hello, Colonel, what's new
in politics The colonel had an in
variable reply: I'm out of politics,
and don't know anything. What do
you hear?" Sometimes, ii the passing
politician happened to be OF the old
day, the colonel would take him by
the arm, and they would saunter away
to the bar. If the politician came from
northern Illinois, the colonel would
would take rye; If from southern IL
|, linois the colonel would take bour-
bon; such was his idea of etiquette.
Though never would he take drink
before breakfast. for a drink before
breakfast, he told Carroll, was a
back log in the fire that would burn
the livelong day.
Carroll was the staff of the colonel's
old 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,
with a discipline as rigid as that with
which he had welded the Nineteenth
Illinois into fighting regiment.
To those who knew the veterans
nistory, his love for the boy was
tell now, but its essential motif must
always be the ingratitude OF 81 War
rem. The colonel had picked Warren
up in the old Fifteenth district, sent
him to congress, and finally made a
United States seEator OF him. War
rem, developing Qu,ckly as a politician,
had turned around, defeated the col
onel for reelection as chairman of the
state executive committee, posi-
ton he had held for sixteen years,
had frozen him out of the Arizona
deal, and somehow caused the colo
neis only son to go wrong out there
In Tucson. The boys mother had
died; of broken heart, they said.
Since then a decade had passed, a
decade which the colonel had spent in
the grim lonesomeness Of a crowded
hotel. He never mentioned Warren's
name. If he heard it, he clenched his
bony fists so tightly that the knuckles
showed white. Once a year. perhaps,
In the springtime, when the state
central committee met, he got out his
white waistcoat and was invited up to
the ordinary to make a speech on the
sts p of the party, and once a year, in
to summertime, he attended a 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 its 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 was the
year the legislature that chose War
ren's successor in the senate was to
be elected, and when the senator
came home from Washington he found
his fences In sad repair. The Silas
Warren of the parlor suite in a Lake
Front hotel was not the 81 Warren
whom Colonel Talbot had rescued
from the dusty little law office down
In Shelbyville fifteen yeas before. The
clothes of that time were faded by the
sun in which he loafed all day on the
post Office corner, whereas the clothes
OF this spring morning bespoke a New
York tailor and valet.
The senator was not in a pleasant
mood. There was opposition to his re-
election, and while his machine ig-
nored 1t, and while George R. Baldwin.
the lawyer who watched the interests
of certain big corporations during the
sessions of the legislature, said it was
but 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 coloners
home county, and so 1t came to pass
that 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
white 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 a week of
dreaming, dramatized himself as max
ing speech in the state senate cham
Der at Springfield. The colonel, as a
mans duty is. advised him to keep
out OF politics, and vet within an hour