Among the Democratic leaders of that period, Hendricks was one of the ablest, and a man of many attractive qualities. His dignity was always impressive, and his appearance suggested the statesman of an earlier time. It is one of immortality's harsh ironies that a man who was a gentleman, and who stood moreover pretty squarely for the policies that it pleased him to defend, should be published to the world in a bronze effigy in his own city as a bandy-legged and tottering tramp, in a frock coat that never was on sea or land.
Joseph E. McDonald, a Senator in Congress, was held in affectionate regard by a wide constituency. He was an independent and vigorous character who never lost a certain raciness and tang. On my first timid venture into the fabled East I rode with him in a day-coach from Washington to New York on a slow train. At some point he saw a peddler of fried oysters on a station platform, alighted to make a purchase, and ate his luncheon quite democratically from the paper parcel in his car seat. He convoyed me across the ferry, asked where I expected to stop, and explained that he did not like the European plan; he liked, he said, to have 'full swing at a bill of fare.'
I used often to look upon the towering form of Daniel W. Voorhees, whom Sulgrove, an Indiana journalist with a gift for translating Macaulay into Hoosierese, had named 'The Tall Sycamore of the Wabash.' In a crowded hotel lobby I can still see him, cloaked and silk-hatted, the centre of the throng, and my strict upbringing in the antagonistic political faith did not diminish my admiration for his eloquence.
Such were some of the characters who came and went in the streets of our provincial capital in those days.
In discussions under captions similar to mine it is often maintained that railways, telegraphs, telephones, and newspapers are knitting us together, so that soon we shall all be keyed to a metropolitan pitch. The proof adduced in support of this is of the most trivial, but it strikes me as wholly undesirable that we should all be ironed out and conventionalized. In the matter of dress, for example, the women of our town used to take their fashions from _Godey's_ and _Peterson's via_ Cincinnati; but now that we are only eighteen hours from New York, with a well-traveled path from the Wabash to Paris, my counselors among the elders declare that the tone of our society--if I may use so perilous a word--has changed little from our good old black alpaca days. The hobble skirt receives prompt consideration in the 'Main' street of any town, and is viewed with frank curiosity, but it is only a one day's wonder. A lively runaway or the barbaric yawp of a new street fakir may dethrone it at any time.