The election being a purely commercial question, I attended the meetings held in commercial districts, where the excitement ran high. During the lunch hour crowds attend the political gatherings held in the centre of the business districts in large stores turned into halls for speechifying and demonstrations, and great as the subject is, and grave as is the issue, the ludicrous is the first feature to strike the stranger. A great empty store, running the whole length of the ground floor of one of the monster ten, twenty, or what you will storied buildings, was appropriated for the purpose. The bare walls were draped with stars and stripes, and innumerable portraits of McKinley and Hobart confronted you on every side. In the centre was a roughly-constructed platform; on this a piano and seats for the orators. At 12.30 sharp (the business lunch hour) a crowd surged in; bankers, brokers, dry goods merchants, clerks, messengers, and office-boys, straight from the Quick Lunch Counters--a great institution there--filling every corner of the hall. An attendant carried the inevitable pitcher of ice water to the orators' table; a "Professor" hastily seated himself at the piano and played a few bars; a solemn-faced quartette took its position in front of the rostrum, and the meeting was opened.
The campaign songsters had taken a leaf from the Salvation Army, and appropriated all popular airs for political purposes. Praises of Sound Money and Protection were sung to the air of "Just tell them that you saw me," and denunciations of Bryan, Free Silver, and all things Democratic to the tune of "Her golden hair was hanging down her back!" The quartette aroused the greatest enthusiasm. An aged Republican seated immediately in front of the platform, who had voted every Republican ticket since Lincoln was elected, waved his stick over his head, and the crowd responded with cheers and encores. The quartette retired, the chairman advanced, motioned with his hand for silence, and announced the name of the first orator of the occasion, who happened to be a clergyman--a tiresome, platitudinous person. Somehow, clergymen on the platform can never divest themselves of their pulpit manner. They bring an air of pews and Sabbath into secular things. The minister denounced Bryan and Democracy in the same tones he used in declaiming against Agag and the Amalekites on Sunday. At last he brought his political sermon to a close, and the quartette again came to the front, sang a few more political adaptations of popular songs, and the chairman announced the next speaker, a smart young lawyer of the Hebrew persuasion. After him, more songs and more speakers of all kinds, and at half-past one the meeting came to an abrupt conclusion. The crowd vanished like magic, the hall was empty, the lunch hour was over!