Was
it not somewhat in the nature of a surprise?" asked Congressman Van
Rensselaer.
"Very much so. It will hardly make a story, but if you would like to
hear how it happens that the --th District of Illinois is represented in
Congress by a Democrat for the first time in its history, here goes--but
mind you, now, I don't pretend to be in Senator Bull's class as a story
teller.
"It was a piping hot day in August, and Harrisville at its worst.
Whenever a vehicle passed, clouds of dust floated in at the windows and
settled upon my books, my papers, and covered my green baize table with
an infinitesimal section of H---- County real estate. Even the slumberer
on the sofa was not exempt. His usually ruddy face had become ashen, and
his snoring was developing into a series of choking gasps. It was
fearful, this dust,--alkaline, penetrating, stifling,--and from such
soil the raw-boned, hard-featured men of H---- wrung a living. And I,
sharing their narrow lives, began to understand the true significance of
the word 'onery' as applied to us by our more prosperous and ofttimes
just exasperated neighbors.
"It was court day, and I had just come in after a stiff tussle with a
pig-headed judge, an irritating opposing counsel, and a H---- County
jury. I thought of old Uncle Peter Whitehead, 'The onriest critters in
the whole State of Illinoy come out o' H----! Thar ain't no tellin'
which way an H---- County jury's a goin' to jump.
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