President's special and make the journey with him, and just as he was giving directions as to the column or two which Mr. Brooks was to send in daily, Mr. Medill went shuffling through the editorial room, bearing a great pile of those foreign exchanges he was so fond of reading. The managing editor explained to Mr. Medill the mission he was committing to Mr. Brooks, and the old editor stood a moment looking at them, then raised his ear-trumpet and said in his queer voice:
"What did you say?"
"I said, I'd just been telling Mr. Brooks to go down to Galesburg to-night, catch the President's special, and send us a column or so each night of his speeches."
"Uh-huh," said Mr. Medill, and then he drily added: "What for?"
IX
It was, of course, for a young correspondent who
hod an eager curiosity about life, an interesting
experience to go on a journey like that, and it was
with delight that, one snowy morning in the late
autumn of that year, I left Chicago to go on a little
trip down through Indiana with James G. Blaine.
He was the secretary of state in President Harrison's
cabinet, a position in which, as it turned out,
he was unhappy, as most men are apt to be in public
positions, though a sort of cruel and evil fascination
will not let them give up the vain pursuit of
them, vainest perhaps when they are won. When
