Page:American Boy's Life of William McKinley.djvu/208

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174
AMERICAN BOYS' LIFE

CHAPTER XVIII


McKinley as a Candidate for Governor—An Interrupted Meeting—Scenes of Childhood—Loss of his Fortune—Mrs. McKinley's Nobility OF Character


There are times when defeat leads on to greater victories, and so it proved in the present instance. Had William McKinley been elected to Congress, he would have been serving his state in that capacity when next Ohio wanted a governor, and some one else would have been placed upon the Republican ticket. As it was, he was free to run; his party remembered what friends he had made among his former political opponents, and they put him up for the office. When the votes were counted, it was learned that he had been elected by a majority of twenty-one thousand.

In this there is a lesson, the learning of which will do every one of us a deal of good. In ordinary life, when one of our plans miscarries, how prone are we to cry out that