A Light in the West Goes Down

The strenuousness of the fall campaign almost wiped these events from
Dick's mind. Day after day he spent in bringing home his points to the
man on the street and in the workshop. Much of it was dreary and
monotonous work, but he kept doggedly at it. It seemed his whole life,
now. And night after night Mr. Preston, Dick and Ellery tried to put
fire into some dingy little hall-full of men. To Percival's surprise,
Norris developed a plain common-sense variety of eloquence that appealed
to his audiences quite as much as did Dick's more fervid eloquence.
Ellery invariably spoke straight to some well-known condition. But they
hammered and pounded and reasoned and explained; they tried emotion, and
logic and everything except bribes to win their ground, until their
speeches began to sound automatic to themselves, their voices grew
hoarse, and they moved like men in a dream.

"If there were one day more of this," Dick said to Norris, as they
tramped home late on the night before election, and felt a certain
restfulness in the November starlight, "I should send down a wheezing
nasal phonograph to grind out my speech. I am played out. Everything I
say sounds like tommy-rot."

"It does grow hollow. The worst of it is it robs me of my evenings with
Madeline."

"Um!" said Dick. "When are you to be married?"

"About Christmas. The death of Golden, poor fellow, shoves me up a peg
on the editorial staff, and justifies me in facing matrimony. Mr. Elton
is good enough to give us a little home. They are a family to hang to,
Dick. I feel as though I had 'belongings' for the first time since I
lost my own father and mother. Madeline and I shall make rather a small
beginning, but, as you know, she has not set her heart on luxuries."