Part 11

“Mr. Bryan is not averse to the employment of the thoughts of others wherever they add force and attractiveness to the argument in hand. Accordingly, we find his speeches interspersed with quotations from some of the best writers in both prose and poetry, but in each instance the quotation has a natural fitness for the place in which it is found. There are some productions which pass for oratory that are mere mechanisms—the offspring of minds cold and plodding without a ray of genius to illumine their path. The work of genius springs spontaneously from the depths of the heart ruled by purity.”

In the preparation of his deliverances Mr. Bryan reads widely and extensively, exhausting all the available sources of information. By carefully and thoroughly acquainting himself with every possible phase of his subject, by viewing it in all lights, he prepares himself not only to prove the correctness of his own position, but to meet every objection that may be offered against him.

In the diction of his speech the most acceptable language is chosen, and so clear and simple do the most profound thoughts appear when they come fresh-coined from his brain, that men have no difficulty in comprehending them in all their force.

But it takes more than good English to make a great public man, though good language is one of the most essential features of the part. An instance that is told will illustrate one of his other qualifications. On his arrival in a large city in the East, he had been taken for a drive, and a number of people were waiting for him when he alighted on his return. All the American people seem to consider it a duty to shake hands with a public man, and these were there for that purpose. Among them was a faded woman, apparently having worked out her hopes and ambitions; while her face showed refinement and intellectuality, her hands were gnarled by years of labor. As the candidate stepped from the gay carriage, he was at once encircled by a throng of local dignitaries, who successfully monopolized his attention, to the hopeless exclusion of the woman, who was thoughtlessly jostled aside.

Mr. Bryan, glancing quickly about, saw her turning away, her disappointment shown in her worn face, and, maneuvering about, he delicately managed to bring himself in front of her, and, as he saw her face light with pleasure, he extended his hands and murmured a few words of pleasant meaning to her and passed on.

It is extremely doubtful if, among the public men of all time, there has lived one more abounding in a superb vitality, or possessing so magnificent a physique as Mr. Bryan. In his case, as in that of most men of profound mentality, the powerful mind is found with powerful muscles and a strong constitution to back it in its contests. His massively moulded frame, capable of enduring the severest hardships and nerve-racking strains, is the result of a clean, strong ancestry and pure and temperate living in the life-giving atmosphere of the great West.

Altogether Mr. Bryan is a good specimen of an American. He is, for example, neat in his dress, but his apparel is the least obtrusive part of him. He is frank, companionable, courteous without subserviency, aggressive without boorish insistence, well poised, witty and yet cleanly minded, learned without conceit. And he loves his family above all else on earth. At one place a hasty departure from a hotel had to be made to catch a train, and one of the party took Mr. Bryan’s coat by mistake. The discovery was made as soon as the garment was put on, and to ascertain to whom it belonged the wearer put his hands in the pocket to see if any article might be found that would serve for identification. There were only two things found, and those were photographs of Mr. Bryan’s family. He had evidently put them where he could find them most readily.

One can not help but remember the marvelous campaign Bryan made four years ago. A terrible campaign for mind and body; no one who traveled with him will ever forget it. As for Bryan himself—though, needless to say, he worked harder, thought more, and shouldered an infinitely heavier responsibility than all the newspaper reporters who kept constantly in his wake—he was least fatigued of all. Hoarse and husky he certainly did become toward the end—speaking from the rear end of a train to open air crowds of thousands, a dozen times a day, and at the top of his voice. But Bryan, upon a physique of the most vigorous and massive kind, inspired by a stupendous vitality, which should keep him in good condition for sixty years to come, had superimposed a brain of the healthiest, keenest, and most capable sort. In addition he had a colossal firmness, and an unmitigable will; he had thorough belief in the goodness of his cause, and in himself as its champion; and finally he understood the people, loved them, was in touch with them, and won their confidence to an extent and to a degree of enthusiasm that can not be paralleled in modern times. Had some of the qualities above named been less in him, or more, he might have been a broader statesman; but he would not have been so mighty and formidable a leader of men.

Other men are admired or feared, or can spend money, or swing a machine; but Bryan is personally trusted as no other man is, and as he deserves to be. “Bryan is a man standing plumb on his own feet, other candidates have been propped on their feet by other persons. Which will last the longer? No man can count on the ultimate triumph of his cause, or even know how strong or how weak it is, unless he comes out flat-footed and tells the people exactly what it contemplates and requires. He must show the seamy side as well as the smooth one; else, when the seamy side shows itself (as it is certain to do) the people will leap to the conclusion that the fabric is seamy on both sides, and the reaction will sweep it out of existence. McKinley, in laboring to make the people believe that his policy is all sweetness, honor, and virtue, is preventing himself from discovering how abhorrent it really is to the desires and wishes of the people.”

Bryan’s method is just the opposite of President McKinley’s. The only criticism to be passed on him is that he is too uncompromisingly outspoken and sincere. He says things that make his own party friends and managers shudder. He never strives for popularity except in so far as it may be consistent with truth and right. He does not want to please any one who can not be pleased with facts and realities. Bryan, in short, from the standpoint of mere policy, always puts his ugly foot forward, always turns his seamy side, always says “If you don’t have me this way, I am not to be had at all.”

HOME LIFE

A very wholesome theory that a man’s home is his castle and that the sanctuary of private life is one that must be respected has no application in America to a public man. The fact that few public men quarrel with the general idea upon this subject proves that it has its basis in sound judgment and honest desire for greater intimacy rather than in impertinent curiosity.

In the case of Mr. Bryan he has never quarreled with this widely held theory. For ten years he has been in the glare of publicity. From the night, a decade ago, when he discomfited the champion of Republican politics in the opening debate of his first congressional campaign, a light has been constantly turned upon him and from him to his home life. That he has come out from under this strong scrutiny a more commanding figure, viewed either from the standpoint of the wise statesman or the typical head of an American family, is a statement that will meet with no attempt at refutation.

On the first day of October next Mr. Bryan will have been married sixteen years. The ceremony was the culmination of a courtship extending over a period of four years, a wooing that had its inspiration in the atmosphere of school life, and which was continued during the years when he was a diligent student of the law and a struggling young attorney with the unblighted courage and the indomitable energy that have come to be such marked characteristics of the man. They first met at a reception given in the parlors of the Presbyterian Academy at Jacksonville, Ill., to the young men of Illinois College. Mrs. Bryan, then Mary Baird, was a student at the Academy, and Mr. Bryan was in attendance at the College. There was little of romance attached to either their meeting or their courtship. Both were young, he twenty, she nineteen. Some sentimentalist has told that she was first attracted to him by hearing him recite some school book classics. The fact is that some friend pointed her out to Mr. Bryan as a girl he “ought to meet.” And mutual friends introduced them.

Miss Baird was born at Perry, Ill., on the seventeenth day of June, 1861. Her father was a merchant, one of a firm that conducted a general store in that town. His employment gave Mr. Baird, naturally a studious man, much leisure, and this he improved by reading. His daughter inherited his taste for literature and it has abided with her. The invalidism of her mother prevented her from finishing the course she had begun at Monticello Seminary, at Godfrey, Ill., but later she was able to attend the academy at Jacksonville, from which she graduated with first honors of her class.

The young couple began their married life in a little home of their own in Jacksonville. With the prudent care that has always distinguished both of them, they postponed their happiness until he had secured a practice sufficient to support them and until they were able to have a roof-tree of their own. Three years after their marriage Mr. Bryan came west on a business trip for a client. At Lincoln he met an old friend and classmate, A. R. Talbot. Talbot had made an excellent beginning in the West, and he suggested to Bryan that he locate at Lincoln and join his law firm. Mr. Bryan said little at the time. A few months after his return, however, he wrote to Mr. Talbot and asked him if he was in earnest in making the proposition. Mr. Talbot replied that he was, and outlined the prospects in the West, then the center of a vast speculation in lands and town lots. Mr. Bryan had been enchanted with the city of Lincoln when he first saw it, and he had simply waited until he could talk it over with his wife.

In this sentiment lies the keynote of the perfect sympathy that has been so marked a characteristic of their wedded life. Mr. Bryan came first, his wife and his young daughter remaining in Jacksonville until he had become settled. They then joined him. They immediately began the erection of a modest home in Lincoln, buying a building lot on D street, and upon it erected the home he now occupies, at No. 1625. The money was furnished by Mr. Baird, but has long since been paid. Three children have been born to them, Ruth, now nearly fifteen, William, aged eleven, and Grace, aged nine. The first named is now a registered student at the seminary at Godfrey, where the mother first began her college career.

Even the most casual visitor to the Bryan residence is impressed with the distinctive home atmosphere of the place. Mrs. Bryan, as its presiding genius, has stamped upon it the impress of her individuality, no less marked in that sphere than her husband’s in his. The house itself is little more than a cottage, although it boasts of a second story and a cupola. Outwardly its lines are a little more impressive than when it was first built. This can be traced to the addition within the past year of a many-columned porch, stretching across its entire front and bending in a graceful curve to a point midway of the rear. With its paneled roof and the electric lights, its cosy corners and inviting arm chairs, it is an enticing retreat, and here the Bryan family spend most of their waking hours in the summer months.

There is no ostentation displayed in the furnishings of the Bryan residence. The parlor is the parlor of the well-to-do middle class. The sitting room is simply furnished, but home-like and inviting. The library is the workshop and no unnecessary tools are lying about. On the walls hang large portraits of Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln, and steel engravings of Benton, Webster, and Calhoun. They are inexpensive pictures, but typical of the ideals of the occupants of the room. Another picture shows Henry Clay, addressing his colleagues in the United States Senate. The artist’s perspective was sadly at fault, but it was not the art, but the subject, that attracted Mr. Bryan. The library is an extensive one, but unique in its character. Fiction and the classics find very little room. In their places are histories, orations, works on political economy, lives and speeches of famous men, who have helped build the nation of the past, dissertations and addresses upon the hundred and one questions that have vexed and still perplex the modern school of statesmanship. Upon few of these has any dust accumulated, and upon all of them are the unmistakable signs of frequent usage.

The characteristic that strikes the visitor most is the _bon homme_, the _camaraderie_, of the household. A wholesome sympathy seems to be the bond that unites all members. Neither the father nor the mother is a strict disciplinarian. They do not believe in tyrannizing over their children. They believe in encouraging their respective bents, and in guiding them in the right channels, rather than in forcing in the ways hallowed by tradition. Mrs. Bryan is essentially a home body; her husband and children are her chiefest, but not her only cares. She is a mentor to them all. Miss Ruth is much like her father in temperament. She is quick and impulsive, warm-hearted and generous. Her popularity among her girl friends is attested by the number that throng her lawn every evening. William is a sturdy youth in build, and, boy-like, more self assertive than his sisters. As his father is a typical American man, so is the youth a typical American boy, fun-loving and possessed of a harmless mischievousness that often disturbs the young girls who are his older sister’s confidantes. Grace, the youngest, is delicate in health, and her father’s favorite. It is to him she goes with her childish troubles, sure of the sympathy that never fails her.

Mr. Bryan takes great pride in his household, and he bends every energy to the end that the bonds of mutual confidence and love, the elements so essential in a perfect home, may be strengthened and cemented. Every hour that he can give to them he gladly spares. For four years he has had no other office, no other working place, than in this home. After the campaign of 1896 he gave up, to all intents and purposes, his down town office, and has spent his time at home. His office is now in his library, an inviting room opening off the parlor on one side, and the sitting room on the other. His work is performed on a big flat-topped desk that occupies a goodly share of the floor space. Here he is surrounded by book-cases and statuettes, by curious mementoes, ink stands, canes, a hundred and one articles that admirers in all sections and climes of the country have sent him. Most of these have been gathered together in a glass-covered compartment that separates the two big book-cases.

Mr. Bryan finds that his best work is done with his wife as his counselor and guide. She has a place on one side of the big desk, he on the other. She is no less indefatigable as a worker than he. She finds time between her consultations with him, when an important work is on hand, to care for her household, and to direct the work of the one domestic employed. Mrs. Bryan’s thorough understanding and appreciation of every detail of his labors make her companionship and aid almost indispensable. Together they have gone over the details of his campaigns in the past years, and with him she still plans for the future. What he writes, she either passes upon or assists in its production. Her self-poise, marred by no self-consciousness, but marked by a quiet dignity, is one of her remarkable possessions. Perhaps the best delineation of the characteristics of this woman, remarkable in many ways, is furnished by the eminent novelist, Julian Hawthorne, who spent some time at the Bryan home during the past summer. Of her he said, “Mrs. Bryan is as unusual a woman as her husband is a man, but she is so unobtrusive that few people have much idea of her true character. I had the opportunity to learn something of her during the campaign of ‘96, and I well recollect her admirable bearing at the great meeting in Madison Square Garden, when she was recognized and greeted on entering her box by more than ten thousand people. It was a tremendous ordeal for a woman to undergo. But she sustained herself with steadiness and self-possession, remarkable in any woman, but more than remarkable in her, who had always lived in quiet domestic ways, occupied with her husband, her children, and her household duties. She is a woman of great courage and unshakable faith, of exceptional intellect, also, nourished with adequate education. She possesses the coolness of judgment which must often have served him well in times of doubt. She is not led away by imagination or hope, but sees things as they are, and resolutely faces facts. Should the decrees of Providence see fit to place her in a position of the first lady of the land, I should have no fear that she would discharge her duties irreproachably. A true American woman, she is such as you may always be glad to match against the great dames of the old world. The dominant expression of her face is penetration, combined with a gentle composure. But there is the sparkle of demure humor in her eyes, and she can use speech as the most delicate of rapiers when she chooses. It is easy to know her as an acquaintance, but I surmise that no one really knows her except her husband, and probably she will be able continually to discover new resources and depths even to him. She is a good woman, with strong religious convictions, and she regards Bryan’s political aspirations from that point of view. If it is the will of God that he shall reach the highest place among his countrymen she will accept the mission with good will and confidence. But should he be defeated she will welcome the life of obscurity with unshaken equanimity, believing that the councils of the Almighty are unsearchable, but faithful. If she be destined to higher things, the example to the nation, irrespective of party, of such a wife and such a mother as she is, can not but be beneficial. If not, ‘Those also serve who only stand and wait.’”

Sociability is one of the graces that attach to her naturally. The number of visitors to her husband is so large and his amiability so great, that if Mrs. Bryan did not maintain a watchfulness over them they would consume all of his hours. This guardianship of his time has imbued her with a little more sternness than is her nature, but at the same time has endowed her with shrewdness of discernment that enables her to gauge every one’s errand with astonishing accuracy. The true democracy of the man is shown in his earnest desire that even the lowest of his callers shall be received with the same consideration bestowed upon the great ones, and no visitor ever leaves the Bryan home, even though he may not have gained his wish, without the consciousness of the gentle courtesy and a full-souled welcome.

But Mrs. Bryan is in no sense a society woman. She is of a turn of mind too serious and too well poised to enable her to find enjoyment in the frivolities and vanities that go to make up so much of the life of the society woman. She likes to meet with her friends and talk with them, and she misses no opportunity to indulge in this pleasure. Club and church work take up much of her leisure. She has been active for years in the work of the Nebraska state federation of women’s clubs. She can write, and frequently does, for newspapers and periodicals. She can also speak and speak well, but this she does rarely. Her range of information is as varied as that of her husband, and she knows the ins and outs of politics as well as she does the theories of good government, and the vagaries of the different schools of political economy. For years Mrs. Bryan’s father has resided with them. Now he is sightless and infirm, but his hours are cheered and his burden lightened by the loving care of his daughter.

The passing years have dealt very gently with Mrs. Bryan. She is above the average in height, but her figure is matronly. Her face is pale, but there is no pallor, the graceful curves of youth have softened in outline, but in manner she has gained the dignity that does not hint of reserve. Mrs. Bryan is always well dressed, the unobtrusiveness and appropriateness of her garments marking the taste of the wearer. Her gowns are usually of one color, relieved here and there by the bright tints women love.

“Mrs. Bryan’s whole life has been one of study,” says Miss Wright, of Lincoln, a friend of the family. “Long before she could read she knew the names of all the bugs her little hoe turned up in the garden. In her early life the doctor said she must be kept out of doors. Luckily she did not like indoor life. All day long she tagged her father, and they played together in the garden. By the time she was old enough for books she was kin to everything they told about. She idealized the earth and its generating and regenerating character. From a weak child she has grown to be a strong woman with rare power of endurance and concentration. She and her father would sit on the porch at night and study the skies, and the Greek and Norse stories of the stars were repeated until she had committed all of them to memory. He told her how far away they were and what a speck the world would look if it could be seen from Venus. The idea of the immensity of the Universe and the relation of the world to the solar system seldom enters the mind of a child, but with Mary Baird, it was the most interesting story that could be told. Early star-gazing and her father’s influence trained her to think of things abstractly, nakedly, and without the impediments of custom and fashion. During her first days in school, her text-books were distasteful, as they were new, but she studied them nevertheless, and soon was at the head of her class. This habit of study has clung to her ever since.”

Social dissipation is unknown in the Bryan household. Since Miss Ruth has grown to the dignity of young womanhood, and has gathered about her a bevy of young friends, an added gaiety has been given. She has had her little parties, but her parents receive rarely, and then but informally. The Bryans have several carriages and horses, and in these they find their chief amusement. Once in a while Mr. and Mrs. Bryan are seen at the theatres, but only at the best plays. Mr. Bryan has grown much stouter in late years, and has taken to frequent horseback rides as both an exercise and a pleasure. His favorite animal is a Kentucky bred saddle horse. It was presented him by ex-Governor W. J. Stone, of Missouri, and in compliment to its donor, Mr. Bryan has named it “Governor.”