human
Amos, I've got you cornered if you consider the visible universe. She works like a watch; she's as predestined as a corn sheller. But let me tell you something--she isn't all visible. There's something back of matter--there's another side to the shield. I know mighty well there's a time when my medicine won't help sick folks--and yet they get well. I've seen a great love flame up in a man's heart or a woman's heart or a child's in a bed of torture, and when medicine wouldn't take hold I've seen love burn through the wall between the worlds, and I have seen help come just as sure as you see the Harvey Hook and Ladder Company coming rattling down Market Street! Funny old world--funny old world--seventy rides around the sun--and then the fireworks. After puffing away to revive his pipe he said:
gpt
I sort of got into this way of thinking recently going over this judgeship fight. He smoked meditatively then broke out,
human
Lord, Lord, what an iron-clad, hog-tight, rock-ribbed, copper-riveted material proposition it is that Tom is putting up. He's bound self-interest with self-interest everywhere. He and Joe Calvin have roped old man Sands in, and every material interest in this whole district is tied up in the Van Dorn candidacy. I'm a child in a cyclone in this fight. The self-interest of the county candidates, of all the deputies who hope two years from now to be county candidates, and all their friends, every straw boss at the shops, in the smelters, in the mines--and all the men who are near them and want to be straw bosses, every merchant who is caught in the old spider's web with a ninety-day note; every street-car conductor, every employee of the light company, every man at the waterworks plant, every man at the gas plant, the telephone linemen--every human being that dances in the great woof of this little spider's web feels the pull of devilish material power.
gpt
Well, Jim, according to your account you're liable to get burned and singed and disfigured until you're as useless in politics as this old Amos Adams--the spook chaser!
human
It's all right, Jim--I have no complaint to make against life. Forty years ago Dan Sands got the first girl I ever loved. I went to war; he paid his bounty and married the girl. That was a long time ago. I often think of the girl--it's no lack of faith to Mary. And I have the memory of the war--of that Day at Peach Tree Creek with all the wonderful exulting joy of that charge and what God gave me to do. This button, he put his thumb under the Loyal Legion emblem in his warped coat lapel,
gpt
said Amos Adams as he opened his eyes,
human
He sighed.
gpt
Yet there is still her soul in him--gentle, kind, trying to do the right thing--but tied and hobbled by life with his father. Grant may be wrong, Doctor, cried the father, raising his hand excitedly,
human
Well, Amos, he returned quietly,
gpt
I suppose if a man wants to get all messed up as one of the points of the drill of life, as you call it--it's easy enough to find a place for the sacrifice. I admire Grant; but someway, his falsetto broke out,
human
I have thought there was a little something in the bread-and-butter proposition.
gpt
A little, Doctor Jim--but not as much as you'd think!
human
Nevertheless in this fight here in Greeley County, I'm quietly lining up a few county delegates, and picking out a few trusty friends who will show up at the caucuses, and Grant has a handful of crazy Ikes that I am going to use in my business, and if we win it will be a practical proposition--my head against Tom's.
gpt
Don't be too sure of that, Jim; I got a writing from Mr. Left last night and he says--
human
Hold on, Amos--hold on, squeaked the Doctor's falsetto;