Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight Part 21

Some writer tells that "a geologist has estimated that a single windstorm across the Sahara once carried nearly 2,000,000 tons of dust from Africa and deposited it over Italy, Austria, France and Germany."

At the end of four months spent in Tripolitania, John Cornwall's contract for a year's service with the Y expired and he asked for transportation to America. He made the trip across the sea from Tripoli to Syracuse, from Syracuse to Bologna by rail except across the strait of Messina, and then in a day or so to Genoa, where he took pa.s.sage on the Giuseppe Verdi for America.

As he journeyed second-cla.s.s, which was the way the Y men were sent home, his fellow-pa.s.sengers were in the main Italians on their way to labor in the vineyards and orchards of California. While he spoke Italian, it was too laborious and incomplete for general conversation.

He had much time to study the ways of the sea, and the infrequent s.h.i.+ps they pa.s.sed were cause for reflection.

He thought how trite from use and yet how true, truer than any of us even dream, is the comparison that life is a great sea and we who journey through, as s.h.i.+ps, that at distant intervals dot the surface.

A s.h.i.+p at sea, as life to many, appears a lonely and desolate thing. How much room there is for s.h.i.+ps, more s.h.i.+ps, bigger s.h.i.+ps, for great convoys of s.h.i.+ps, yet s.h.i.+ps as a rule travel alone and not in convoys.

What of the s.h.i.+ps?

Just now, there is pa.s.sing a corporation-owned oil tanker, greasy and uninteresting. Yesterday we pa.s.sed several scheduled freighters, carrying fixed cargoes to fixed ports; the day before a pa.s.senger liner, sailing by the clock, in Naples or New York on Friday, pouring out its never-ending tide of those going and returning.

But let us not waste time or thought on commercial or mercenary craft.

Here is not interest or adventure or much real return on the investment, unless your aim in life is to die merely a sea captain or a s.h.i.+p owner.

Let us cruise where the currents are strong, where the rocks are dangerous: in the frozen North or in sight of coral island or low beach and palm trees, where there is an uncertainty of return in gold, but a wealth of interest and adventure and experience.

The coral islands and the palm groves in this great sea are not in the South Pacific; nor the ice floes north or south of a certain degree; nor the swift currents and dangerous rocks near some inhospitable sh.o.r.e, but at home; and the s.h.i.+ps that pa.s.s are our companions.

And the s.h.i.+ps of interest are the barks that sail as fancy whispers in the chart room or the tramp trader, at Sidney today, tomorrow at Malta, or the derelict. And who would not rather hear and know the story of such a vessel and voyage than smell the oil of the tanker or hear from daybreak to midnight the victrola, the piano and the chit-chat of the pa.s.senger liner.

And, strange to tell, most of us when on a most wonderful cruise with everything within reach, though out of sight, because we jab our eyes sightless wiping the tears away, bewail our luck, saying:

"See I a dog? There's ne'er a stone to throw!

Or stone? Tere's ne'er a dog to hit I trow!

Or if at once both stone and dog I view, It is the King's dog! d.a.m.n! What can I do?"

Home again! John finds the boy two inches taller and Mary as fair to look upon as when first he married her. The house is just the same, except Mary has taken down the framed needle-work done by his mother which hung over the living-room door. He asks that it be replaced.

When John and you were boys, back in the eighties, on the wall of the living-room of many a Kentucky home, was found mother's handwriting on the wall, done in colored worsted or silk: "G.o.d Bless Our Home"; this her work went to the attic or the ash heap. These mothers are no longer of this earth.

After many months in "a far country," John understands as never before, the sort of home that mother made and what that sentence meant to her.

We have dug out the old bra.s.s candlesticks and the old tester bed; would we might find the old, framed needle-work and see again mother's handwriting on the wall.

CHAPTER IV.

TWO CANDIDATES.

At the close of the April term, 1923, Judge Finch, member of the Court of Appeals from the Seventh District, resigned.

John Cornwall, though the district was overwhelmingly Republican, was persuaded by the State organization to make the race as the Democratic candidate. Not that he was expected to win, but, being a strong man, it was thought his name on the ticket would cut down the Republican majority of the district and thus help the Democratic candidate for Governor and the rest of the State ticket.

Mrs. Rosamond Clay Saylor, at home for the summer, read his announcement in the Pineville Messenger. When her husband came home she met him on the porch.

"I see John Cornwall is a candidate for Judge of the Court of Appeals."

"Yes, I knew that several days ago. He would make a good judge, but has no chance in this district. I'll have to vote for him and speak and work for the Republican ticket in some other section of the State."

"You will do nothing of the sort. You will make the race against him.

Think what an opportunity you would have while on the bench at Frankfort to electioneer as a candidate for Governor in 1927. That is the way Judge Singer worked it when he was nominated and elected. Besides, the woman's suffrage organization wants a judge they can trust, and as long as you are married to me they can trust you."

"But I want to run for Congress next year in this district."

"Can't you see further than the end of your nose. You have been in Congress; there's nothing in that for you. You better let that drop. If you listen to me you will be elected Governor in 1927 if the Republicans win."

"But John is my brother-in-law; he's a much better lawyer and would make a good judge."

"When did they begin electing good lawyers as Judges of the Court of Appeals? You are standard judicial timber. And when did you develop such a sentimental family streak? You have not been to see your mother since you returned from Italy in 1919."

"Well, I will go down to Louisville and see what Searcy Chilton has to say about it. Let's have dinner."

Several days later he called on Searcy Chilton. After waiting a short while he was admitted to his private office. "Well! h.e.l.lo Saylor! When did you get in? What do you want? How are things going in the Eleventh this fall? We must have thirty-five thousand in that district."

"I want the nomination for Judge of the Court of Appeals in the Seventh District."

"Against your brother-in-law?"

"Yes, he didn't consult me before he announced."

"You are too late. We have promised that to Judge Kash; though from the way he's sh.e.l.ling out, he had better change his name to Judge Tight Wad.

Your nomination would hold some votes which otherwise Cornwall would swing for the State ticket. How do you stand with the miners? If I give you the nomination what will you do for the State ticket?"

"I will give five thousand dollars and finance my own campaign. I'm all right with the miners, if I do say so myself."

"Well, I will think about it and if my answer is favorable your announcement will be in the Sunday Post. If you see the announcement bring me down that five thousand in cash next week. I want no checks. No one need know what is spent this year. Goodbye. Call again when you come to town."

"In the Sunday Post Colonel Saylor read an excellent biography of himself, coupled with a declaration that he was a candidate for Judge of the Court of Appeals in the Seventh District, and was said to have the backing of the Republican State organization. Though, when Mr. Searcy Chilton was called up and asked, he stated; 'The organization has adopted an unbreakable policy of hands off in the district, and local races.'"

In due course, Colonel Saylor and John Cornwall were each nominated and entered upon an active campaign of the twenty-seven counties of the district.

In the beginning of the campaign it looked as though Colonel Saylor would be overwhelmingly elected. While nine-tenths of the lawyers favored Cornwall's election, Mrs. Rosamond Clay Saylor was making an active canva.s.s and lining up the women in her husband's behalf; Luigi Poggi and several other miners were organizing Saylor clubs among the miners; and a majority of the American Legion, of course, favored the election of one of their charter members.

Slowly sentiment began to s.h.i.+ft in favor of Cornwall. Some of the members of the Legion insisted that Colonel Saylor as a candidate was using his connection with their organization too strongly. He made an egregious blunder in an address to the Clear Creek miners and when his speech was reported he lost many votes.

Some of the lawyers in the face of his almost certain election, knowing that after his qualification, he would even scores with them, charged that he was unfit for the place; and that the politicians of the State would no longer permit a good lawyer to be elected Judge of that court.

Colonel Craddock, a retired lawyer of the local bar at Pineville, and eighty-three years old, published a statement in opposition to Saylor's candidacy. He said in part;

"Though an old man I am not a wors.h.i.+per of ancientism. I think I can give to present-day men credit where credit is due. But when you are old and experience has taught you that no one is infallible and that every one at times is weak and therefore you should judge your neighbor compa.s.sionately, it has also given you the power to discriminate between the false and the true and to see through the shams of life with accurate insight.

"Exercising this faculty which comes with the loss of others, as the sense of touch is developed in the blind, and guided by it, though a Republican, I am forced to oppose the candidacy of J. C. Saylor as Judge of the Court of Appeals and advocate that of his opponent John Cornwall, a Democrat.