that if I could have chosen the place of my birth, I could not have found a fairer spot than this wonderland of nature.”
Earthly Paradise, thinks Commoner.
“I have travelled far in my day,” continued the man who had been chosen three times by a great Party to contend for the highest honor within the gift of the people. “I have gone from the woods of Maine to the wave-washed sands of Florida, from Hatteras to Halifax, and from the summits of the Rockies to where Missouri rolls her turgid flood, but I have seen few spots that equal, and none that surpass, the beauty of this mountain Eden.”
The reporter made notes rapidly.
The years of his glory washed back to him upon the rolling tides of rhetoric—the great lost days of the first crusade when the money barons trembled beneath the shadow of the Cross of Gold, and Bryan! Bryan! Bryan! Bryan! burned through the land like a comet. Ere I was old. 1896. Ah, woeful ere, which tells me youth’s no longer here.
Foresees Dawn of New Era.
When pressed more closely by the reporter as to his future plans, Mr. Bryan replied:
“My schedule is completely filled, for months to come, with speaking engagements that will take me from one end of the country to the other, in the fight I am making for the reduction of the vast armaments that form the chief obstacle to the reign of peace on earth, good-will to men. After that, who knows?” he said, flashing his famous smile. “Perhaps I shall come back to this beautiful region, and take up my life among my good friends here as one who, having fought the good fight, deserves to spend the declining years of his life not only within sight, but within the actual boundaries, of the happy land of Canaan.”
Asked if he could predict with any certainty the date of his proposed retirement, the Commoner answered characteristically with the following beautiful quotation from Longfellow:
"When the war-drum throbbed no longer, And the battle-flags were furled In the Parliament of man, The Federation of the world."
