Motion Picture Story Magazine (Feb-Jul 1912)

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An Antique Ring (Lubin) By PETER WADE "\/ES> ' ' sa^ *he old political reporter, settling himself comfortably on the smoking-room lounge, "some one once said that every man has his main point of honor, and a few minor ones. In the push and vainglory of life he sometimes gets separated by quite a distance from the high standard he has set himself, and after a fall has to come creeping humbly back to his little home-made pinnacle ; but a woman ( Heaven bless her little weaknesses ! ) has hewn herself a narrower path of honor, from which there can be no deviating. It is more often her duty to keep others from stumbling or falling. So if you care to hear about such a case, one famous, and plotted-to-benotorious, in our young State 's political annals, I can tell it to you before the primary returns begin to come m. It took place in 188-, when P was the smallest kind of a baby city, and our budding State had hardly put by its territorial graduation gown. "We were a proud little community in those days. Our new Capitol had just been built, from our own quarries ; new enterprises, mining and agricultural, were hatching overnight, and teaming off to be started whirling; and we had a capable, honest young governor to look after us. "So matters stood when the summer preceding the gubernatorial election came, and with it a lining up of forces and a counting up of heads. On one side, Jim Dixon, a grayheaded, cool, persuasive tactician, representing pretty covetous outside interests, for they had bought him the biggest bank in town, and installed him as president; on the other, Joe Simpson, slow-spoken, careful, feeling out each new step. "Dixon realized that to carry the State, and all that went with it, he 106 must break into the solid rural vote, and for over a year had been hatching schemes to do so. First had come the issuance of the Farmers' Friend, a weekly, deep in the lore of plowshare and cattle plague, and sent gratuitously to the ranchers. The editorials were certainly beautiful, clear and uplifting, and how such a scurvy rascal could have turned them out I have often wondered. Next came the lowering of the rate of interest on maturing farm mortgages held by the bank. And here he got right next to the enlarged end of a farmer's heart —his pocketbook; and in the meantime, his infernally lucid editorials were pulling quietly at the contracted end — his cast-iron allegiance. "It must have been a day or two after the primaries, when the bank was doing a roaring business in mortgages, and Dixon stood, shaking hands, with a gubernatorial pose, behind the swinging doors, while Joe Simpson had hardly been heartened up to the campaign, but stuck to the executive offices on some dry-as-dust routine, when the woman's honor business first entered into the matter. "The out-county returns had been coming in very slowly; we had not heard from the strictly farming ones as yet, and Dixon was on tenterhooks, despite his smiling face. Late in the afternoon a buckboard came whirling up to the bank building, and Hen Foster, his dust-covered lieutenant, got out and made for the back stairs leading over the banking rooms. Here Dixon joined him. " 'Well, what news?' he almost panted. ' Out with it, man ! ' " 'Lincoln County's against us, almost to a man,' said Foster, looking absently into his sweaty slouch, as if for a stray ballot. 'And on my way thru Stevenson/ continued the dis