Left alone Peter looked round for a blank wall.  Failing in his search, he put his head into his hands, and tried to shut out the seething, excited mass of men about him.  After a time he took a sheet of paper and wrote a paragraph for the platform.  It pledged the party to investigate the food and tenement questions, and to pass such remedial legislation as should seem best.  It pledged the party to do this, with as little disturbance and interference with present conditions as possible, “but fully recognizing the danger of State interference, we place human life above money profits, and human health above annual incomes, and shall use the law to its utmost to protect both.”  When it appeared in the platform, there was an addition that charged the failure to obtain legislation “which should have rendered impossible the recent terrible lesson in New York City” to “the obstruction in the last legislature in the interest of the moneyed classes and landlords, by the Republican party.”  That had not been in Peter’s draft and he was sorry to see it.  Still, the paragraph had a real ring of honesty and feeling in it.  That was what others thought too.  “Gad, that Stirling knows how to sling English,” said one of the committee, when the paragraph was read aloud.  “He makes it take right hold.”  Many an orator in that fall’s campaign read the nineteenth section of the Democratic platform aloud, feeling that it was ammunition of the right kind.  It is in all the New York papers of September 24th, of that year.

Immediately after the morning adjournment, Green came up to Peter.

“We’ve had a count, and can’t carry Catlin.  So we shan’t even put him up.  What do you think of Milton?”

“I don’t know him personally, but he has a very good record, I believe.”

“He isn’t what we want, but that’s not the question.  We must take what we can get.”

“I suppose you think Porter has a chance.”

“Not if we take Milton.”

“Between the two I have no choice.”

An hour later, the convention was called to order by the chairman.  A few moments sufficed to complete the unfinished business, and then the chairman’s gavel fell, and every one knew without his announcement that the crucial moment had been reached.

Much to Peter’s surprise, Kennedy was one of the members who was instantly on his feet, and was the one selected for recognition by the chairman.  He was still more surprised when Kennedy launched at once into a glowing eulogium of Porter.  Peter was sitting next Kennedy, and though he sat quietly, a sad look came into the face usually so expressionless.  He felt wronged.  He felt that he had been an instrument in the deceiving of others.  Most of all he grieved to think that a delegate of his ward, largely through his own interference, was acting discreditably.  Peter wanted others to do right, and he felt that that was not what Kennedy was doing.