In a second he thought over all the sins of his past life, which was pretty quick work, as anybody will admit who knows the man.  He thought of how he would be looked down upon by Gabe Bouck, and all the fellows, if it once got out that he had been frightened into going back on his party.

He made up his mind that he would die before he would hurrah for Garfield, but when the merciless woman pushed him towards the edge of the rock, and, “Last call!  Yell, or down you go!” he opened his mouth and yelled so they heard it in Kilbourn City: 

“Hurrah for Garfield!  Now lemme go!”

Though endowed with more than ordinary eloquence, no remarks that he had ever made before brought the applause that this did.  Everybody yelled, and the woman smiled as pleasantly as though she had not crushed the young life out of her victim, and left him a bleeding sacrifice on the altar of his country, but when she had realized what she had done her heart smote her, and she felt bad.

[Illustration:  “Yell, or go down!”]

Chapin will never be himself again.  From that moment his proud spirit was broken, and all during the picnic he seemed to have lost his cud.  He leaned listlessly against a tree, pale as death, and fanned himself with a skimmer.  When the party had spread the lunch on the ground and gathered around, sitting on the ant-hills, he sat down with them mechanically, but his appetite was gone, and when that is gone there is not enough of him left for a quorum.

Friends rallied around him, passed the pickles, and drove the antmires out of a sandwich, and handed it to him on a piece of shingle, but he either passed or turned it down.  He said he couldn’t take a trick.  Later on, when the lemonade was brought on, the flies were skimmed off of some of it, and a little colored water was put in to make it look inviting, but his eyes were sot.  He said they couldn’t fool him.  After what had occurred, he didn’t feel as though any Democrat was safe.  He expected to be poisoned on account of his politics, and all he asked was to live to get home.

Nothing was left undone to rally him, and cause him to forget the fearful scene through which he had passed.  Only once did he partially come to himself, and show an interest in worldly affairs, and that was when it was found that he had sat down on some raspberry jam with his white pants on.  When told of it, he smiled a ghastly smile, and said they were all welcome to his share of the jam.

They tried to interest him in conversation by drawing war maps with three-tined folks on the jam, but he never showed that he knew what they were about until Mr. Moak, of Watertown, took a brush, made of cauliflower preserved in mustard, and shaded the lines of the war map on Mr. Chapin’s trousers, which Mr. Butterfield had drawn in the jam.  Then his artistic eye took in the incongruity of the colors, and he gasped for breath, and said: