Sylvia touching some memory of his first encounter with her about the stars.  He brought her as a “commencement present” Bacon’s “Essays.”  People listened to Sylvia; Sylvia had things to say!  Even the gruff admiral paid her deference.  He demanded to know whether it was true that Sylvia had declined a position at the Naval Observatory, which required the calculation of tides for the Nautical Almanac.  Mrs. Bassett was annoyed that Sylvia had refused a position that would have removed her from a proximity to Mrs. Owen that struck her as replete with danger.  And yet Mrs. Bassett was outwardly friendly, and she privately counseled Marian, quite unnecessarily, to be “nice” to Sylvia.  On the same evening Mrs. Bassett was disagreeably impressed by Harwood’s obvious rubrication in Mrs. Owen’s good books.  It seemed darkly portentous that Dan was, at Mrs. Owen’s instigation, managing Sylvia’s business affairs; she must warn her husband against this employment of his secretary to strengthen the ties between Mrs. Owen and this object of her benevolence.

Mrs. Bassett’s presence at the convention did not pass unremarked by many gentlemen upon the floor, or by the newspapers.

“While the state chairman struggled to bring the delegates to order, Miss Marian Bassett, daughter of the Honorable Morton Bassett, of Fraser County, was a charming and vivacious figure in the balcony.  At a moment when it seemed that the band would never cease from troubling the air with the strains of ‘Dixie,’ Miss Bassett tossed a carnation into the Marion County delegation.  The flower was deftly caught by Mr. Daniel Harwood, who wore it in his buttonhole throughout the strenuous events of the day.”

This item was among the “Kodak Shots” subjoined to the “Advertiser’s” account of the convention.  It was stated elsewhere in the same journal that “never before had so many ladies attended a state convention as graced this occasion.  The wives of both Republican United States Senators and of many prominent politicians of both parties were present, their summer costumes giving to the severe lines of the balcony a bright note of color.”  The “Capital,” in its minor notes of the day, remarked upon the perfect amity that prevailed among the wives and daughters of Republicans and Democrats.  It noted also the presence in Mrs. Bassett’s party of her aunt, Mrs. Jackson Owen, and of Mrs. Owen’s guest, Miss Sylvia Garrison, a graduate of this year’s class at Wellesley.

The experiences and sensations of a delegate to a large convention are quite different from those of a reporter at the press table, as Dan Harwood realized; and it must be confessed that he was keyed to a proper pitch of excitement by the day’s prospects.  In spite of Bassett’s promise that he need not trouble to help elect himself a delegate, Harwood had been drawn sharply into the preliminary skirmish at the primaries.  He had thought it wise to cultivate the acquaintance of the men who ruled his own county even though his name had been written large upon the Bassett slate.