They would advance
in grim silence and open at once with the crushing fire of their biggest
guns.
But such fighting is not for me. I should lose half the joy of the
battle, and kill off my adversary before I had begun to like him! It
wouldn't do, it wouldn't do at all.
"It's a warm day," observes my opponent, and I take a sure measure of
his fighting form. I rather like the look of his eye.
"I never saw the corn ripening better," I observe, and let him feel a
little of the cunning of the arrangement of my forces.
There is much in the tone of the voice, the cut of the words, the turn
of a phrase. I can be your servant with a "Yes sir," or your master with
a "No sir."
Thus we warm up to one another--a little at a time--we mass our forces,
each sees the white of his adversary's eyes. I can even see my
opponent--with some joy--trotting up his reserves, having found the
opposition stronger than he at first supposed.
"I hear," said Mr. Caldwell, finally, with a smile intended to be
disarming, "that you are opposing my reelection."
Boom! the cannon's opening roar!
"Well," I replied, also smiling, and not to be outdone in the directness
of my thrust, "I have told a few of my friends that I thought Mr.
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