I want you to say 'yes,'
for if you don't you're abandoning our old State as though she were a
widow headed for the almshouse."
Thornton leaned forward, grasped his glass and drained it at a gulp, and
then looked the amazed General squarely in the eyes.
"You're going to be nominated as Governor of this State in the next
convention, and you've got to accept," he declared. "Now hold on! Just
as you understand that I've got good reasons for asking you to do this,
just so I understand all that you're going to say in objection. I
discount all your objections in advance. I know you haven't lost run of
affairs in this State--you know all the mix-up the party is in right
now. They're going to beat Dave Everett in convention, General, just as
sure as the devil can't freeze his own ice. It's going to be
'Seventy-two all over again. People gone crazy for a change and jumping
the wrong way, like grasshoppers in front of a mowing machine. Spinney
means the whole rotten thing over again--State treasury looted, tax rate
reduced to get a popular hoorah, a floating debt that will make us
stagger and keep enterprise out of this State for ten years, petty graft
in every State office, and every strap on the party nag busted from
snaffle to crupper.
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