On that night Hugh wanted to be an orator. As he stumbled in the darkness
along Turner's Pike he imagined himself Governor of a State addressing
a multitude of people. A mile north of Pickleville a dense thicket grew
beside the road, and Hugh stopped and addressed the young trees and bushes.
In the darkness the mass of bushes looked not unlike a crowd standing at
attention, listening. The wind blew and played in the thick, dry growth and
there was a sound as of many voices whispering words of encouragement. Hugh
said many foolish things. Expressions he had heard from the lips of Steve
Hunter and Tom Butterworth came into his mind and were repeated by his
lips. He spoke of the swift growth that had come to the town of Bidwell
as though it were an unmixed blessing, the factories, the homes of happy,
contented people, the coming of industrial development as something akin to
a visit of the gods. Rising to the height of egotism he shouted, "I have
done it. I have done it."
Hugh heard a buggy coming along the road and fled into the thicket. A
farmer, who had gone to town for the evening and who had stayed after the
political meeting to talk with other farmers in Ben Head's saloon, went
homeward, asleep in his buggy. His head nodded up and down, heavy with
the vapors rising from many glasses of beer. Hugh came out of the thicket
feeling somewhat ashamed. The next day he wrote a letter to Sarah Shepherd
and told her of his progress.
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