Читать книгу The Statesmen Snowbound - Robert Fitzgerald - Страница 8

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Again on the train, our troubles were over, and we pulled out of the station amid cheers and yells from hundreds of throats—an odd contrast to the mournful silence of the throng upon our arrival.

In our party were Senators Baker, of Kentucky; Bull, of Montana; Wendell, of Massachusetts; Hammond, of Michigan; Pennypacker, of West Virginia; and Congressmen Holloway, of Illinois; Manysnifters, of Georgia; Van Rensselaer, of New York; a majority of the Kentucky delegation, Mr. Ridley, Senator Bull's private secretary, and several newspaper men.

Senator Bull is seventy, tall and massive. His features are striking—a big nose, heavy, grizzled mustache, bushy brows emphasizing eyes blue and kindly, a wide mouth, tobacco-stained, with a constant movement of the jaws—bovine, but shrewdly ruminative. A leonine head of shaggy white hair crowns the whole. Ridley, the private secretary, is about the same age. He is a ruddy-cheeked, round-paunched little fellow, scarcely measuring up to the Senator's shoulder. The thin fringe of hair around his shining pate gives him the appearance of a jolly friar. He peers at you through gold-rimmed spectacles, and is quite helpless without them. He has been with Senator Bull for years, serving him faithfully in various capacities, and is now a partner in the enterprises which have made the Senator many times a millionaire. The title of "private secretary" is one of courtesy merely, and seems to highly amuse the two friends.