campaign and Cole had met it with the declaration that he didn’t “care a d—n.” “I have a wife and a boy,” he said. “I want their respect. The rest can all go to h—l.” Cole has organized since a league to reform the legislature, but after the 1898 campaign the Nine were tired, disappointed, and Cole was temporarily used up.
The Nine had to let Cole and Hoyt King go. But they wouldn’t let the League go. They had no successor for Cole. None on the committee would take his place; they all declined it in turn. They looked outside for a man, finding nobody. The prospect was dark. Then William Kent spoke up. Kent had time and money, but he wouldn’t do anything anyone else could be persuaded to do. He was not strong physically, and his physicians had warned him that to live he must work little and play much. At that moment he was under orders to go West and shoot. But when he saw what was happening, he said:
“I’m not the man for this job; I’m no organizer. I can smash more things in a minute than I can build up in a hundred years. But the League has got to go on, so I’ll take Cole’s place if you’ll give me a hard-working, able man for secretary, an organizer and a master of detail.”
Such a secretary was hard to find, but Allen B. 256Pond, the architect,
