My Story by Elizabeth J. Hauser Page A

headquarters of the single tax movement in this country. Sometimes he went with me on bicycling excursions, and we used to laugh a good deal about one business trip he made with me. I invited him to go, telling him that I should not be very busy, that we could take our wheels and have some time to visit. It was a western trip. We stopped at a good many towns, I had interviews with several men in each place and, as was my custom, I made no discrimination between night and day when it came to settling business matters, or taking trains. To me it was rather a leisurely journey. We got in a few spins on our bicycles and of course we visitedon the train. Mr. George said nothing to me about the character of the trip, but when he got home his comment to Mrs. George was,
    â€œWell, if Tom calls this trip one when he wasn’t very busy, he needn’t invite me to go on one when he is.”
    In Mr. George’s last campaign for mayor of New York in 1897 I was his political manager. It was during that campaign that I was hissed in a public meeting, the first and only time in my life that that ever happened to me. It was at a meeting in Brooklyn in a large hall or an opera house. As I stepped forward to the middle of the stage to begin my speech a slight hissing came from the house, but it was overbalanced by the applause. A few moments later when I had gotten fairly started it came again, this time loud and insistent and from a group of men seated in the front and near the center of the balcony. I stopped, looked towards them and called out, “Well, what is it? What don’t you like? Tell me; maybe I can explain.” No answer, but more hisses.
    â€œOh, you don’t know what you are hissing for? You were just told to do it,” I continued. “Well, come on, give us some more of it. I like it, it makes me feel good,” and I coaxed for more hissing, making the sound of the tongue against the teeth used to urge a horse to greater speed. But I got no response now and the meeting was not disturbed again.
    The group of hissers had evidently been sent to the meeting with instructions to break it up, but their courage failed them. When the meeting was over they followed me out and while I was waiting for the private trolley car in which I was traveling that night, a great husky workman standing near me on the sidewalk exclaimed in loud tones, “Well,did you see the big —— —— —— throw the con into them!”

    HENRY GEORGE
    Intending to pay me a compliment, he called me a name which Southerners and Westerners usually consider sufficient provocation for a quarrel, and my heart stood still for a moment, for my brother Albert was just behind me and I fully expected him to reach past me and hit the man who had spoken. I reached one arm behind me and got hold of my brother and put my other hand on the man’s shoulder and said, “Come, my friend, help me to persuade these fellows to go with me to my next meeting,” and then I invited the group of men who had tried to stop my speech to get into my car and go with me. Completely bluffed by this time they all slunk away.
    When the question of Mr. George’s candidacy was being discussed by some of his friends and advisers and it had been decided that he should run, someone suggested that the campaign might cost him his life. He was not yet sixty years of age, but the hard lines of his life had told upon him, and his friends knew his physical strength could hardly measure up to the demands of a heated political struggle. When the suggestion that his life might be the forfeit was made, Mr. George straightened suddenly in his chair, his eyes brightened, and with his whole heart evidently in his answer he said:
    â€œWouldn’t it be glorious to die that way!”
    His body was weaker, but the same intrepid spirit was in the man as when he had made his first campaign for mayor of New York ten years before. Then when