One million people, by the coldest reckoning, and in all probability many more saw or tried to see Nominee Smith in New England last week. Some of those who tried were carried away in ambulances. . . .
There were crowds and there was noise when the Brown Derby's train, coming from Albany, stopped at Springfield. Editor Waldo Cook, 63, of the Springfield Republican, said he had never seen anything like it in all his many and much observing years. At Worcester, the people and the noise were again one flesh. But at Boston, the people and the noise were such a People and such a Noise as no ecstasy had ever before sublimated. Journalistically recordable fact was of little importance, save as the finite is important in the infinite. Recorded fact was as follows:
Nominee Smith, Mrs. Smith and daughter Emily Warner stepped off the train at South Station at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Policemen, three lines deep, and ropes failed to hold the burden of the mass. Wanting to touch, to say something to the Smith family, the People charged, milled, shoved, yelled. Scarcely heard were the screams of two girls whose bodies were bent back sharply over the ropes. Mrs. Smith became separated from her husband. He refused to take another step until she was restored to his side. An officer found her; she was white with fright. Finally, the Smiths reached an automobile. The Brown Derby began to wave salutations. As far as his dazzling blue eyes could see, was the People—on roofs and on streets. It took an hour for the Smith automobile to travel 20 blocks. For safety the motor had to be shut off; the People pushed the car. An old man in a robe stood on a truck at Scollay Square; he held aloft a sign saying: "Diogenes looking for Hoover Prosperity." The air was full of a thousand Smiths and not a few O'Briens; they were on pages of torn-up telephone books. It was getting dark. The Smith mounted a bandstand on Boston Common. Noise. Ambulances. Later were found upon the Common purses, women's hats, beaded bags, and 17 shoes. The Smith went to the Hotel Statler to eat, dress and think over his speech. The crowd, hungry, waited.
Three halls, jammed as they had never been jammed before, received the Happy Warrior that night. First, he went to Mechanics and Symphony Halls, where 17.000 people risked limb, if not life, for two smiles and two dozen words by the Nominee, and for a long wait until his speech came in over the radio from the Boston Arena. It was after 9 o'clock when he reached the Arena, stuffy and emotionally boiling with 19,000 persons, where no more than 15,000 persons had ever been able to get in together before. Mrs. Francis B. Sayre (whom President Wilson gave in marriage from the White House) had spoken.— So had Senator David Ignatius Walsh, rocking the building with the announcement that Senator Norris had come out for Nominee Smith (see p. 16). The cheering on the appearance of the Happy Warrior was the peak of the New England trip, perhaps the peak of his campaign. When it was stilled, Mrs. Sayre quoted what Woodrow Wilson said of Alfred Emanuel Smith. Another outburst. Then the Nominee spoke: ". . . We shall use words to convey our meaning—if the orators in the gallery will only just subside shall use words to convey our meaning, not to hide it. . . ."