November 2, MONDAY. The baby walked all alone today. Poor George Cornell’s death is announced at last. He was a useful man, and his prominent fault, cynicism of speech, merely assumed. . . .
State election comes off tomorrow. Nobody cares. Twelve months and a crisis have toned down people’s interest in politics wonderfully. John C. Fremont is a very insignificant person, and Kansas a very remote insignificant territory. The Democrats are likely to carry the state by default.
The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas
Poor George sounds a little down.
November 3. Voted, on my way downtown, in Twentieth Street. My contribution to the new glass ballot-boxes was a mosaic, little bits from all the tickets, and one or two John Smiths and William Browns derived from my imagination, for in some cases I knew nothing good of any candidate. It has been the quietest of elections. Voting was like going to daily service, a lonely thing to do. Even the ticket distributors in their little boxes seemed desolate and dreary as Simon Stylites (or Simon Stock, rather, in his hollow tree), and found it a delightful novelty to be asked whether this was a verdant voter’s legal district who was the other candidate for assemblyman or constable, and the like.
The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas