Late summer, 1872.

The tables were laid out under shade trees on the lawn of a country estate,

groaning with the spread a political committee puts on when it wants to impress.

Platters of cold ham, fried chicken, pickles and stoneware crocks, bread still warm from the oven, butter and glass dishes, and for dessert, wedges of ripe watermelon cut thick and piled on China.

At the seat of honor sat the vice presidential nominee of the liberal Republican and Democratic parties, a tall, hollow-eyed Missouri named

B. Gratz Brown. He had Transylvania and Yale behind him, a United States Senate term behind him,

a Missouri governorship behind him, and a national campaign in front of him. He had the attention

of every reporter in the county. He also had a butter knife.

Brown picked up a wedge of watermelon, set it down on his plate, and began with the slow, focused concentration of a man engaged in important work, to butter it.

He buttered the red meat. He buttered the rind. He worked the knife back and forth across the cold, wet flesh as though preparing a dinner roll for a cardinal.

The crowd watched. The reporters watched. Nobody stopped him.

A watermelon, in 1872 as now, was eaten fresh, cut, held, bitten.

Bread got buttered. Corn on the cob got buttered.

Watermelon did not, any more than a man would pepper ice cream or salt a peach.

Brown knew it when he was sober. He was not sober. He had confused a dessert fruit for a dinner course, and the only explanation the reporters needed was the one they already suspected.

The man was drunk again. Benjamin Gratz Brown was born in

Frankfurt, Kentucky, in 1826, into a family that mattered. His father practiced law. His cousin

was Frank Blair, Jr., who would one day sit in the same United States Senate Brown himself

would occupy. He went to Transylvania at 15, transferred to Yale, and graduated in

1847. He passed the bar, moved to St. Louis, and took up the editorship of the Missouri Democrat,

a paper with abolitionist leanings in a city where such leanings could get a man horsewhipped or

worse. Brown had iron in him and proved it. In 1856, he fought a duel

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