Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/210

 *mities have faded away, though remembering Jones's admonition to "draw the sting" I tried to keep enmities out of it. Since I could not bring myself to discuss myself, I resolved not to discuss my opponents, and I went through the campaign without once mentioning the name of one of them—there were four candidates for mayor against me—without making one personal reference to them. And never in any political campaign since have I attacked an opponent. It was enough to discuss the principles of our little platform; and the first task was to get the electors to see the absurdity of their partizanship and to make clear the necessity of having a city government that represented the people or, since that phrase is perhaps indefinite, one that did not represent the privileged interests of the city.

The campaign was like the old Jones campaigns, though not altogether like them.

The legislature, which is always interfering as much as possible with the cities, had changed the time of holding the municipal elections from the spring to the autumn, one change wrought by a legislature in cities that the people approved, since instead of those raw spring winds we now have the glorious weather the autumn usually brings us in the lake regions, with a sparkling air and a warm sun, and a long procession of golden days, on which one really should be playing golf, if one could play golf in the midst of a political campaign, which one could not, since art and politics, or at least the practice of them, are wholly incompatible.

There was no old gray Molly to jog about from