Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 12.pdf/339

 Rh

if the Conservative candidate should be re turned, the supply of beer and rum, to drink long life and success to the new M. P., might be expected to be continued, and would, I was sure, taste much better than any paid for out of a yellow purse. I promised to report to Mr. Mac Price on the state of his health and on the lamented demise of the deceased quadruped, and to meet Briggs "with further news the day pre ceding the polling day. It is expedient in electioneering always to adopt veiled lan guage; words may be overheard, but a sig nificant pressure of the hand is a token which will be felt though unheard. And so I left Rottenton, satisfied with the impression I had left on the oracular mind of the wooden-legged tobacconist and barber. And Briggs and the loaned donkey still con tinued to parade the streets of Rottenton, decked in the yellow colors of the party to which that wise quadruped still adhered, and the 'longshoremen were interviewed by Briggs and shaved at the expense of the local mag nate, and quenched their thirst for political principles at the inexhaustible oracle of Briggs, while the other and less easily ex haustible thirst for beer and rum was also mitigated at the local magnate's expense up to the day preceding the polling. On the afternoon of that day (the day before the polling), I met Briggs by ap pointment, as also a goodly number of the 'longshoremen, at an inn some three miles out of the town. Our interview was short, sharp and decisive. I need not put on rec ord all that passed, but before we parted I knew that the Conservative candidate could depend upon the twenty-five 'long shore votes, which would suffice to turn the election. Neither the candidate himself, nor his agent, knew anything of my operations, and no question of implied agency before or after the election could by any possibility be made out against them as concerned any thing I did. It was philanthropy pure and simple, and such could not be said of the

loan of the donkey and the supply of drinks by the accredited agent of the spoiled Egyp tians. I ought to mention that an old pensioner of the family of my friend Mac Price lived in the borough in the person of an old man named Joe Castor, who had in his best days been the irresistibly comic clown of a travel ing circus, and who had met with an untoward accident in the height of his career which rendered him a partial cripple. He, too, was a voter; for him, too, a timely subscription had been raised by Mac Price's free-handed friends to tide him over the wants of old age; and he, too, was a devoted adherent to the principles of true blue faith. Poor old fellow; he had grown in his later years mor bidly melancholy, and it was only now and then, when the rare chance of passing off some recondite joke of old days presented itself beyond the powers of resistance, that his long visage melted into a smile; then his hilarity was almost pitiable to see. He re tained one accomplishment to the last, he was an inimitable ventriloquist. On the af ternoon of the day before the polling day I called upon him and pressed him into the service of the good cause. One act of justice remained to be done, and I gave the doing of it into the hands of the long-visaged Joe Castor. About mid night a prolonged hee haw awoke the echoes of the front garden of the domicile of the local magnate, and a pealing ring of the front door bell startled the inmates of that secluded mansion. A company of admiring friends were sitting around his hospitable board, drinking deeply to his success at the poll on the morrow, the local minister of his religion was extolling his virtues in turgid oratorical periods, invoking the confusion of heaven on the accursed Conservative creed, which stifled all freedom of religious belief, etc., when his oratory was rudely interrupted by the prolonged "hee haw " and pealing ring of the front door bell above referred to. On the assembled company rushing to the door