CHAPTER XXIV.
ALDERMAN TOPER'S FLATTERING OPINION OF THE "DODGER."
The next week the "Licensed Liquor Sellers' Association" of the county held the meeting of which Rivers had spoken, and there were also representatives present from Toronto and other places. They all agreed that the plan outlined by Rivers would be the best to adopt; that was, if the reader recollects, to play a waiting game, and at the same time to treat the law with supreme contempt.
"I tell you what it is," said Alderman Toper, who was one of the representatives from the city—having been elected an alderman by the whiskey interest, for He was proprietor of the "Toper House," one of the largest second-class hotels in the city—"I will spend a thousand dollars of my own money in order in the end to beat them."
"Don't you think, Toper," said Rivers, "it would pay us to employ Gustavus Adolphus Dodger. I hear he is one of the best stump-speakers in the country, and that he can do as he likes with an average crowd What do you think? You know him better than I do."
"Yes," said Toper, in an undertone, "I know his face better than I do his dimes, for I have had the former at my bar every day for the last six months, though nary one of the latter have I seen. But 'he is just the man for Galway,' for all that. He is the aptest, smoothest, most oily rascal I have ever met, and there is not a man in Canada that can hold a candle to him as a speaker in his own line. Why, I remember at a certain meeting he addressed a crowd who had been shouting themselves hoarse against the man in whose behalf he was about to speak, but he pleaded so eloquently and plausibly for his friend—and he was the man's friend, because he had received a consideration—that, before he was through, they shouted as loudly for the one whose cause he was advocating as they had a few moments before for his opponent."
"I suppose," said William Soker, one of the delegates from the county, "there is no fear of the other side getting the start of us and buying him up, for, from what you say, I should judge he was in the market and ready to sell himself to the highest bidder."
"There is no danger of that," said Toper, "for he has committed himself, soul and body, to the liquor interest, both upon the stump and through the press; and, though a man may not be troubled with that inconvenient article called principle, yet he has, to secure success, to be somewhat consistent."
"Oh, bosh about consistency," remarked Bottlesby; "I would not trust the rascal if he could make more than he could with us."
"Neither would I, if he had any chance to sell us, not a bit quicker than I would a fox in a goose-pen or a monkey on a peanut-stand, but there is no fear of the Dodger (that's what we call him) in this case, because he has so far committed himself to our side that the public would not believe him if he turned. But if he were ever so willing, the teetotal party 'wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole.'"
That night, after they were through with the business part of their programme, a supper was held by them at the Bayton House. There were present Judge McGullett, Capt. McWriggler, Sheriff Bottlesby, Capt. Flannigan, John Sealy, Esq., Stanley Ginsling, and as many of the magistrates of the town and county as could be induced to come. All were jubilant that so many of the latter responded to their invitation; for they considered their presence indicated their sympathy with them. Rivers, in a private conversation that he managed to have with Sealy, said with a chuckle:
"We have them as good as beaten already, for we have here the principal part of the men before whom the cases must be tried."
"That's so," replied Sealy, "but we will have some hard fighting to do first."
The party broke up in the small hours of the morning. During the course of their night's debauch there was a great deal of speechifying, and the epithets fanatical, humbug, etc., were used ad infinitum. Over the state of nearly every one of the party it is well to cast the veil of oblivion. But what may be expected of a town or a county that has such men to administer justice and to hold its most responsible positions.