“Wood! Wood! Wherein——” Carroll rushed in and turned up the electric light impatiently. “Wh-what you going to do about the First Ward?”
He had thin bright curly hair, the slimmest of bodies, and moved like a restless insect.
“Tell'em to count it twenty-eight Reform plurality, no more and no less! And turn off that light! And clear out! Well—now—that Charlie Carroll, he's a living fidget. Well—when they used to race steamboats on the Mississippi, they'd put a nigger on the safety valve, so it wouldn't get nervous. I've heard so. I've seen 'em tie it up with a string. Well—winning the race depended some on the size and serenity of the nigger, that'd see it wasn't his place to worry, for he'd get blown off all right in the natural course of things. For sitting on a safety valve you want a nigger that won't wriggle. Well—Charlie's a good man. Keeps people thinking about odds and ends of things. If one thing out of forty is going to happen, his mind's going to be a sort of composite picture of the whole forty. Sees eight or ten dimensions to a straight line. Yes—folks are pretty liberal. They'll allow there's another side to 'most anything, and a straight line's got no business to be so gone particular. It's the liberal-mindedness of the public that lets us win out, of course. But—you've got to sit still sometimes, and wait for the earth to turn round.”
“I suppose you have. It'll turn round.”
“Yes, it'll turn round.”
The tumult outside had subsided in a dull, unsettled rumble. The moon went into retreat among silver-grey clouds. Tecumseh Street muttered in the darkness of its pit. The stereopticons continued.
“The Chronicle suspects the U. S. Census,” from The Press.
“Census O. K. Wood didn't make it,” from The Chronicle.
“Port Argent stands by the G. O. P.”
“Did Wood mention his Candidate's Name?”