The next day I was waited upon by the treasurers of eleven chowder clubs, the financial secretary of the Shanty Sharpshooters and Goat Hill Volunteers. A man also came to obtain means for burying a dead friend. I afterward saw him doing so to some extent. He was burying his friend beneath the solemn shadow of a heavy mahogany-colored mustache, of which he was the sole proprieter.
I was waited upon by delegations from Tammany, the County Democracy and the Jeffersonian Simplicity Chub. Everybody seemed to have dropped his own business in order to wait upon me, I became pledged to every one on condition that I should be elected. It makes me shudder now to think what I may have signed. I paid forty odd dollars for the privilege of voting for a beautiful child, and thus lost all influence with every other parent in the contest. I voted for the most popular young lady and heard afterward that she regarded me only as a friend. I had a biography and portrait of myself printed in an obscure paper that claimed a large circulation, and the first time the forms went into the press a loose screw fell out on the machinery, caught in the forehead of my portrait and peeled back the scalp so that it dropped over the eye like a prayer rag hanging out of the window.
I had paid a boy three dollars to scatter these papers among the neighbors, but I met him as he came out of the office and made it five dollars if he would put them in the bosom of the moaning tide.
I give below a rough draft of expenses, not including; some of the items referred to above:
