“I’ve ran for mayor o’ this ’ere town now goin’ on five times, and I’m dog damned if I ever heerd such a lot o’ fool questions before!”
The next day it was rumored that Father Hennessey had told his parishioners that Squire Goddard could not be trusted. Then the storm broke. The W. C. T. U. held a mass meeting and issued an appeal to save the boys. That night husbands were put on the rack of domestic inquisition. They had it pointed out to them that there was a drunkard in every fifth family—statistics proved it—and parents didn’t want their boys exposed any longer to such temptations. No one knew where the statistical lightning was going to strike.
“Suppose you want to intrust the regulation of the rum power to the Democrats, do you?” sneered the husbands, with ironical grunts, thereby moving the previous question and closing the debate. Nevertheless, after that the mayor was kept busy explaining, which is the direst necessity that can befall a candidate. He encountered Halliday in the Square one day, and blazed forth:
“You’re gittin’ too smart ’round this town all to onct, young feller. You know more’n your pap a’ready, an’ if he can’t l’arn ye no respec’ fer yer elders, I will.” He shook a palsied fist at the youth, as he added, in a tone almost pitiable: “An’ I’ll tell him jest what you done, too.”
Defeat might have killed the old man, and the campaign was beginning to tell on him. But when they raised the fund, it was as a hot and sweetened toddy to warm the cockles of his heart. While he had no adequate concept of it, and while the manner of its working was a mystery to him, he did not doubt its efficacy. He felt safe. Also, as the subject of the only campaign fund Gordon County had ever known, he felt a supreme importance, which swelled out his chest and filled him with a ripe content. He even found himself taking the opposition with some zest, now that it was certain to be non-effective. Three days more, thought the squire, and it would be all over. He imagined some sort of civic triumph for himself. He dreamed of a serenade by the Macochee Silver Cornet Band, in the evening, under the shade of the pine trees about his home. He dramatized himself as bowing and smiling on the front porch. He would go out just as he was, in his shirt-sleeves and slippers, his silver-bowed spectacles on his nose, and the Cincinnati paper in his hand. It would be thus more spontaneous, more democratic. Mandy would stand behind him, holding the lamp high. The front picket fence would be black with people. He wondered if there would be enough of the campaign fund left to provide the cake she must offer the band boys, and whether a part of its office was to meet such contingencies. So the old squire sat in his old chair, the split bottom of which had been worn shiny years ago, and smoked his old pipe, with sharp, dry puffs of contentment.
The squire looked forward to disbursing the fund himself, but the court-house ring still clung to it in indecision. Friday morning, when they met, election was but three days off, and the ring agreed that they must get down to business. Major Turner said, with profound wisdom, that money could be used to best advantage in the saloons. Charley Bassett—he was prosecuting attorney then—asked, with a lawyer’s passion for fine distinctions, in what sense the major employed the word “used.” Before the major could reply—he had knit his brows and was whittling a fresh chew from his plug, to irrigate his thought—old Bill Williams said:
“No, that won’t do; we must use it to get out the vote.”
“Well,” said Bassett, who always annoyed the old fellows with his young haggling, “how’ll you get out the vote?”
The auditor, with an effort at something definite, said:
“Why, we must have organization—that’s what wins in elections these days.” He shook his head, in a keen triumph, for the phrase pleased him, as phrases do please politicians. He began to conceive himself—gladly, as a great political leader, as an organizer of victory. “Organization, that’s the word,” he persisted, and then, growing bolder, he brought his fist down on his fat knee, and plunged on heedlessly into detail.