A People's Man

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

"Mother, you are too frivolous," Elisabeth insisted. "If this tone of
levity is not dropped, I shall start another subject of conversation.
Mr. Maraton, you, of course, are in favour of Universal Manhood
Suffrage?"

"I am not at all sure about it," he replied. "It gives the vote to a lot of people I'd sooner see deported."

"But you—you to talk like that!" she exclaimed.

He smiled.

"Votes should belong to those who have a stake in the country, not to the flotsam and jetsam," he continued solemnly.

"But you're a Tory!" she cried.

"Not a bit," he answered. "If I had my way, you would very soon see that one man wouldn't have so much more stake in the country than another. Then Universal Suffrage follows automatically—in fact that's the way I'd arrive at it."

"Don't ever let Mr. Maraton be Prime Minister!" Elisabeth begged.
"He's too iconoclastic."

"And just now I was a Tory," Maraton protested.

"It isn't my fault that you are a study in contraries," she laughed. "But then politicians are rather like that, aren't they? I think really that they should be like surgeons, specialise all the time."