Oh, what a heavy, heavy blow
Last night you struck on Jingo Joe!
From the Bishop's House, Kennington, S.E., Dr. Talbot wrote:—
I wish, as one to whom, as its Bishop, the affairs of Woolwich are of great interest, to offer you my sincere good wishes for your Parliamentary course.
I am aware that by so writing at this moment I may risk misunderstanding and seem to "worship the rising sun," and that you may not care for words when there were not deeds in support.
But I venture to risk this: and to trust you to take as genuine what is genuinely said. I think you are the man to do this.
I cannot but feel and I desire to express great satisfaction that the needs and interests of Labour should have their representative in one who has given such proof of desire to work and suffer for the welfare of his fellow-men as you have done.
All that I have heard of you commands my admiration and respect. It will be a great pleasure to find there are occasions when we may co-operate for the public welfare in Woolwich.
Had the Bishop of Bloemfontein—Chandler—been in England, I might have asked him for an introduction to you; as it is, may our common friendship for him serve the purpose.
You will come into Parliament with great power from your character and experience, and as the representative by such a majority of such a place. May you seek, and may God Almighty give you, the wisdom and strength to use rightly this great position.
To turn from the Bishop to the bar-parlour will help us to preserve the balance of things human. While Dr. Talbot was sending his blessing from the Bishop's House, there came a chorus of good-wishes from nearly every public-house in Woolwich. This was all the more remarkable because Crooks had made the constituency hold its sides with laughter over the innumerable stories he told during the campaign against beer-drinkers. Those who laughed the loudest were the drinkers themselves, admitting while so doing they had never heard a teetotaler put the case against them so well before.
It was a great delight to Crooks to learn that even the regular tipplers were saying among themselves that "although that chap Crooks don't spare us blokes, he's the man for our money."
One conversation reported to him from a public-house a few days after the election was certainly quaint and amusing. The narrator was the best of mimics. He told how the subject of the election was introduced by "a long thin man with a sheeny nose," who had just come in.
"Well," began the new-comer, without any preliminary, "I've read 'The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World,' but I tell you Woolwich licks the lot."
"What about Napoleon Bonaparty?" ventured one of the company.
"Bonaparty? What did Bony do? Why, ten years after Wellington won Waterloo things was back worse than they was before."