“You have hit the nail on the head,” declaimed the Reverend Larynx with a loud, hearty laugh, “but the Bulletin will rouse them to a sense of duty. Last night, Mr. Burnit, the Utopian Club was formed with an initial membership of over seventy, and it selected a candidate for mayor of whom the Bulletin is bound to approve. Shake hands with Mr. Freedom, the Utopian Club’s candidate for mayor, Mr. Burnit.”
Bobby shook hands with Mr. Freedom quite nicely, and studied him curiously.
He was one of the two who wore side-whiskers and a habitual Prince Albert, and he displayed a phenomenal length from lower lip to chin, which, by reason of his extremely high and narrow forehead, gave his features the appearance of being grouped in tiny spots somewhere near the center of a long, yellow cylinder. Mr. Freedom, he afterward ascertained, was a respectable singing-teacher.
“Professor Freedom,” went on the Reverend Doctor Larynx, still loudly and heartily, “has the time to devote to this office, as well as the ideal qualifications. He has no vices whatever. He does not even smoke nor use tobacco in any form, and under his régime the saloons of this town would be turned into vacant store-rooms, if there are laws to make possible such action.”
“I do not want the saloons put out of business,” declared Bobby. “I merely want them vacated at twelve every night, without exception.”
When Doctor Larynx and his delegation went away in wrath the leader was already preparing his sermon upon The Iniquity of the Sons of Rich Fathers.
On the following day a delegation from the business men’s club waited upon him. The business men’s club wanted a business administration. This crowd Bobby handled differently. Upon his desk, tabulated in advance against just such an emergency, he had statistics concerning all the business men’s administrations that had been tried in various cities, and he submitted this statement without argument. It needed none.
“Politics is in itself a distinct business,” he explained. “You would not one of you take up the duties of a surveyor without previous training. The only trouble is that there are no restrictions placed upon politicians. I propose to use them, but to regulate them.”
He did not convert the delegation by this one interview, but he did by cultivating these men and others of their kind separately. He ate luncheons and dinners with them at the Traders’ Club, played billiards with them, smoked and talked with them; and the burden of his talk was Chalmers. When he finally got ready for his campaign the business men were with him unanimously, at least outwardly. Inwardly, there were reservations, for the matter of special privileges was one to be very gravely considered; and special privileges, at a price not entirely prohibitive, was the bulwark of Stone’s régime.
“But the Stone régime,” Bobby advised them, coming brutally to the point and telling them what he knew of their own affairs and Stone’s, “is about to come to an end. The handwriting is on the wall, and you might just as well climb into the band wagon, for at last I have the public on my side.”