"Glory! Humph," said Mrs. Perkins, "I am not aware that nations are talking of previous Mayors of Dumfries Corners. Mr. Jiggers's name is not a household word outside of this city, is it?"
Mr. Jiggers was the gentleman, into whose shoes Thaddeus was seeking to place his feet—the incumbent of the mighty office to which he aspired.
"Who is the present Lord Mayor of London?" the lady continued.
"Haven't the slightest idea," murmured the standard-bearer of the Democratic party, hopelessly.
"Or Berlin, or Peking—or even of Chicago?" she went on.
"What has that got to do with it?" retorted the worm, turning a trifle.
"You spoke of glory—the glory of being Mayor of Dumfries Corners, a city of 30,000 inhabitants. This is going to send your name echoing from sea to sea, reverberating through Europe, and thundering down through the ages to come; and yet you admit that the glories of the Mayors of London with 4,000,000 souls, of Berlin, Chicago, and Peking, with millions more, are so slight that you can't remember their names—or even to have heard them, for that matter. Really, Thaddeus, I am surprised at you. What you expect to get out of this besides nervous prostration I must confess I cannot see."
"Lamps," said Thaddeus, clutching like a drowning man at the one emolument of the coveted office.
Mrs. Perkins gazed at her husband anxiously. The answer was so unexpected and seemingly so absurd that she for a moment feared he had lost his mind. The notion that two years' service in so important an office as that of Mayor of Dumfries Corners received as its sole reward nothing but lamps was to her mind impossible.
"Is—is there anything the matter with you, dear?" she asked, placing her hand on his brow. "You don't seem feverish."