Here one of Noggs's friends culpably interposed, evidently with the desire of ridiculing the august proceedings, and asked:
"Have you got thirty-one wives?"—another man asked if he had his hat full of saur-krout—and a third was anxious to be informed if he could stand on his head and smoke a pipe, and balance a potash kettle on his heels to all of which he placidly responded "Yaw." Inspector hurried to the rescue, and put the test question:
"Do you vote for Hoggs?" and receiving the same complacent "Yaw," he took his vote, and shoved him aside.
All sorts of odd customers came up to deposit their ballots, but it is a remarkable fact that if they wanted to vote for Boggs, Scroggs, or Noggs, or, in fact, any one but Hoggs, they were sure to be crowded, shoved, and hustled, and generally left the room with bloody noses, and their ballots still in their hands.
Fun grew fast and furious; whiskey man ahead, but wanted tremendous majority; the pauper forces of Randall's Island, visiting the city for that occasion only, came up and voted.
This last trick is getting stale, and whoever is elected this time will probably have it denounced as a diabolical invention of the opposite faction, and have a sharp watch kept over these individuals until his own term of office runs out, and he is announced as a candidate for re-election; which circumstance will blind his eyes for a while unless his opponents bring them over to the other side, when he will turn state's evidence, and expose the whole trick to his constituents.
Almost time to close the polls, but the inspector kept the box open twenty minutes after sundown to receive the votes of sixteen promiscuous rascals, who had been habeas corpused from the Tombs, and who voted every man for Hoggs.
Polls closed; intense excitement; bonfires built; squibs, rockets, guns and Chinese crackers; liquor scarce, the candidates having cut off the supply as soon as the voting was over.
Crowd sat down in bar-rooms and engine-houses, and crowded about the secret rooms to get dispatches; about twelve o'clock they began to come: it was soon evident that Noggs was beaten, Boggs was distanced, and Scroggs was nowhere; it was Hoggs everywhere; Hoggs in the street; Hoggs in the tavern; Hoggs at the bonfires; Hoggs for ever; no one but Hoggs; triumphant Hoggs; victorious Hoggs; high-old Hoggs, the people's choice.
This morning Noggs's typographical organ announced the utter ruin, and speedy annihilation of the country, under the destructive rule of Hoggs, and it asserted that honor, honesty and truth had left the nation; patriotism and decency had deserted hand in hand, and that the outraged goddess of liberty had taken off her night-cap, pinned up her skirts, put on a pair of cowhide boots, and bidden eternal farewell to fallen, degenerate Columbia.