Whether to see the Fair, Pickerbaugh, the delightful ravages of a disaster, or another fight between the anti ladies, half the city struggled into the Tabernacle that evening, and when Pickerbaugh took the platform for his closing lecture he was greeted with frenzy. Next day, when he galloped into the last week of his campaign, he was overlord of all the district.
II
His opponent was a snuffy little lawyer whose strength lay in his training. He had been state senator, lieutenant governor, county judge. But the Democratic slogan, “Pickerbaugh the Pick-up Candidate,” was drowned in the admiration for the hero of the health fair. He dashed about in motors, proclaiming, “I am not running because I want office, but because I want the chance to take to the whole nation my ideals of health.” Everywhere was plastered:
For Congress
PICKERBAUGH
The two-fisted fighting poet doc
Just elect him for a term
And all through the nation he’ll swat the germ.
Enormous meetings were held. Pickerbaugh was ample and vague about his Policies. Yes, he was opposed to our entering the European War, but he assured them, he certainly did assure them, that he was for using every power of our Government to end this terrible calamity. Yes, he was for high tariff, but it must be so adjusted that the farmers in his district could buy everything cheaply. Yes, he was for high wages for each and every workman, but he stood like a rock, like a boulder, like a moraine, for protecting the prosperity of all manufacturers, merchants, and real-estate owners.
While this larger campaign thundered, there was proceeding in Nautilus a smaller and much defter campaign, to reëlect as mayor one Mr. Pugh, Pickerbaugh’s loving chief. Mr. Pugh sat nicely at desks, and he was pleasant and promissory to everybody who came to see him; clergymen, gamblers, G. A. R. veterans, circus advance-agents, policemen, and ladies of reasonable virtue—everybody except perhaps socialist agitators, against whom he staunchly protected the embattled city. In his speeches Pickerbaugh commended Pugh for “that firm integrity and ready sympathy with which His Honor had backed up every movement for the public weal,” and when Pickerbaugh (quite honestly) begged, “Mr. Mayor, if I go to Congress you must appoint Arrowsmith in my place; he knows nothing about politics but he’s incorruptible,” then Pugh gave his promise, and amity abode in that land.... Nobody said anything at all about Mr. F. X. Jordan.
F. X. Jordan was a contractor with a generous interest in politics. Pickerbaugh called him a grafter, and the last time Pugh had been elected—it had been on a Reform Platform, though since that time the reform had been coaxed to behave itself and be practical—both Pugh and Pickerbaugh had denounced Jordan as a “malign force.” But so kindly was Mayor Pugh that in the present election he said nothing that could hurt Mr. Jordan’s feelings, and in return what could Mr. Jordan do but speak forgivingly about Mr. Pugh to the people in blind-pigs and houses of ill fame?
On the evening of the election, Martin and Leora were among the company awaiting the returns at the Pickerbaughs’. They were confident. Martin had never been roused by politics, but he was stirred now by Pickerbaugh’s twitchy pretense of indifference, by the telephoned report from the newspaper office, “Here’s Willow Grove township— Pickerbaugh leading, two to one!” by the crowds which went past the house howling, “Pickerbaugh, Pickerbaugh, Pickerbaugh!”
At eleven the victory was certain, and Martin, his bowels weak with unconfidence, realized that he was now Director of Public Health, with responsibility for seventy thousand lives.
He looked wistfully toward Leora and in her still smile found assurance.