Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town

by Stephen Leacock

  “Come now,” said the member, “that’s splendid: that will help enormously. Honesty and public morality! The very thing! If Drone runs and makes a good showing, we win for a certainty. Tompkins, you must lose no time over this. Can’t you manage to get some articles in the other papers hinting that at the last election we bribed all the voters in the county, and that we gave out enough contracts to simply pervert the whole constituency. Imply that we poured the public money into this county in bucketsful and that we are bound to do it again. Let Drone have plenty of material of this sort and he’ll draw off every honest unbiased vote in the Conservative party.

  “My only fear is,” continued the old war horse, losing some of his animation, “that Drone won’t run after all. He’s said it so often before and never has. He hasn’t got the money. But we must see to that. Gingham, you know his brother well; you must work it so that we pay Drone’s deposit and his campaign expenses. But how like Drone it is to come out at this time!”

  It was indeed very like Edward Drone to attempt so misguided a thing as to come out an Independent candidate in Missinaba County on a platform of public honesty. It was just the sort of thing that anyone in Mariposa would expect from him.

  Edward Drone was the Rural Dean’s younger brother,—young Mr. Drone, they used to call him, years ago, to distinguish him from the rector. He was a somewhat weaker copy of his elder brother, with a simple, inefficient face and kind blue eyes. Edward Drone was, and always had been, a failure. In training he had been, once upon a time, an engineer and built dams that broke and bridges that fell down and wharves that floated away in the spring floods. He had been a manufacturer and failed, had been a contractor and failed, and now lived a meagre life as a sort of surveyor or land expert on goodness knows what.

  In his political ideas Edward Drone was and, as everybody in Mariposa knew, always had been crazy. He used to come up to the autumn exercises at the high school and make speeches about the ancient Romans and Titus Manlius and Quintus Curtius at the same time when John Henry Bagshaw used to make a speech about the Maple Leaf and ask for an extra half holiday. Drone used to tell the boys about the lessons to be learned from the lives of the truly great, and Bagshaw used to talk to them about the lessons learned from the lives of the extremely rich. Drone used to say that his heart filled whenever he thought of the splendid patriotism of the ancient Romans, and Bagshaw said that whenever he looked out over this wide Dominion his heart overflowed.

  Even the youngest boy in the school could tell that Drone was foolish. Not even the school teachers would have voted for him.

  “What about the Conservatives?” asked Bagshaw presently; “is there any talk yet as to who they’ll bring out?”

  Gingham and Mallory Tompkins looked at one another. They were almost afraid to speak.

  “Hadn’t you heard?” said Gingham; “they’ve got their man already.”

  “Who is it?” said Bagshaw quickly.

  “They’re going to put up Josh Smith.”

  “Great Heaven!” said Bagshaw, jumping to his feet; “Smith! the hotel keeper.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Mr. Gingham, “that’s the man.”

  Do you remember, in history, how Napoleon turned pale when he heard that the Duke of Wellington was to lead the allies in Belgium? Do you remember how when Themistocles heard that Aristogiton was to lead the Spartans, he jumped into the sea? Possibly you don’t, but it may help you to form some idea of what John Henry Bagshaw felt when he heard that the Conservatives had selected Josh Smith, proprietor of Smith’s Hotel.

  You remember Smith. You’ve seen him there on the steps of his hotel,—two hundred and eighty pounds in his stockinged feet. You’ve seen him selling liquor after hours through sheer public spirit, and you recall how he saved the lives of hundreds of people on the day when the steamer sank, and how he saved the town from being destroyed the night when the Church of England Church burnt down. You know that hotel of his, too, half way down the street, Smith’s Northern Health Resort, though already they were beginning to call it Smith’s British Arms.

  So you can imagine that Bagshaw came as near to turning pale as a man in federal politics can.

  “I never knew Smith was a Conservative,” he said faintly; “he always subscribed to our fund.”

  “He is now,” said Mr. Gingham ominously; “he says the idea of this reciprocity business cuts him to the heart.”

  “The infernal liar!” said Mr. Bagshaw.

  There was silence for a few moments. Then Bagshaw spoke again.

  “Will Smith have anything else in his platform besides the trade question?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Gingham gloomily, “he will.”

  “What is it?”

  “Temperance and total prohibition!”

  John Henry Bagshaw sank back in his chair as if struck with a club. There let me leave him for a chapter.

  ELEVEN

  THE CANDIDACY OF MR. SMITH

  “Boys,” said Mr. Smith to the two hostlers, stepping out on to the sidewalk in front of the hotel,—“hoist that there British Jack over the place and hoist her up good.”

  Then he stood and watched the flag fluttering in the wind.

  “Billy,” he said to the desk clerk, “get a couple more and put them up on the roof of the caff behind the hotel. Wire down to the city and get a quotation on a hundred of them. Take them signs ‘American Drinks’ out of the bar. Put up noo ones with ‘British Beer at all Hours’; clear out the rye whiskey and order in Scotch and Irish, and then go up to the printing office and get me them placards.”

  Then another thought struck Mr. Smith.

  “Say, Billy,” he said, “wire to the city for fifty pictures of King George. Get ’em good, and get ’em coloured. It don’t matter what they cost.”

  “All right, sir,” said Billy.

  “And Billy,” called Mr. Smith, as still another thought struck him (indeed, the moment Mr. Smith went into politics you could see these thoughts strike him like waves), “get fifty pictures of his father, old King Albert.”

  “All right, sir.”

  “And say, I tell you, while you’re at it, get some of the old queen, Victorina, if you can. Get ’em in mourning, with a harp and one of them lions and a three-pointed prong.”

  It was on the morning after the Conservative Convention. Josh Smith had been chosen the candidate. And now the whole town was covered with flags and placards and there were bands in the streets every evening, and noise and music and excitement that went on from morning till night.

  Election times are exciting enough even in the city. But there the excitement dies down in business hours. In Mariposa there aren’t any business hours and the excitement goes on all the time.

  Mr. Smith had carried the Convention before him. There had been a feeble attempt to put up Nivens. But everybody knew that he was a lawyer and a college man and wouldn’t have a chance by a man with a broader outlook like Josh Smith.

  So the result was that Smith was the candidate and there were placards out all over the town with SMITH AND BRITISH ALLEGIANCE in big letters, and people were wearing badges with Mr. Smith’s face on one side and King George’s on the other, and the fruit store next to the hotel had been cleaned out and turned into committee rooms with a gang of workers smoking cigars in it all day and half the night.

  There were other placards, too, with BAGSHAW AND LIBERTY, BAGSHAW AND PROSPERITY, VOTE FOR THE OLD MISSINABA STANDARD BEARER, and up town beside the Mariposa House there were the Bagshaw committee rooms with a huge white streamer across the street, and with a gang of Bagshaw workers smoking their heads off.

  But Mr. Smith had an estimate made which showed that nearly two cigars to one were smoked in his committee rooms as compared with the Liberals. It was the first time in five elections that the Conservative had been able to make such a showing as that.

  One might mention, too, that there were Drone placards out,—five or six of them,—little things about the size of a pocket handk
erchief, with a statement that “Mr. Edward Drone solicits the votes of the electors of Missinaba County.” But you would never notice them. And when Drone tried to put up a streamer across the Main Street with DRONE AND HONESTY the wind carried it away into the lake.

  The fight was really between Smith and Bagshaw, and everybody knew it from the start.

  I wish that I were able to narrate all the phases and the turns of the great contest from the opening of the campaign till the final polling day. But it would take volumes.

  First of all, of course, the trade question was hotly discussed in the two newspapers of Mariposa, and the Newspacket and the Times-Herald literally bristled with statistics. Then came interviews with the candidates and the expression of their convictions in regard to tariff questions.

  “Mr. Smith,” said the reporter of the Mariposa Newspacket, “we’d like to get your views of the effect of the proposed reduction of the differential duties.”

  “By gosh, Pete,” said Mr. Smith, “you can search me. Have a cigar.”

  “What do you think, Mr. Smith, would be the result of lowering the ad valorem British preference and admitting American goods at a reciprocal rate?”

  “It’s a corker, ain’t it?” answered Mr. Smith. “What’ll you take, lager or domestic?”

  And in that short dialogue Mr. Smith showed that he had instantaneously grasped the whole method of dealing with the press. The interview in the paper next day said that Mr. Smith, while unwilling to state positively that the principle of tariff discrimination was at variance with sound fiscal science, was firmly of opinion that any reciprocal interchange of tariff preferences with the United States must inevitably lead to a serious per capita reduction of the national industry.

  “MR. SMITH,” said the chairman of a delegation of the manufacturers of Mariposa, “what do you propose to do in regard to the tariff if you’re elected?”

  “Boys,” answered Mr. Smith, “I’ll put her up so darned high they won’t never get her down again.”

  “MR. SMITH,” said the chairman of another delegation, “I’m an old free trader—”

  “Put it there,” said Mr. Smith, “so’m I. There ain’t nothing like it.”

  “WHAT DO YOU THINK about imperial defence?” asked another questioner.

  “Which?” said Mr. Smith.

  “Imperial defence.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of everything.”

  “Who says it?” said Mr. Smith.

  “Everybody is talking of it.”

  “What do the Conservative boys at Ottaway think about it?” answered Mr. Smith.

  “They’re all for it.”

  “Well, I’m fer it too,” said Mr. Smith.

  THESE LITTLE CONVERSATIONS represented only the first stage, the argumentative stage of the great contest. It was during this period, for example, that the Mariposa Newspacket absolutely proved that the price of hogs in Mariposa was decimal six higher than the price of oranges in Southern California and that the average decennial import of eggs into Missinaba County had increased four decimal six eight two in the last fifteen years more than the import of lemons in New Orleans.

  Figures of this kind made the people think. Most certainly.

  After all this came the organizing stage and after that the big public meetings and the rallies. Perhaps you have never seen a county being “organized.” It is a wonderful sight. First of all the Bagshaw men drove through crosswise in top buggies and then drove through it again lengthwise. Whenever they met a farmer they went in and ate a meal with him, and after the meal they took him out to the buggy and gave him a drink. After that the man’s vote was absolutely solid until it was tampered with by feeding a Conservative.

  In fact, the only way to show a farmer that you are in earnest is to go in and eat a meal with him. If you won’t eat it, he won’t vote for you. That is the recognized political test.

  But, of course, just as soon as the Bagshaw men had begun to get the farming vote solidified, the Smith buggies came driving through in the other direction, eating meals and distributing cigars and turning all the farmers back into Conservatives.

  Here and there you might see Edward Drone, the Independent candidate, wandering round from farm to farm in the dust of the political buggies. To each of the farmers he explained that he pledged himself to give no bribes, to spend no money and to offer no jobs, and each one of them gripped him warmly by the hand and showed him the way to the next farm.

  After the organization of the county there came the period of the public meetings and the rallies and the joint debates between the candidates and their supporters.

  I suppose there was no place in the whole Dominion where the trade question—the Reciprocity question—was threshed out quite so thoroughly and in quite such a national patriotic spirit as in Mariposa. For a month, at least, people talked of nothing else. A man would stop another in the street and tell him that he had read last night that the average price of an egg in New York was decimal ought one more than the price of an egg in Mariposa, and the other man would stop the first one later in the day and tell him that the average price of a hog in Idaho was point six of a cent per pound less (or more,—he couldn’t remember which for the moment) than the average price of beef in Mariposa.

  People lived on figures of this sort, and the man who could remember most of them stood out as a born leader.

  But of course it was at the public meetings that these things were most fully discussed. It would take volumes to do full justice to all the meetings that they held in Missinaba County. But here and there single speeches stood out as masterpieces of convincing oratory. Take, for example, the speech of John Henry Bagshaw at the Tecumseh Corners School House. The Mariposa Times-Herald said next day that that speech would go down in history, and so it will,—ever so far down.

  Anyone who has heard Bagshaw knows what an impressive speaker he is, and on this night when he spoke with the quiet dignity of a man old in years and anxious only to serve his country, he almost surpassed himself. Near the end of his speech somebody dropped a pin, and the noise it made in falling fairly rattled the windows.

  “I am an old man now, gentlemen,” Bagshaw said, “and the time must soon come when I must not only leave politics, but must take my way towards that goal from which no traveller returns.”

  There was a deep hush when Bagshaw said this. It was understood to imply that he thought of going to the United States.

  “Yes, gentlemen, I am an old man, and I wish, when my time comes to go, to depart leaving as little animosity behind me as possible. But before I do go, I want it pretty clearly understood that there are more darn scoundrels in the Conservative party than ought to be tolerated in any decent community. I bear,” he continued, “malice towards none and I wish to speak with gentleness to all, but what I will say is that how any set of rational responsible men could nominate such a skunk as the Conservative candidate passes the bounds of my comprehension. Gentlemen, in the present campaign there is no room for vindictive abuse. Let us rise to a higher level than that. They tell me that my opponent, Smith, is a common saloon keeper. Let it pass. They tell me that he has stood convicted of horse stealing, that he is a notable perjurer, that he is known as the blackest-hearted liar in Missinaba County. Let us not speak of it. Let no whisper of it pass our lips.

  “No, gentlemen,” continued Bagshaw, pausing to take a drink of water, “let us rather consider this question on the high plane of national welfare. Let us not think of our own particular interests but let us consider the good of the country at large. And to do this, let me present to you some facts in regard to the price of barley in Tecumseh Township.”

  Then, amid a deep stillness, Bagshaw read off the list of prices of sixteen kinds of grain in sixteen different places during sixteen years.

  “But let me turn,” Bagshaw went on to another phase of the national subject, “and view for a moment the price of marsh hay in Missinaba County—”

  When Bagshaw
sat down that night it was felt that a Liberal vote in Tecumseh Township was a foregone conclusion.

  But here they hadn’t reckoned on the political genius of Mr. Smith. When he heard next day of the meeting, he summoned some of his leading speakers to him and he said:

  “Boys, they’re beating us on them statissicks. Ourn ain’t good enough.”

  Then he turned to Nivens and he said:

  “What was them figures you had here the other night?”

  Nivens took out a paper and began reading.

  “Stop,” said Mr. Smith, “what was that figure for bacon?”

  “Fourteen million dollars,” said Nivens.

  “Not enough,” said Mr. Smith, “make it twenty. They’ll stand for it, them farmers.”

  Nivens changed it.

  “And what was that for hay?”

  “Two dollars a ton.”

  “Shove it up to four,” said Mr. Smith. “And I tell you,” he added, “if any of them farmers says the figures ain’t correct, tell them to go to Washington and see for themselves; say that if any man wants the proof of your figures let him go over to England and ask,—tell him to go straight to London and see it all for himself in the books.”

  AFTER THIS, there was no more trouble over statistics. I must say though that it is a wonderfully convincing thing to hear trade figures of this kind properly handled. Perhaps the best man on this sort of thing in the campaign was Mullins, the banker. A man of his profession simply has to have figures of trade and population and money at his fingers’ ends and the effect of it in public speaking is wonderful.

  No doubt you have listened to speakers of this kind, but I question whether you have ever heard anything more typical of the sort of effect that I allude to than Mullins’s speech at the big rally at the Fourth Concession.

  Mullins himself, of course, knows the figures so well that he never bothers to write them into notes and the effect is very striking.

  “Now, gentlemen,” he said very earnestly, “how many of you know just to what extent the exports of this country have increased in the last ten years? How many could tell what per cent of increase there has been in one decade of our national importation?”—then Mullins paused and looked round. Not a man knew it.