Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town Stephen Leacock (ready to read books TXT) 📖

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.

XI 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 handkerchief, 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