I have found no class of people in the Southwest so omnipresent as office-seeking politicians. I have visited no neighborhood so remote, no valley so deep, no mountain so high, that the secluded cabins had not been honored by the visits of aspiring politicians, eager to secure the votes of their "sovereign" occupants. In multitudes of such cabins and settlements, their first impressions in regard to me were that I was either a sheriff, collecting the county and State taxes, or a "candidate" soliciting votes. The one vocation was as general and as universally recognized as an honorable employment as the other. If I did not make myself known as a clergyman as soon as I arrived at many of these out-of-the-way cabins, I was frequently greeted with the salutation: "How dy, sir? I reckon you are a candidate, stranger!" Some months preceding each election these aspirants for official honors publicly announced themselves as candidates for the particular office that they sought. In those States where the election was held the first Monday in August, these announcements were usually made the preceding spring at the February county or circuit court. On such occasions the court adjourned for the afternoon, and after dinner the crowds in attendance gathered in the court-house, and, one after another, all the aspirants for all the different offices, State and national, came before the assembled people, announced themselves as candidates, and set forth their qualifications for the office sought and their claims upon the suffrages of their fellow-citizens. Sometimes half a dozen or more would announce themselves as candidates for the same office. In listening to their speeches one would be led to think that the chief excellence and glory of our Constitution was that it secured to every citizen the right to be an office-seeker. "My fellow-citizens, I claim the _right_ of an American citizen to come before you and solicit your suffrages," was asserted by a great many of these candidates, and very often by those who could present but a sorry list of other claims for the office sought.