"My fellow-citizens, I came before you at the opening of this campaign and announced myself as a candidate for sheriff of the county. I now appear before you to withdraw from the race. I have a great many friends, strong friends. They stand up to me nobly. Nobody could wish for better friends. There is only this one trouble in my case--_I haven't got quite enough of them_. "I have already gone so far in this race that I don't know myself. I have lost myself entirely. When I go into the different precincts and hear all the tales that they have got afloat about me, and the character that they give me, it is somebody that I don't know anything about--somebody that I never heard of before. Fellow-citizens, it isn't me, I assure you, that they are talking about. They have mistaken the man. If any of you should want to know anything about _me_, just ask the boys in my precinct. They know me. They will tell you. They all stand up for me." I will relate but one more veritable incident to illustrate political life in the Brush, and to show the expedients sometimes resorted to by able and eloquent men to make sure of an election to an important office. I had spent a Sabbath and preached in behalf of the American Bible Society at a small county-seat town upon one of the large rivers in the Southwest. While at breakfast on Monday morning, the circuit judge of that judicial district, who was a resident of the village, sent his colored boy to the house where I was staying, with the message that he had heard that I was going to Big Spring that day, and he wished to know whether I was going in the morning or afternoon. He said that he had expected to go there in the morning, but if he could have my company he would defer his ride. As I had an appointment to meet the officers of the county Bible Society, and attend to the appointment of a Bible-distributor, and order Bibles from New York for the supply of the county, I sent back word to him that I could not close up my business so as to leave until afternoon. After dinner we mounted our horses and started upon our pleasant ride of about twenty miles. The day was pleasant, the distance not great, the Judge was intelligent and a very fine talker, and I enjoyed the ride greatly. In former visits to the village I had been a guest in his family, when he had been absent from home, holding his courts in distant parts of his district, so that I had not before become as well acquainted with him as I was with his family.