“Yes, trying to rake in some ads, stir up my local correspondents, and take subscriptions. As to your progress, old man, I'm sorry to say Wiggin's given it a sort of black eye. There was a meeting of farmers over in the tenth, at Miller's Spring. I was blamed sorry you were not there. Wiggin made a speech. It was a corker--viewed as campaign material solely. That chap's failed at the law, but he's the sharpest, most unprincipled manipulator of men's emotions I ever ran across. He showed you up as Sam Jones does the ring-tailed monster of the cloven foot.” “What Carson said about the Willis and Johnson mob was his theme, of course?” said Garner, above the dog-eared pages of his thriller. “That and ten thousand things Carson never dreamed of,” returned Tingle. “Here's the way it went. The meeting was held under a bush-arbor to keep the sun off, and the farmers had their wives and children out for a picnic. A long-faced parson led in prayer, some of the old maids piped up with a song that would have ripped slits in your musical tympanum, Garner, and then a raw-boned ploughman in a hickory shirt and one gallus introduced the guest of honor. How they could have overlooked the editor-in-chief and proprietor of the greatest agricultural weekly in north Georgia and picked out that skunk was a riddle to me.” “Well, what did he say?” Garner asked, as sharply as if he were cross-examining a non-committal witness of importance. “What did he say?” Tingle laughed, as he wiped the lather from his face with a ragged towel and stood with it in his hand. “He began by saying that he had gone into the race to win, and that he was going to the Legislature as sure as the sun was on its way down in this country and on its way up in China. He said it was a scientific certainty, as easily demonstrated as two and two make four. Those hardy, horny-handed men before him that day were not going to the polls and vote for a town dude who parted his hair in the middle, wore spike-toed shoes that glittered like a new dash-board, and was the ringleader of the rowdiest set of young card-players and whiskey-drinkers that ever blackened the morals of a mining-camp. He said that about the gang, boys, and I didn't have a thing to shoot with. In fact, I had to sit there and take in more.” “What did he say about his _platform?_” Garner asked, with a heavy frown; “that's what I want to get at. You never can hurt a politician by circulating the report that he drinks--that's what half of 'em vote for.”