I am now hard at work canvassing. My wife flatly declines to help, and I'm afraid to suggest the girls should take the field in support of their father. I tried to secure the services of the vicar's two daughters, but he only wrote rather a stiff note to say that he thought they would have quite enough to do in advocating his claims. I am not always at one with the clergy, but for once I agree with him. I _have_ succeeded, however, in getting Miss PHILL BURTT to help me. Her full name is, of course, PHYLLIS; but it's always called and spelt "PHILL"--I could never understand why. She's a most delightful girl, and is worth, at least, a hundred votes to me. As I explained once before, she has an extraordinary habit of calling all the villagers "idiots"--of course, I mean to her friends (such as myself), not to the villagers themselves. I asked her one day why, if she thought them idiots, she was kind enough to take the trouble to canvass them. "Well, you see," she said with a charming smile that was all her own; "I'm asking them to vote for _you_." At the time I thought this was a pretty saying, prettily said. I even told it with some amount of pride to my wife just to show her that there were people who did not sympathise with her haughty indifference. Curiously enough my wife only laughed consumedly. When she had recovered, I asked her why she laughed. "Do you _really_ mean to say, TIMOTHY," was her reply, "that you don't see what she meant?" "Well, though it may seem idiotic...." I said, and was going to add, "I don't," but before I said that, I _did_ see what she (PHYLLIS, of course, I mean) _might_ have meant. Yet I hope she didn't. Miss BURTT has only one drawback as a canvasser. She is so ridiculously scrupulous, I came across an old woman the other day who was quite deaf to my appeals. Whilst I reasoned with her, I found out how kind PHYLLIS was to her. "Miss PHILL, she's really good to us poor people. I'd vote for _her_ if she was standing." I left, having produced no impression. A day or two after I met Miss PHILL BURTT, and asked her to go and canvass the old woman; I felt sure she could secure her vote. Will it be believed that she wouldn't? She said it would be really undue influence if she did. How strange that even the nicest of women are so strangely unpractical at times! Another woman she refused to see because she never called upon her at ordinary times. Still, with all her faults, Miss BURTT is a tower of strength, and as I see her daily going about, canvass book in hand, my hopes rise higher and higher. * * * * * OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.