The Candidate: A Political RomanceAltsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
General
The Candidate: A Political Romance
Altsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
Political campaigns -- Fiction; Political fiction
The only one not pleased was Churchill, who had expected much from Mr.
Heathcote, and who now, as he considered it, saw the committeeman turn
traitor. It was not a matter that he could handle fully in his
despatches to the _Monitor_, being too intangible to allow of bald
assertion, and he was reduced to indirect statement. This not satisfying
him at all, he wrote a long letter to Mr. Goodnight, both for the sake
of the cause and for the sake of his own feelings, which had been much
lacerated. Its production cost him a great deal of thought and labor;
but he had his reward, as its perusal after completion proved to him
that it was a masterpiece.
Churchill showed quite clearly to Mr. Goodnight the steady decay of the
candidate's character and the lower levels to which his campaign was
falling. In the security of a private letter it was not necessary for
him to spare words, and Churchill spoke his mind forcibly about the
manner in which Jimmy Grayson was pandering to the "common people," the
"ignorant mob," the "million-footed." Churchill himself, although not
old, had taken long ago the measure of these foolish common people, and
he despised them, his contempt giving him a very pleasant conviction of
his own superiority.
He also poured a few vials of wrath upon the head of Mr. Heathcote, whom
he characterized as a coward, not able to stand up against petty
persecution, and from the committeeman he passed on to others of Mr.
Grayson's immediate following, taking "King" Plummer next. Mr. Plummer,
in his opinion, was an excellent type of democracy run to riot. He was
one of the "boys" in every sense. He was wofully wanting in personal
dignity, speaking to everybody in the most familiar manner, and
encouraging the same form of address towards himself; he failed utterly
to recognize the superiority of some other men, and he was grossly
ignorant, knowing nothing whatever of Europe and the vast work that had
been done there for civilization and order. Moreover, he could not be
induced, even by the well-informed, to take any interest in the Old
World, and once had had the rudeness to say to Churchill himself, "What
in the devil is Europe to us?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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