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 candidate, too, was troubled, and sought the privacy of the special
car's drawing-room more than usual. Sylvia Morgan had given him a hint
that attacks upon him from a certain source were likely to be renewed,
and, moreover, would increase in virulence. He soon found that she was
right, as the copies of the _Monitor_ that they now obtained were
frankly cynical and unbelieving. All of its despatches from the West,
Churchill's as well as others, were depreciatory. The candidate was
invariably made to appear in a bad light--which is an easy matter to
do, in any case, without sacrifice of the truth--that is, verbally, only
the spirit being changed--and the editor reinforced them with strong
criticisms, in which quotations from English writers and a French phrase
now and then were freely employed. The whole burden of it was, "We
support this candidate; but, oh, how hard it is for us to do it, how
badly we feel about it, and how much easier it would be for us to
support any other man!" It also printed many contributions from readers,
in all of which the contributors spoke of themselves as belonging by
nature and cultivation to the select few, "the saving remnant," who
really knew what was good for the country. Here much latitude of
expression was allowed, as the paper was not directly responsible for
what these gentlemen said. They wrote of the way in which the dignity of
a great party had been destroyed by the uncouth and talkative Westerner
who had been lucky enough to secure the nomination. They felt that they
had been shamed in the face of the world, and more than once asked the
burning and painful question, "What will Europe say?" They asked, also,
if it were yet too late to amend the error, and they threw forth the
suggestion that the intelligent and cultured minority within the party
might refrain from voting, when election day came, or, in a pinch, might
vote for the other man.
These communications were signed, sometimes, with Latin names, and
sometimes with names in modern English, but always they indicated a
certain sense of superiority and of detachment from the crowd on the
part of the signers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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