To begin with, it was soon apparent that Cosmos Alley had shown less than its usual acumen in choosing a candidate. At the first blush, Sir Stuyvescent Milgrim, with his protection for key industries, preferential tariffs within the Empire and other shining lures for a purely mercantile community was “the sure card.” But, as John Endor’s first meeting proved, the U. P. champion was not well adapted to withstand the fire of criticism that was suddenly directed upon him from an unexpected quarter. To the surprise of every politician in the City, the chair at Mr. Endor’s first meeting was occupied by Blackhampton’s Big Noise. For years Sir Josiah Munt had held a unique position in its public life. He was the friend of every good cause. If money had to be raised for a worthy object, a piece of legislation demanded, or a wrong denounced it was “as sure as Monday morning” that Sir Munt in his own characteristic fashion would sit at a small table with a tiny hammer in his hand in the center of the platform of the City’s largest public hall. Moreover, he would bring the occasion home in a few words peculiarly his own. In the art of “putting it over” he had locally no equal. Disdaining mere grammar, verbal finesse, minor niceties of form, at all times he knew how to speak man to man to the citizens. At the Chairman’s table, Sir Munt was a formidable proposition. He was very much a master man. And from the outset of the fight for Blackhampton East, the friends of Sir Stuyvescent Milgrim had to keep the fact ever before them. “Seems to some on us, gentlemen,” said Sir Munt, in the course of his opening remarks, at Mr. Endor’s first meeting, “that our Colonial friend with the old Yorkshire name, who is so keen to help us over here, might do almost as well in Ottawa, trying to persuade the Land of Promise to give a square deal to people not so happily situated. Some on us in this hall, who helped to provide his country with the money that has done so much to make her the proposition she is to-day, have not forgotten her Government’s dealings with the Grand Trunk Railway. Those of us in the city who happened to hold the stock have not forgotten how its proprietors were frozen out by penal legislation. I, for one, gentlemen, intend to keep that little episode in mind.”