"And why, pray?" asked the Doctor. "Because there are no more drugs, must the physician walk?" "Not at all," said the Idiot. "But he'd be better equipped if he drove about in a piano-organ or, if he preferred, an auto on a steam-calliope." XIV HE DEFENDS CAMPAIGN METHODS "Good-morning, gentlemen," said the Idiot, cheerily, as he entered the breakfast-room. "This is a fine Sunday morning in spite of the gloom into which the approaching death of the campaign should plunge us all." "You think that, do you?" observed the Bibliomaniac. "Well, I don't agree with you. I for one am sick and tired of politics, and it will be a great relief to me when it is all over." "Dear me, what a blasé old customer you are, Mr. Bib," returned the Idiot. "Do you mean to say that a Presidential campaign does not keep your nerve-centres in a constant state of pleasurable titillation? Why, to me it is what a bag full of nuts must be to a squirrel. I fairly gloat over these quadrennial political campaigns of ours. They are to me among the most exhilarating institutions of modern life. They satisfy all one's zest for warfare without the distressing shedding of blood which attends real war, and regarded from the standpoint of humor, I know of nothing that, to the eye of an ordinarily keen observer, is more provocative of good, honest, wholesome mirth." "I don't see it," said Mr. Bib. "To my mind, the average political campaign is just a vulgar scrap in which men who ought to know better descend to all sorts of despicable trickery merely to gain the emoluments of office. This quest for the flesh-pots of politics, so far from being diverting, is, to my notion, one of the most deplorable exhibitions of human weakness that modern civilization, so called, has produced. A couple of men are put up for the most dignified office known to the world--both are gentlemen by birth and education, men of honor, men who, you would think, would scorn baseness as they hate poison--and then what happens? For three weary months the followers of each attack the character and intelligence of the other until, if you really believed what was said of either, neither in your estimation would have a shred of reputation left. Is that either diverting or elevating or educational or, indeed, anything but deplorable?"