"It's perfectly fine," said the Idiot, "to think that we have men in the country whose characters are such that they can stand four months of such a test. That's what I find elevating in it. When a man who is nominated for the Presidency in June or July can emerge in November unscathed in spite of the minute scrutiny to which himself and his record and the record of his sisters and his cousins and his aunts have been subjected, it's time for the American rooster to get upon his hind legs and give three cheers for himself and the people to whom he belongs. Even old Diogenes, who spent his life looking for an honest man, would have to admit every four years that he could spot him instantly by merely coming to this country and taking his choice from among the several candidates." "You must admit, however," said the Bibliomaniac, "that a man with an honorable name must find it unpleasant to have such outrageous stories told of him." "Not a bit of it," laughed the Idiot. "The more outrageous the better. For instance, when _The Sunday Jigger_ comes out with a four-page revelation of your Republican candidate's past, in which we learn how, in 1873, he put out the eyes of a maiden aunt with a red-hot poker, and stabbed a negro cook in the back with a skewer, because she would not permit him to put rat-poison in his grandfather's coffee, you know perfectly well that that story has been put forth for the purpose of turning the maiden aunt, negro, and grandfather votes against him. You know well enough that he either never did what is charged against him, or at least that the story is greatly exaggerated--he may have stuck a pin into the cook, and played some boyish trick upon some of his relatives--but the story on the face of it is untrue and therefore harmless. Similarly with the Democratic candidate. When the _Daily Flim Flam_ asserts that he believes that the working-man is entitled to four cents a day for sixteen hours' work, and has repeatedly avowed that bread and water is the proper food for motormen, everybody with common-sense realizes at once that even the _Flim Flam_ doesn't believe the story. It hurts no one, therefore, and provokes a great deal of innocent mirth. You don't yourself believe that last yarn about the Prohibition candidate, do you?" "I haven't heard any yarn about him," said the Bibliomaniac. "That he is the owner of a brewery up in Rochester, and backs fifteen saloons and a pool-room in New York?" said the Idiot. "Of course I don't," said the Bibliomaniac. "Who does?"