Another candidate comes before my mind who wanted to sacrifice himself on the altar of his country by filling some civic office. He had, it seems, been jocularly accused by someone with being a clodhopper and not sharp enough for a councillor. For the first time in his life he mounted the rostrum, and eager as he was to speak when among the crowd, up there it was quite another affair. A great big, hulking fellow he was, who had just attained his majority, and whose father had set him up on a hundred-acre farm. Never since his youthful days, when he recited at the common school-- “On Linden, when the sun was low, All bloodless lay the untrodden snow,” with all the declamation the piece could possibly stand, had he stood up before the public. He chokes, makes a squeak, tries it again, swallows rapidly, and after a most painful suspense of a minute or so gets out: “Gentlemen, I am a clodhopper, and I’m not ashamed to own it. But I am fit for the office of councillor, and if you will vote for me I will serve you well and faithfully. I promise you I will keep down expenditures, and I will do my best to look after the roads and bridges. Gentlemen, I ask for your votes.” And he gets off that rostrum as quickly as if he were standing on hot coals. He is in a profuse glow of perspiration, feeling down in his heart, “What a fool I made of myself.” This time the religious belief was all right, and he got in. In our towns and cities throughout Ontario, nearly seven out of every ten men are looking for municipal offices. Let one attend a town nomination and he will find as many as ten applicants for every single office, and the mutual recriminations which these would-be-immortalized townsmen make upon one another are to the listener, to say the least, rather disgraceful and disgusting. It is a fact that very ordinary persons in our towns and villages--men of very moderate ability or means--will come as near calling their fellow-townsmen liars as they dare go, and all for the sake of sitting at a council board for one year. Let the roads in that town, for instance, be pretty bad during an open winter, and one may hear such municipal councillors holding an open-air meeting of the council, and it is quite refreshing to find that every single one of that devoted council is responsible for the bad streets of the town. To get municipal honors in towns it may be necessary to act in this way, but then I am pleased to think there are some few persons in every community who are content to jog on through life and do without such honors, and who do not find it necessary to call their fellows liars. It is said the real safeguard for the liberty of the English-speaking people is the town meeting. If that be so, our liberties in Canada are fully assured. [Illustration: CAMP MEETING SCENE.] CHAPTER XV.