July per year is now inadequate, the country has grown so.
–Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar
The summer weeks dragged by, and then the political campaign opened–
opened in pretty warm fashion, and waxed hotter and hotter daily.
The twins threw themselves into it with their whole heart,
for their self-love was engaged. Their popularity,
so general at first, had suffered afterward; mainly because they
had been TOO popular, and so a natural reaction had followed.
Besides, it had been diligently whispered around that it was
curious–indeed, VERY curious–that that wonderful knife of
theirs did not turn up–IF it was so valuable, or IF it had ever existed.
And with the whisperings went chucklings and nudgings and winks,
and such things have an effect. The twins considered
that success in the election would reinstate them, and that
defeat would work them irreparable damage. Therefore they worked hard,
but not harder than Judge Driscoll and Tom worked against
them in the closing days of the canvass. Tom’s conduct had
remained so letter-perfect during two whole months now, that his
uncle not only trusted him with money with which to persuade voters,
but trusted him to go and get it himself out of the safe
in the private sitting room.
The closing speech of the campaign was made by Judge Driscoll,
and he made it against both of the foreigners. It was
disastrously effective. He poured out rivers of ridicule upon them,
and forced the big mass meeting to laugh and applaud.
He scoffed at them as adventures, mountebanks, sideshow riffraff,
dime museum freaks; he assailed their showy titles with
measureless derision; he said they were back-alley barbers
disguised as nobilities, peanut peddlers masquerading as
gentlemen, organ-grinders bereft of their brother monkey.
At last he stopped and stood still. He waited until the place had
become absolutely silent and expectant, then he delivered his
deadliest shot; delivered it with ice-cold seriousness and
deliberation, with a significant emphasis upon the closing words:
he said he believed that the reward offered for the lost knife
was humbug and bunkum, and that its owner would know where to
find it whenever he should have occasion TO ASSASSINATE SOMEBODY.
Then he stepped from the stand, leaving a startled and
impressive hush behind him instead of the customary explosion of
cheers and party cries.
The strange remark flew far and wide over the town and made
an extraordinary sensation. Everybody was asking, “What could he
mean by that?” And everybody went on asking that question,
but in vain; for the judge only said he knew what he was talking about,
and stopped there; Tom said he hadn’t any idea what his uncle meant,
and Wilson, whenever he was asked what he thought it meant,
parried the question by asking the questioner what HE thought it meant.
Wilson was elected, the twins were defeated–crushed,
in fact, and left forlorn and substantially friendless.
Tom went back to St. Louis happy.
Dawson’s Landing had a week of repose now, and it needed it.
But it was in an expectant state, for the air was full of rumors
of a new duel. Judge Driscoll’s election labors had prostrated him,
but it was said that as soon as he was well enough to
entertain a challenge he would get one from Count Luigi.
The brothers withdrew entirely from society, and nursed
their humiliation in privacy. They avoided the people, and wait
out for exercise only late at night, when the streets were deserted.
CHAPTER 18
Roxana Commands
Gratitude and treachery are merely the two extremities of
the same procession. You have seen all of it that is worth
staying for when the band and the gaudy officials have gone by.
–Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar
THANKSGIVING DAY. Let us all give humble, hearty, and
sincere thanks now, but the turkeys. In the island of Fiji they
do not use turkeys; they use plumbers. It does not become you
and me to sneer at Fiji.
–Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar
The Friday after the election was a rainy one in St. Louis.
It rained all day long, and rained hard, apparently trying its
best to wash that soot-blackened town white, but of course not
succeeding. Toward midnight Tom Driscoll arrived at his lodgings