could stand it–you couldn’t yourself.”
“Now, then, you’re sneezing again–I just expected it.”
“Because I’ve caught a cold in my head. I always do, when I go in the
water with my clothes on. And it takes me weeks to get over it, too.
I think it was a shame to serve me so.”
“Luigi, you are unreasonable; you know very well they couldn’t baptize
him dry. I should think you would be willing to undergo a little
inconvenience for your brother’s sake.”
“Inconvenience! Now how you talk, Aunt Betsy. I came as near as
anything to getting drowned you saw that yourself; and do you call this
inconvenience?–the room shut up as tight as a drum, and so hot the
mosquitoes are trying to get out; and a cold in the head, and dying for
sleep and no chance to get any–on account of this infamous medicine that
that assassin prescri–”
“There, you’re sneezing again. I’m going down and mix some more of this
truck for you, dear.”
CHAPTER IX
THE DRINKLESS DRUNK
During Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday the twins grew steadily worse; but
then the doctor was summoned South to attend his mother’s funeral, and
they got well in forty-eight hours. They appeared on the street on
Friday, and were welcomed with enthusiasm by the new-born parties, the
Luigi and Angelo factions. The Luigi faction carried its strength into
the Democratic party, the Angelo faction entered into a combination with
the Whigs. The Democrats nominated Luigi for alderman under the new city
government, and the Whigs put up Angelo against him. The Democrats
nominated Pudd’nhead Wilson for mayor, and he was left alone in this
glory, for the Whigs had no man who was willing to enter the lists
against such a formidable opponent. No politician had scored such a
compliment as this before in the history of the Mississippi Valley.
The political campaign in Dawson’s Landing opened in a pretty warm
fashion, and waned hotter every week. Luigi’s whole heart was in it,
and even Angelo developed a surprising amount of interest-which was
natural, because he was not merely representing Whigism, a matter of no
consequence to him; but he was representing something immensely finer and
greater–to wit, Reform. In him was centered the hopes of the whole
reform element of the town; he was the chosen and admired champion of
every clique that had a pet reform of any sort or kind at heart. He was
president of the great Teetotalers’ Union, its chiefest prophet and
mouthpiece.
But as the canvass went on, troubles began to spring up all around–
troubles for the twins, and through them for all the parties and segments
and factions of parties. Whenever Luigi had possession of the legs, he
carried Angelo to balls, rum shops, Sons of Liberty parades, horse-
races, campaign riots, and everywhere else that could damage him with his
party and the church; and when it was Angelo’s week he carried Luigi
diligently to all manner of moral and religious gatherings, doing his
best to regain the ground he had lost before. As a result of these
double performances, there was a storm blowing all the time, an ever-
rising storm, too–a storm of frantic criticism of the twins, and rage
over their extravagant, incomprehensible conduct.
Luigi had the final chance. The legs were his for the closing week of
the canvass. He led his brother a fearful dance.
But he saved his best card for the very eve of the election. There was
to be a grand turnout of the Teetotalers’ Union that day, and Angelo was
to march at the head of the procession and deliver a great oration
afterward. Luigi drank a couple of glasses of whisky–which steadied his
nerves and clarified his mind, but made Angelo drunk. Everybody who saw
the march, saw that the Champion of the Teetotalers was half seas over,
and noted also that his brother, who made no hypocritical pretensions to
extra temperance virtues, was dignified and sober. This eloquent fact
could not be unfruitful at the end of a hot political canvass. At the
mass-meeting Angelo tried to make his great temperance oration, but was
so discommoded–by hiccoughs and thickness of tongue that he had to give