them, at any rate I ought to, as I have been brought up in a raging
Tory household, and so have been steeped in them from my youth up.

There is such a sameness in politicians. Whatever their opinions,
their language and feelings are all one. They are only directed at
different people. While one man is gloating over a Conservative
victory you hear a mutter from the Radical to the effect that "That
_brute_ has got in for ----" Poor man, why, because he thinks
differently to you, should he be a brute? But just the same words are
spoken if the positions be reversed. It is only the mouths that change
places.

I am afraid my views incline toward the Tory side. I cannot help it, I
was bought over long ago. You _must_ feel an interest as to the
successful candidate when the result means either a tip all round or a
thundery atmosphere for the rest of the day. Men take an adverse poll
as a personal affront and vent their feelings on their families. The
tipping was quite an understood thing when I was younger, now it is
given up, and joy is shown in a less substantial way, I regret to say.
Unfortunately the thunder storms are not events of the past as well.

Politicians have such a narrow way of looking at things. The other
side can do nothing right while they themselves are absolutely
faultless! If a Tory wishes to confer an opprobrious epithet on a
person he calls him a Radical, and _vice versâ_; the opposite faction
is capable of any enormity? This reminds me of the old Scotchman who
on being asked his opinion of a man who had first murdered and then
mutilated his victim, answered in a shocked voice, "What do I think?
Well, I think that a maun who'd do all that would whistle on the
Sawbuths!" "Such a man must be a Home Ruler," my father would have