* * *

The poll was drawing to a close in the Lakoumistan division. The
candidate of the Young Turkish Party was known to be three or four
hundred votes ahead, and he was already drafting his address,
returning thanks to the electors. His victory had been almost a
foregone conclusion, for he had set in motion all the approved
electioneering machinery of the West. He had even employed
motorcars. Few of his supporters had gone to the poll in these
vehicles, but, thanks to the intelligent driving of his chauffeurs,
many of his opponents had gone to their graves or to the local
hospitals, or otherwise abstained from voting. And then something
unlooked-for happened. The rival candidate, Ali the Blest, arrived
on the scene with his wives and womenfolk, who numbered, roughly,
six hundred. Ali had wasted little effort on election literature,
but had been heard to remark that every vote given to his opponent
meant another sack thrown into the Bosphorus. The Young Turkish
candidate, who had conformed to the Western custom of one wife and
hardly any mistresses, stood by helplessly while his adversary's
poll swelled to a triumphant majority.

"Cristabel Columbus!" he exclaimed, invoking in some confusion the
name of a distinguished pioneer; "who would have thought it?"

"Strange," mused Ali, "that one who harangued so clamorously about
the Secret Ballot should have overlooked the Veiled Vote."

And, walking homeward with his constituents, he murmured in his
beard an improvisation on the heretic poet of Persia: