breaking furniture had been heard by the neighbors on Caraway
Street. But at any rate the Bishop lived up to his word. Orders
over his signature went to Congress, and vast sums of money were
appropriated immediately for

The establishment and maintenance of a national park with suitable
buildings and appurtenances wherein might be maintained an elected
individual in a state of freedom, with access to alcoholic
beverages, in order that successive generations might view for
themselves the devastating effects of alcohol upon the human
system.

No political campaign was ever contested with more zeal and zest
than that which led up to the election of the Perpetual Souse.
Life had grown rather dreary under the innumerable prohibitions of
the Chuff regime, and the citizens welcomed the excitement of the
campaign as a notable diversion. Quimbleton appointed himself
chairman of the committee to nominate Bleak, and the editor
(acting under his friend's instructions) had hardly begun to deny
vigorously that he had any intention of being a candidate before
he found himself plunged into a bewildering vortex of meetings,
speeches, and confessions of faith. Marching clubs, properly
outfitted with two-quart silk tiles and frock coats, were spatting
their way plumply down the Boulevard. Torchlight processions
tinted the night; ward picnics strewed the shells of hard-boiled
eggs on the lawns of suburban amusement parks, while Bleak, very
ill at ease, was kissing adhesive babies and autographing tissue
napkins and smiling horribly as he whirled about with the
grandmothers in the agony of the carrousel. More than once,
reeling with the endless circuit of a painted merry-go-round