hard drinkers. Day after day Quimbleton and Miss Chuff, after a
little psychic communing, would prop the editor among cushions in
the big gray limousine and spin him about the city and suburbs to
bow, smile, say a few automatic words and pass on. Over the car
floated a big banner with the words: Let Bleak Do Your Drinking
For You: He Knows How. The unhappy Purplevein, who had to do his
electioneering in a state of chill sobriety, was aghast to see the
beaming and gently flushed face of his rival radiating cheer. At
the eleventh hour he tried to change his tactics and plastered the
billboards with immense posters:

BLEAK DOESN'T NEED THE JOB--HE'S SOUSED ALREADY

This line of argument might perhaps have been powerful if adopted
earlier, but by that time the agreeable vision of Bleak's ascetic
features wreathed in a faintly spiritual benignance was already
firmly fixed in the public imagination. The little celluloid
button showing his transfigured and endearing smile was worn on
millions of lapels. As one walked down the street one met that
little badge hundreds of times, and the mere repetition of the
tenderly exhilarated face seemed to many a citizen a beautiful and
significant thing. Men are altruistic at heart. They saw that
Bleak would make of this high office a richly eloquent and
appealing stewardship. They were reconciled to their own
abstinence in the thought that the dreams and desires of their own
hearts would be so nobly fulfilled by him. Alcohol was gone
forever, and perhaps it was as well. They themselves were
conscious of having abused its sacred powers. But now, in the
person of this chosen representative, all that was lovely and
laughable in the old customs would be consecrated and enshrined