nd I
hope he's to have some'at for his trouble. He won't have my word to
vote unless he have some'at." Such is the conversation in which the
candidate takes a part, while his cortege at the door is criticising
his very imperfect mode of securing Mrs. Bubbs' good wishes. Then he
goes on to the next house, and the same thing with some variation is
endured again. Some guide, philosopher, and friend, who accompanies
him, and who is the chief of the cortege, has calculated on his
behalf that he ought to make twenty such visitations an hour, and to
call on two hundred constituents in the course of the day. As he is
always falling behind in his number, he is always being driven on by
his philosopher, till he comes to hate the poor creatures to whom he
is forced to address himself, with a most cordial hatred.

It is a nuisance to which no man should subject himself in any
weather. But when it rains there is superadded a squalor and an ill
humour to all the party which makes it almost impossible for them not
to quarrel before the day is over. To talk politics to Mrs. Bubbs
under any circumstances is bad, but to do so with the conviction that
the moisture is penetrating from your greatcoat through your shirt to
your bones, and that while so employed you are breathing the steam
from those seven other wet men at the door, is abominable. To have
to go through this is enough to take away all the pride which a man
might otherwise take from becoming a member of Parliament. But to
go through it and then not to become a member is base indeed! To
go through it and to feel that you are probably paying at the rate
of a hundred pounds a day for the privilege is most disheartening.
Silverbridge, as he backed up Tregear in the uncomfortable work,
congratulated himself on the comfort of having a Mr. Sprugeon and a
Mr. Sprout who could manage his borough for him without a contest.

They worked on that day all the morning till one, when they took
luncheon, all reeking with wet, at the King's Head,--so that a little
money might be legitimately spent in the cause. Then, at two, they
sallied out again, vainly endeavouring to make their twenty calls
within the hour. About four, when it was beginning to be dusk, they
were very tired, and Silverbridge had ventured to suggest that as
they were all wet through, and as there was to be another meeting in
the Assembly Room that night, and as nobody in that part of the town
seemed to be at home, they might