weary of civic honours. He had had enough. He felt it
incumbent on him to step out and make way for others who deserved their
turn as well as himself: in future he proposed to confine his whole
attention to his Misfit Semi-Ready Establishment which he was happy to
state was offering as nobby a line of early fall suiting as was ever
seen at the price."

* * * * *

There is no need to recount here in detail the glorious triumph of the
election day itself. It will always be remembered as the purest,
cleanest election ever held in the precincts of the city. The citizens'
organization turned out in overwhelming force to guarantee that it
should be so. Bands of Dr. Boomer's students, armed with baseball bats,
surrounded the polls to guarantee fair play. Any man wishing to cast an
unclean vote was driven from the booth: all those attempting to
introduce any element of brute force or rowdyism into the election were
cracked over the head. In the lower part of the town scores of willing
workers, recruited often from the humblest classes, kept order with
pickaxes. In every part of the city motor cars, supplied by all the
leading businessmen, lawyers, and doctors of the city, acted as patrols
to see that no unfair use should be made of other vehicles in carrying
voters to the polls.

It was a foregone victory from the first--overwhelming and complete.
The cohorts of darkness were so completely routed that it was
practically impossible to find them. As it fell dusk the streets were
filled with roaring and surging crowds celebrating the great victory
for clean government, while in front of every newspaper office huge
lantern pictures of _Mayor McGrath the Champion of Pure Government_,
and _O. Skinyer, the People's Solicitor_, and the other nominees of the
league, called forth cheer after cheer of frenzied enthusiasm.

* * * * *

They held that night in celebration a great reception at the Mausoleum
Club on Plutoria Avenue, given at its own suggestion by the city. The
city, indeed, insisted on it.

Nor was there ever witnessed even in that home of art and refinement a
scene of greater charm. In the spacious corridor of the club a
Hungarian band wafted Viennese music from Tyrolese flutes through the
rubber trees. There was champagne bubbling at a score of sideboards
where noiseless waiters poured it into goblets as broad and flat as
floating water-lily leaves. And through it all moved the