dead horse which we
don't want to flog, and now-a-days we are all in favour of a big
navy, so I think that is about everything--except, of course,
anti-vaccination, which you'll run for all it's worth."

"I never said that I would, Mr. Strong," I answered.

He looked at me curiously. "No, and you never said you wouldn't.
Now, doctor, let us come to an understanding about this, for here in
Dunchester it's worth more than all the other things put together. If
this seat is to be won, it will be won on anti-vaccination. That's our
burning question, and that's why you are being asked to stand, because
you've studied the thing and are believed to be one of the few doctors
who don't bow the knee to Baal. So look here, let's understand each
other. If you have any doubts about this matter, say so, and we will
have done with it, for, remember, once you are on the platform you've
got to go the whole hog; none of your scientific finicking, but appeals
to the people to rise up in their thousands and save their innocent
children from being offered to the Moloch of vaccination, with enlarged
photographs of nasty-looking cases, and the rest of it."

I listened and shivered. The inquiry into rare cases of disease after
vaccination had been interesting work, which, whatever deductions people
might choose to draw, in fact committed me to nothing. But to become one
of the ragged little regiment of medical dissenters, to swallow all the
unscientific follies of the anti-vaccination agitators, to make myself
responsible for and to promulgate their distorted figures and wild
statements--ah! that was another thing. Must I appear upon platforms and
denounce this wonderful discovery as the "law of useless infanticide"?
Must I tell people that "smallpox is really a curative process and not
the deadly scourge and pestilence that doctors pretend it to be"? Must I
maintain "that vaccination never did, never does, and never can prevent
even a single case of smallpox"? Must I hold it up as a "law (!) of
devil worship and human sacrifice to idols"?

If I accepted Strong's offer it seemed that I must do all these
things: more, I must be false to my instincts, false to my training and
profession, false to my scientific knowledge. I could not do it. And
yet--when did a man in my position ever get such a chance as that which
was offered to me this day? I was ready with my tongue and fond of
public speaking; from boyhood it had been my desire to enter Par