hs altogether.

O'Donoghue was elected. He secured 262 of the votes which were not
spoiled. I ran him very close, having 260 votes to my credit. Vittie
came a bad third, with only eight votes. Vittie, as Titherington told me
from the first, never had a chance of success. He was only nominated in
the hope that he might take some votes away from me. I hope his friends
were satisfied with the result. Three of his eight votes would have
given me a majority. Titherington wrote me a long letter some time
afterward, as soon, in fact, as he was well enough to do sums. He said
that originally, before Lalage came on the scene, I had 1800 firm and
reliable supporters, men who would have walked miles through snowstorms
to cast their votes for me. O'Donoghue had about the same number who
would have acted with equal self-denial on his behalf. Vittie was
tolerably sure of two hundred voters and there were about two hundred
others who hesitated between Vittie and me, but would rather cut off
their right hands than vote for O'Donoghue. I ought, therefore, to have
been elected, and I would have been elected, if Lalage had not turned
the minds of the voters away from serious political thought. "I do not
know," Titherington wrote in a sort of parenthesis, "whether these women
hope to advance their cause by tactics of this kind. If they do they
are making a bad mistake. No right-thinking man will ever consent to
the enfranchisement of a sex capable of treating political life with the
levity displayed here by Miss Beresford." It is very curious how hard
Titherington finds it to believe that he has made a mistake. He will
probably go down to his grave maintaining that the letters A.S.P.L.
stand for woman's suffrage, although I pointed out to him more than once
that they do not.

The latter part of Titherington's letter was devoted to a carefully
reasoned explanation of the actual victory of O'Donoghue. He accounted
for it in two ways. O'Donoghue's supporters, being inferior in
education and general intelligence to mine, were less likely to be
affected by new and heretical doctrines such as Lalage's. A certain
amount of mental activity is required in order to go wrong. Also,
Lalage's professed admiration for truth made its strongest appeal to
my supporters, because O'Donoghue's friends were naturally addicted
to lying and loved falsehood for its own sake. My side was, in fact,
beaten--I have noticed that this is the case in many elections--be