o the enchanted
house, pray modulate your voice a little musical though it is--for there
is said to be an enchanted baby on the premises whose sleep must not
lightly be disturbed.

TEN. The Great Election in Missinaba County

Don't ask me what election it was, whether Dominion or Provincial or
Imperial or Universal, for I scarcely know.

It must, of course, have been going on in other parts of the country
as well, but I saw it all from Missinaba County which, with the town of
Mariposa, was, of course, the storm centre and focus point of the whole
turmoil.

I only know that it was a huge election and that on it turned issues of
the most tremendous importance, such as whether or not Mariposa should
become part of the United States, and whether the flag that had waved
over the school house at Tecumseh Township for ten centuries should be
trampled under the hoof of an alien invader, and whether Britons should
be slaves, and whether Canadians should be Britons, and whether the
farming class would prove themselves Canadians, and tremendous questions
of that kind.

And there was such a roar and a tumult to it, and such a waving of flags
and beating of drums and flaring of torchlights that such parts of the
election as may have been going on elsewhere than in Missinaba county
must have been quite unimportant and didn't really matter.

Now that it is all over, we can look back at it without heat or passion.
We can see,--it's plain enough now,--that in the great election Canada
saved the British Empire, and that Missinaba saved Canada and that
the vote of the Third Concession of Tecumseh Township saved Missinaba
County, and that those of us who carried the third concession,--well,
there's no need to push it further. We prefer to be modest about it. If
we still speak of it, it is only quietly and simply and not more than
three or four times a day.

But you can't understand the election at all, and the conventions and
the campaigns and the nominations and the balloting, unless you first
appreciate the peculiar complexion of politics in Mariposa.

Let me begin at the beginning. Everybody in Mariposa is either a Liberal
or a Conservative or else is both. Some of the people are or have
been Liberals or Conservatives all their lives and are called
dyed-in-the-wool Grits or old-time Tories and things of that sort. These
people get from long training such a swift penetrating insight into
national issues that they can deci