de the most complicated question in
four seconds: in fact, just as soon as they grab the city papers out of
the morning mail, they know the whole solution of any problem you can
put to them. There are other people whose aim it is to be broad-minded
and judicious and who vote Liberal or Conservative according to their
judgment of the questions of the day. If their judgment of these
questions tells them that there is something in it for them in voting
Liberal, then they do so. But if not, they refuse to be the slaves of a
party or the henchmen of any political leader. So that anybody looking
for henches has got to keep away from them.

But the one thing that nobody is allowed to do in Mariposa is to have
no politics. Of course there are always some people whose circumstances
compel them to say that they have no politics. But that is easily
understood. Take the case of Trelawney, the postmaster. Long ago he was
a letter carrier under the old Mackenzie Government, and later he was
a letter sorter under the old Macdonald Government, and after that a
letter stamper under the old Tupper Government, and so on. Trelawney
always says that he has no politics, but the truth is that he has too
many.

So, too, with the clergy in Mariposa. They have no politics--absolutely
none. Yet Dean Drone round election time always announces as his text
such a verse as: "Lo! is there not one righteous man in Israel?" or:
"What ho! is it not time for a change?" And that is a signal for all the
Liberal business men to get up and leave their pews.

Similarly over at the Presbyterian Church, the minister says that his
sacred calling will not allow him to take part in politics and that
his sacred calling prevents him from breathing even a word of harshness
against his fellow man, but that when it comes to the elevation of the
ungodly into high places in the commonwealth (this means, of course, the
nomination of the Conservative candidate) then he's not going to allow
his sacred calling to prevent him from saying just what he thinks of
it. And by that time, having pretty well cleared the church of
Conservatives, he proceeds to show from the scriptures that the ancient
Hebrews were Liberals to a man, except those who were drowned in the
flood or who perished, more or less deservedly, in the desert.

There are, I say, some people who are allowed to claim to have no
politics,--the office holders, and the clergy and the school teachers
and the hotel ke