ent sides.

But just as soon as elections drew near, the differences in politics
became perfectly apparent. Liberals and Conservatives drew away from one
another. Joe Milligan used the motor boat one Saturday and Dr. Gallagher
the next, and Pete Glover sold hardware on one side of the store and Alf
McNichol sold paint on the other. You soon realized too that one of the
newspapers was Conservative and the other was Liberal, and that there
was a Liberal drug store and a Conservative drug store, and so on.
Similarly round election time, the Mariposa House was the Liberal Hotel,
and the Continental Conservative, though Mr. Smith's place, where they
always put on a couple of extra bar tenders, was what you might call
Independent-Liberal-Conservative, with a dash of Imperialism thrown in.
Mr. Gingham, the undertaker, was, as a natural effect of his calling,
an advanced Liberal, but at election time he always engaged a special
assistant for embalming Conservative customers.

So now, I think, you understand something of the general political
surroundings of the great election in Missinaba County.

John Henry Bagshaw was the sitting member, the Liberal member, for
Missinaba County.

The Liberals called him the old war horse, and the old battle-axe, and
the old charger and the old champion and all sorts of things of that
kind. The Conservatives called him the old jackass and the old army mule
and the old booze fighter and the old grafter and the old scoundrel.

John Henry Bagshaw was, I suppose, one of the greatest political forces
in the world. He had flowing white hair crowned with a fedora hat, and a
smooth statesmanlike face which it cost the country twenty-five cents a
day to shave.

Altogether the Dominion of Canada had spent over two thousand dollars in
shaving that face during the twenty years that Bagshaw had represented
Missinaba County. But the result had been well worth it.

Bagshaw wore a long political overcoat that it cost the country twenty
cents a day to brush, and boots that cost the Dominion fifteen cents
every morning to shine.

But it was money well spent.

Bagshaw of Mariposa was one of the most representative men of the age,
and it's no wonder that he had been returned for the county for five
elections running, leaving the Conservatives nowhere. Just think how
representative he was. He owned two hundred acres out on the Third
Concession and kept two men working on it all the time to prove that he