to England and ask,--tell him to go
straight to London and see it all for himself in the books."

After this, there was no more trouble over statistics. I must say though
that it is a wonderfully convincing thing to hear trade figures of this
kind properly handled. Perhaps the best man on this sort of thing in the
campaign was Mullins, the banker. A man of his profession simply has to
have figures of trade and population and money at his fingers' ends and
the effect of it in public speaking is wonderful.

No doubt you have listened to speakers of this kind, but I question
whether you have ever heard anything more typical of the sort of effect
that I allude to than Mullins's speech at the big rally at the Fourth
Concession.

Mullins himself, of course, knows the figures so well that he never
bothers to write them into notes and the effect is very striking.

"Now, gentlemen," he said very earnestly, "how many of you know just to
what extent the exports of this country have increased in the last ten
years? How many could tell what per cent. of increase there has been in
one decade of our national importation?"--then Mullins paused and looked
round. Not a man knew it.

"I don't recall," he said, "exactly the precise amount myself,--not at
this moment,--but it must be simply tremendous. Or take the question of
population," Mullins went on, warming up again as a born statistician
always does at the proximity of figures, "how many of you know, how many
of you can state, what has been the decennial percentage increase in our
leading cities--?"

There he paused, and would you believe it, not a man could state it.

"I don't recall the exact figures," said Mullins, "but I have them at
home and they are positively colossal."

But just in one phase of the public speaking, the candidacy of Mr. Smith
received a serious set-back.

It had been arranged that Mr. Smith should run on a platform of total
prohibition. But they soon found that it was a mistake. They had
imported a special speaker from the city, a grave man with a white tie,
who put his whole heart into the work and would take nothing for it
except his expenses and a sum of money for each speech. But beyond the
money, I say, he would take nothing.

He spoke one night at the Tecumseh Corners social hall at the same time
when the Liberal meeting was going on at the Tecumseh Corners school
house.

"Gentlemen," he said, as he paused half way in his speech,--"while