he day and that the Liberal party was the glory of the Dominion
and that as for this idea of non-partisan politics the very thought
of it made them sick. Right away in the committee rooms they began
to organize the demonstration for the evening with lantern slides and
speeches and they arranged for a huge bouquet to be presented to Bagshaw
on the platform by four little girls (all Liberals) all dressed in
white.

And it was just at this juncture, with one hour of voting left, that
Mr. Smith emerged from his committee rooms and turned his voters on the
town, much as the Duke of Wellington sent the whole line to the charge
at Waterloo. From every committee room and sub-committee room they
poured out in flocks with blue badges fluttering on their coats.

"Get at it, boys," said Mr. Smith, "vote and keep on voting till they
make you quit."

Then he turned to his campaign assistant. "Billy," he said, "wire down
to the city that I'm elected by an overwhelming majority and tell them
to wire it right back. Send word by telephone to all the polling places
in the county that the hull town has gone solid Conservative and tell
them to send the same news back here. Get carpenters and tell them to
run up a platform in front of the hotel; tell them to take the bar door
clean off its hinges and be all ready the minute the poll quits."

It was that last hour that did it. Just as soon as the big posters
went up in the windows of the Mariposa Newspacket with the telegraphic
despatch that Josh Smith was reported in the city to be elected, and was
followed by the messages from all over the county, the voters hesitated
no longer. They had waited, most of them, all through the day, not
wanting to make any error in their vote, but when they saw the Smith men
crowding into the polls and heard the news from the outside, they went
solid in one great stampede, and by the time the poll was declared
closed at five o'clock there was no shadow of doubt that the county was
saved and that Josh Smith was elected for Missinaba.

I wish you could have witnessed the scene in Mariposa that evening. It
would have done your heart good,--such joy, such public rejoicing as you
never saw. It turned out that there wasn't really a Liberal in the whole
town and that there never had been. They were all Conservatives and had
been for years and years. Men who had voted, with pain and sorrow in
their hearts, for the Liberal party for twenty years, came out that
e