vening and owned up straight that they were Conservatives. They
said they could stand the strain no longer and simply had to confess.
Whatever the sacrifice might mean, they were prepared to make it.

Even Mr. Golgotha Gingham, the undertaker, came out and admitted that
in working for John Henry Bagshaw he'd been going straight against his
conscience. He said that right from the first he had had his misgivings.
He said it had haunted him. Often at night when he would be working away
quietly, one of these sudden misgivings would overcome him so that he
could hardly go on with his embalming. Why, it appeared that on the very
first day when reciprocity was proposed, he had come home and said to
Mrs. Gingham that he thought it simply meant selling out the country.
And the strange thing was that ever so many others had just the same
misgivings. Trelawney admitted that he had said to Mrs. Trelawney that
it was madness, and Jeff Thorpe, the barber, had, he admitted, gone home
to his dinner, the first day reciprocity was talked of, and said to Mrs.
Thorpe that it would simply kill business in the country and introduce
a cheap, shoddy, American form of haircut that would render true loyalty
impossible. To think that Mrs. Gingham and Mrs. Trelawney and Mrs.
Thorpe had known all this for six months and kept quiet about it! Yet I
think there were a good many Mrs. Ginghams in the country. It is merely
another proof that no woman is fit for politics.

The demonstration that night in Mariposa will never be forgotten. The
excitement in the streets, the torchlights, the music of the band of
the Knights of Pythias (an organization which is conservative in all but
name), and above all the speeches and the patriotism.

They had put up a big platform in front of the hotel, and on it were
Mr. Smith and his chief workers, and behind them was a perfect forest of
flags. They presented a huge bouquet of flowers to Mr. Smith, handed to
him by four little girls in white,--the same four that I spoke of above,
for it turned out that they were all Conservatives.

Then there were the speeches. Judge Pepperleigh spoke and said that
there was no need to dwell on the victory that they had achieved,
because it was history; there was no occasion to speak of what part he
himself had played, within the limits of his official position, because
what he had done was henceforth a matter of history; and Nivens, the
lawyer, said that he would only say just a f