ty's ticket. By count of friend and foe alike, Senator Hanway was
certain of convention fortune; he was the sure prognostication for the
White House of all the prophets.

And because the last is ever the first in the memory of a forgetful age,
and therefore the most important, that which particularly contributed to
the strength of Senator Hanway was his project of a Georgian Bay-Ontario
Canal. There arose but one opinion, and that of highest favor, touching
this gigantic waterway and the farsighted statesmanship which conceived
it; that is, but one opinion if you except the murmurs of a few railway
companies who trembled over freight rates, and whose complaints were
lost in the general roar of Canal approval.

At this juncture, so fraught with happy promise for Senator Hanway, what
should come waddling into the equation to spoil all, but a purblind,
klabber-witted journal of Toronto, just then busy beating the beauties
of the Georgian Bay-Ontario Canal into the dull Canadian skull. This
imprint, as a reason for Kanuck acquiescence in the great waterway,
proceeded to show how its effect would be to strengthen Canada in case
of war between England and the United States. Batteries could be planted
to defend the entrances of the canal, which might then be employed in
quickly sending a Canadian fleet from the upper lakes into Ontario and
vice versa. Twenty Canadian war boats, with the canal to aid them, could
threaten New York in the morning and Michigan in the afternoon, and keep
threefold their number of American vessels jumping sidewise to guard
against their ravages. If for no reason other than a reason of defensive
and offensive war, Canada should have the Georgian Bay-Ontario Canal.
Thus spake this valuable authority of Toronto.

It was Mr. Hawke, among the adherents of Governor Obstinate, who saw the
weapon that might be fashioned against Senator Hanway from the Canadian
suggestion. Mr. Hawke had long been aware of Senator Hanway's
interference against himself in the Speakership fight, and in favor of
Mr. Frost. True, he did not know of those four hundred terrifying
telegrams that so shook from his support the hysterical little
goat-bearded one and his equally hysterical fellows; but Mr. Hawke had
learned enough to ascribe his defeat to Senator Hanway, and that was
sufficient to edge him with double readiness to do said statesman what
injury he could. Besides, there was the native eagerness of Mr. Hawke to
move ever