War, the Presidential campaign, the fight between the rival
steamboat lines, had kept old Brownsville pretty well stirred up for
several years, but nothing equaling the excitement caused by the
campaign between Potts and Patton had ever been experienced in the old
town. Torch-light processions were the popular way of arousing
enthusiasm. It was the general belief in those days that the fellow who
carried the biggest blaze in the procession was the fellow of most
importance. Nowadays it's the fellow who buys the oil and sits on the
porch and watches the procession go by.

Cousin Albert was an ardent adherent of the Potts faction. Alfred's
father was just as strong for Patton. The father was well disposed
toward Albert but he was very much disgusted with Albert's fondness for
torch-light processions, particularly when Albert bore a transparency on
which was painted, in crude letters, a motto most offensive to Patton
men.

The father more than once intimated that Alfred was a very dull boy in
some respects. "He can play practical jokes on people who should be
exempt, and jokes in which no one but Alfred could see the humor. But
there's Albert, who has laid himself liable to have any sort of a joke
played upon him, goes Scott free."

Therefore Alfred fancied any joke perpetrated upon Cousin Albert must be
pretty strong or the father would stamp it as inane and without humor.

Handbills advertised there would be a parade of the Potts club and the
route was given. Alfred knew that Cousin Albert would be at the head of
the marchers, bearing a very large transparency, with an offensive motto
painted by his father's competitor, Jeffries.

Alfred procured a piece of duck canvas, water proof, about one yard
square. Repairing to the Bowman's pasture lot where the cows spent the
night near the gate, Alfred, with a scoop shovel, filled the canvas with
a half bushel or more of fertilizer. He carried it to Sammy Steele's old
tan house where he had once carried food to the exiles. An old finishing
table stood under a window from which the sash had long since
disappeared. One standing on the table at the opening was six or seven
feet higher than the narrow street below.

Drums were beating, the procession was coming, the candle torches showed
the parade turning Hogg's corner off Market Street; they were coming
toward the old tan-yard. Alfred stood at the window with the canvas
containing the mass of fertilizer. As the head of the p