t. "It's a
clear issue," wrote an influential person at Ottawa to the local party
leaders at Elgin, "we don't want any tendency to hedge or double.
It's straight business with us, the thing we want, and it will be till
Wallingham either gets it through over there, or finds he can't deal
with us. Meanwhile it might be as well to ascertain just how much there
is in it for platform purposes in a safe spot like South Fox, and how
much the fresh opposition will cost us where we can afford it. We can't
lose the seat, and the returns will be worth anything in their bearing
on the General Election next year. The objection to Carter is that he's
only half-convinced; he couldn't talk straight if he wanted to, and
that lecture tour of his in the United States ten years ago pushing
reciprocity with the Americans would make awkward literature."

The rejection of Carter practically exhausted the list of men available
whose standing in the town and experience of its suffrages brought them
naturally into the field of selection; and at this point Cruickshank
wrote to Farquharson suggesting the dramatic departure involved in the
name of Lorne Murchison. Cruickshank wrote judiciously, leaving the main
arguments in Lorne's favour to form themselves in Farquharson's mind,
but countering the objections that would rise there by the suggestion
that after a long period of confidence and steady going, in fact of
the orthodox and expected, the party should profit by the swing of
the pendulum toward novelty and tentative, rather than bring forward a
candidate who would represent, possibly misrepresent, the same beliefs
and intentions on a lower personal level. As there was no first-rate
man of the same sort to succeed Farquharson, Cruickshank suggested the
undesirability of a second-rate man; and he did it so adroitly that the
old fellow found himself in a good deal of sympathy with the idea. He
had small opinion of the lot that was left for selection, and smaller
relish for the prospect of turning his honourable activity over to any
one of them. Force of habit and training made him smile at Cruickshank's
proposition as impracticable, but he felt its attraction, even while
he dismissed it to an inside pocket. Young Murchison's name would be so
unlooked-for that if he, Farquharson, could succeed in imposing it
upon the party it would be almost like making a personal choice of his
successor, a grateful idea in abdication. Farquharson wished regretful