In the days following Quimbleton\'s coup Chuff was in seclusion. It was rumored that he was ill; it was rumored that the sounds of breaking furniture had been heard by the neighbors on Caraway Street. But at any rate the Bishop lived up to his word. Orders over his signature went to Congress, and vast sums of money were appropriated immediately for
The establishment and maintenance of a national park with suitable buildings and appurtenances wherein might be maintained an elected individual in a state of freedom, with access to alcoholic beverages, in order that successive generations might view for themselves the devastating effects of alcohol upon the human system.
No political campaign was ever contested with more zeal and zest than that which led up to the election of the Perpetual Souse. Life had grown rather dreary under the innumerable prohibitions of the Chuff regime, and the citizens welcomed the excitement of the campaign as a notable diversion. Quimbleton appointed himself chairman of the committee to nominate Bleak, and the editor (acting under his friend\'s instructions) had hardly begun to deny vigorously that he had any intention of being a candidate before he found himself plunged into a bewildering vortex of meetings, speeches, and confessions of faith. Marching clubs, properly outfitted with two-quart silk tiles and frock coats, were spatting their way plumply down the Boulevard. Torchlight processions tinted the night; ward picnics strewed the shells of hard-boiled eggs on the lawns of suburban amusement parks, while Bleak, very ill at ease, was kissing adhesive babies and autographing tissue napkins and smiling horribly as he whirled about with the grandmothers in the agony of the carrousel. More than once, reeling with the endless circuit of a painted merry-go-round charger, the perplexed candidate became so confused that he kissed the paper napkin and autographed the baby.
He found Quimbleton a stern ringleader. Virgil was not satisfied with the old-fashioned method of stumping the country from the taff-rail of a Pullman car, and insisted on strapping Bleak into the cockpit of a biplane and flying him from city to city. They would land in some central square, and the candidate, deafened and half-frozen, would stammer a few halting remarks. He felt it rather keenly that Quimbleton looked down on his lack of oratorical gift, and it was a frequent humiliation that when words did not prosper on his tongue his impatient pilot would turn on the motors and zoom off into space in the very middle of a sentence.
Nevertheless, the campaign went famously. Bleak had one considerable advantage in being comparatively unknown. He had never permitted himself the luxury of making enemies: except for a few ex-reporters who had once worked on the Balloon he had not a foe in the world. Quimbleton had been eager to import a covey of gunmen from other cities, but when these arrived there was really nothing for them to do. They were glad to accept jobs from Bishop Chuff, and were well paid for waylaying and sniping the few grapes and apples that had escaped previous pogroms.
There was only one plank in Bleak\'s modest platform, but he walked it so happily that it began to look like a gangplank leading onto the Ship of State. He expressed his doctrine very agreeably in his speech accepting the party nomination; though credit should be given to Theodolinda, who had assisted him by a little private seance before he addressed the convention.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said (looking as he spoke at one of the handbills announcing his candidacy for the dignity of mouthpiece of the nation)—"I issue dodgers, but I never dodge the issue. I can Take It or Let It Alone, but frankly, I prefer to Take It. I hope I speak modestly: yet candor insists that both by past training and present inclination I feel myself fitted to deal with the problems of this exalted office. If elected to this high place of trust I shall regard myself solely as the servant of the public, solely as the representative of your sovereign will. As I raise the glass or peel the lemon, I shall not act in any individual capacity. My own good cheer (I beg you to believe) will be my last thought. I shall remember, in every gesture and every gulp, that my thirst is in reality the Thirst of a Nation, delegated to me by ballot; that my laughter and song (if things should go so far) are truly the mirth and music of a proud people expressing themselves through me. I shall be at all times accessible to my fellow-men, solicitous to hear their counsel and command. Believing (as I do) in moderation, yet I should not dream of permitting private sentiment to interfere with public interest when more violent measures should seem desirable.
"I like to think, my fellow-citizens, that you have conferred this nomination upon me not wholly at random. I like to think that I am only expressing your thought when I say that many drinkers have been the worst enemies of the cause we all hold dear. The alcoholshevik and the I.W.W.—the I Wallow in Wine faction—have done much to discredit the old bland Jeffersonian toper who carried tippling to the level of a fine art. I have no patience with the doctrine of complete immersion. Ever since I was first admitted to the bar I have deplored the conduct of those violent and vulgar revelers who have brought discredit upon the loveliest, most delicate art known to man. Now, at last, by supreme wisdom, drinking is to be elevated to the dignity of a career. I like to think that I express your sentiment when I say that drinking is too precious, too subtle, too fragile a function to be entrusted to the common crowd. Therefore I heartily applaud your admirable intention of entrusting it entirely to me, and look forward with profound satisfaction to the privilege of enshrining and perpetuating in my own person the genial traditions that have clustered round the institution of Liquor. If elected, I shall endeavor to carry on the fine old rituals and pass them down unimpaired to the next incumbent. I shall endeavor to make duty a pleasure, and pleasure a duty. I shall remind myself that I am only performing the service to humanity that each one of you would willingly render if you were in my place.
"My fellow-citizens, I thank you for your amiable confidence, and am happy to accept the nomination."
There were some who criticized this speech on the ground that it was too academic. It was remembered that Mr. Bleak had at one time been a school-teacher, and his opponents were quick to raise the cry "What can a schoolmaster know about liquor?" It was said that Mr. Bleak was too scholarly, too aloof, too cold-blooded: that his interest in booze was merely philosophical, that he would be incompetent to deal with the practical problems of actual drinking: that he would surround himself with drinks that would be mere puppets, subservient entirely to his own purposes. The adherents of Jerry Purplevein, the nominee of the other party, made haste to assert that Bleak was not a drinker at all but was a tool of the Chuff machine. Jerry was a former bartender who had been pining away in the ice-cream cone business. Huge banners appeared across the streets, showing highly ............