"
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.
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