"The boys in your division
are a pretty tough lot, anyhow. We don't want the other
side getting hold of any monkey tricks."
"It's necessary to win this election, young man," said
Bingham, "lawfully. You won't have any trouble with my
bunch."
It was not, as will be imagined, the first discussion,
so late in the day, of the value of the preference trade
argument to the Liberal campaign. They had all realized,
after the first few weeks, that their young candidate
was a trifle overbitten with it, though remonstrance had
been a good deal curbed by Murchison's treatment of it.
When he had brought it forward at the late fall fairs
and in the lonely country schoolhouses, his talk had been
so trenchant, so vivid and pictorial, that the gathered
farmers listened with open mouths, like children,
pathetically used with life, to a grown-up fairy tale.
As Horace Williams said, if a dead horse could be made
to go this one would have brought Murchison romping in.
And Lorne had taken heed to the counsel of his party
leaders. At joint meetings, which offered the enemy his.
best opportunity for travesty and derision, he had left
it in the background of debate, devoting himself to
arguments of more immediate utility. In the literature
of the campaign it glowed with prospective benefit, but
vaguely, like a halo of Liberal conception and possible
achievement, waiting for the word from overseas.
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