rtheless began a fire
of cross-questions on Mr. Tooting as to the personality, habits, and
occupations of the discerning ten in question, making certain little
marks of his own against each name. Thus it will be seen that Mr. Crewe
knew perfectly what he was about--although no one else did except Mr.
Tooting, who merely looked mysterious when questioned on the streets
of Ripton or Newcastle or Kingston. It was generally supposed, however,
that the gentleman from Leith was going to run for the State Senate, and
was attempting to get a following in other counties, in order to push
through his measures next time. Hence the tiny fluctuations of Hilary
Vane's seismograph an instrument, as will be shown, utterly out-of-date.
Not so the motto toujours l'audace. Geniuses continue (at long
intervals) to be born, and to live up to that motto.

That seismograph of the Honourable Hilary's persisted in tracing only
a slightly ragged line throughout the beautiful month of May, in which
favourable season the campaign of the Honourable Adam B. Hunt took root
and flourished--apparently from the seed planted by the State Tribune.
The ground, as usual, had been carefully prepared, and trained gardeners
raked, and watered, and weeded the patch. It had been decreed and
countersigned that the Honourable Adam B. Hunt was the flower that was
to grow this year.

There must be something vitally wrong with an instrument which failed to
register the great earthquake shock of June the seventh!

Now that we have come to the point where this shock is to be recorded
on these pages, we begin to doubt whether our own pen will be able
adequately to register it, and whether the sheet is long enough and
broad enough upon which to portray the relative importance of the
disturbance created. The trouble is, that there is nothing to measure it
by. What other event in the history of the State produced the vexation
of spirit, the anger, the tears, the profanity; the derision, the
laughter of fools, the contempt; the hope, the glee, the prayers, the
awe, the dumb amazement at the superb courage of this act? No, for a
just comparison we shall have to reach back to history and fable: David
and Goliath; Theseus and the Minotaur; or, better still, Cadmus and
the Dragon! It was Cadmus (if we remember rightly) who wasted no time
whatever, but actually jumped down the dragon's throat and cut him up
from the inside! And it was Cadmus, likewise, who afterwards sowed the