other placards, too, with BAGSHAW AND LIBERTY, BAGSHAW AND
PROSPERITY, VOTE FOR THE OLD MISSINABA STANDARD BEARER, and up town
beside the Mariposa House there were the Bagshaw committee rooms with
a huge white streamer across the street, and with a gang of Bagshaw
workers smoking their heads off.

But Mr. Smith had an estimate made which showed that nearly two cigars
to one were smoked in his committee rooms as compared with the Liberals.
It was the first time in five elections that the Conservative had been
able to make such a showing as that.

One might mention, too, that there were Drone placards out,--five or six
of them,--little things about the size of a pocket handkerchief, with a
statement that "Mr. Edward Drone solicits the votes of the electors of
Missinaba County." But you would never notice them. And when Drone tried
to put up a streamer across the Main Street with DRONE AND HONESTY the
wind carried it away into the lake.

The fight was really between Smith and Bagshaw, and everybody knew it
from the start.

I wish that I were able to narrate all the phases and the turns of the
great contest from the opening of the campaign till the final polling
day. But it would take volumes.

First of all, of course, the trade question was hotly discussed in the
two newspapers of Mariposa, and the Newspacket and the Times-Herald
literally bristled with statistics. Then came interviews with the
candidates and the expression of their convictions in regard to tariff
questions.

"Mr. Smith," said the reporter of the Mariposa Newspacket, "we'd like
to get your views of the effect of the proposed reduction of the
differential duties."

"By gosh, Pete," said Mr. Smith, "you can search me. Have a cigar."

"What do you think, Mr. Smith, would be the result of lowering the _ad
valorem_ British preference and admitting American goods at a reciprocal
rate?"

"It's a corker, ain't it?" answered Mr. Smith. "What'll you take, lager
or domestic?"

And in that short dialogue Mr. Smith showed that he had instantaneously
grasped the whole method of dealing with the press. The interview in the
paper next day said that Mr. Smith, while unwilling to state positively
that the principle of tariff discrimination was at variance with sound
fiscal science, was firmly of opinion that any reciprocal interchange
of tariff preferences with the United States must inevitably lead to a
serious per capita reduction of the national industry.