How Mr. Walsh was elected he informed me in these
words:

"You know," said Mr. Walsh, "that I didn't want that position. When
they talked of nominating me, I told them, says I, 'It's no use; you
needn't elect me; I'm not going to serve. D'you s'pose I'm going to
give up a respectable business to become a kind of State undertaker?
I'm opposed to this _post-mortem_ foolery, any way. When a man's blown
up with gunpowder, it don't interest me to know what killed him; so
you needn't make me coroner, for I won't serve.'

"Well, do you believe that they persisted in nominating me on the
Republican ticket--actually put me up as a candidate? So I published a
letter declining the nomination; but they absolutely had the impudence
to keep me on the ticket and to hold mass-meetings, at which they made
speeches in my favor. I was pretty mad about it, because it showed
such a disregard of my feelings; and so I chummed in with the
Democrats, and for about two months I went around to the Democratic
mass-meetings and spoke against myself and in favor of the opposition
candidate. I thought I had them for sure, because I knew more about my
own failings than those other fellows did, and I enlarged upon them
until I made myself out--Well, I heaped up the iniquity until I used
to go home feeling that I was a good deal wickeder sinner than I ever
thought I was before. It did me good, too: I reformed. I've been a
better man ever since.

"Now, you'd a thought people would a considered me pretty fair
authority about my own unfitness for the office, but hang me if the
citizens of this county positively didn't go to the polls and elect me
by about eight hundred majority. I was the worst disappointed of any
man you ever saw. I had repeaters around at the polls, too, voting for
the Democratic candidate, and I paid four of the judges to falsify the
returns, so as to elect him. But it was no use; the majority was too
big. And on election night the Republican executive committee came
round to serenade me, and as soon as the band struck up I opened on
them with a shot-gun and wounded the bass drummer in the leg. But they
kept on playing; and after a while, when they stopped, they poked some
congratulatory resolutions under the front door, and gave me three
cheers and went home. I was never so annoyed in my life.

"Then they sent me round my certificate of election, but I refused to
receive it; and those fellows seized me and held me while Harry Hamm