THE FUN OF THE ELECTION.

Kumara Times, Issue 2521, 19 July 1884, Page 3

THE FUN OF THE ELECTION.

[tbiaru herald,]

A contested election is stunning good fun for everybody concerned except the two or three poor beggars who constitute the most conspicuous figures in it. We would rather be anybody in a contested election than a candidate. We would infinitely prefer to be the Returning Officer, because he gets fees and does not care a tinker’s cuss who gets in; or the bellman, because he I’ings up meetings and organises small boys’ cheers “ at per dozen, not counting cracked ’uns, for all the gents ekally for the small consideration of one sufferin’ quid,”—and'then “wotes arter all for the cove has he’s nuts on.” There are a multitude of pleasing features connected with the situation of either of these functionaries. They have everything to get and nothing to lose. The unhappy candidate, on the contrary, has everything to pay, any number of sleepless nights, and headaches by day, anxieties, telegrams, inner workings of the perturbed gizzard from the woful funk, quarrels with men he really likes, cheek-by-jowl conferences and confidences with men he loathes the sight of, hard work, abuse, ridicule—and in the large majority of instances, a good licking to finish up with. It is a merry pursuit, politics; and we dearly love it. If there were a man whom we hated and yearned for revenge upon, we should not waylay him and shoot him through the brain, because then he would be at rest, while we should not’. We would not steal away the heart of his own and only darling, and marry her before his glazed eyes; because we should feel small when we wanted to give him a thousand pounds to take her backhand he wouldn’t. No—we would get up a requisition to him to contest an election, and then when he was fairly in for it, we should go on his committee and run up the expenses and mingle with the throng and revel in his agonies. Nothing amuses us more in an election than to hear the off-hand, positive way in which the man in the street settles the event beforehand, according to his own taste and fancy, and the last rumor he happens to have got hold of the wrong end of. “ Well, I bear it is all up with Bluggtrapp.” “ All up with him. Why he is the finest febow out. I heard he was going in flying !” “ Ah so he was, but he’s lost the block Baptist vote.” “ The dickens he has ! Why has he lost it f “Oh, well, you see, the Fire Brigade cook mm up mid that made the Baptists jealous, because they’ve always been at logger-heads with the Fire Brigade about the watersupply ; so he lost the Baptist block, and Snorking has got it now; and so it’s all up with Bluggtrapl” Ha, I always thought he was a duffer, though I promised to vote fur him. Hollo, there’s Snorkings. By jove, I must just run over and promise him my vote, and tell him Bluggtrap hasn’t a show. - ' etc., etc. Yes, yes; a contested election is a veritaolc touchstone of human nature.