A SERIOUS ELECTION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 249, 11 March 1913, Page 5

A SERIOUS ELECTION.

A newspaper correspondent, who tried to make a joke in Londonderry on the eve of the live-election, when every vote was counted jealously, found that the Ulsterinan could not be induced to smile. '"To-day," lie said, in the course of one of his articles, ''a, Nationalist working on a steep roof was noticed by a friend below to be taking the usual risks of his trade. There, outlined against the sky, was a vote in danger. 'Mulligan!' he cried in alarm, "couldn't that roof wait till after the poll V " Two days later the correspondent declared sadly that, after reading the comments of the local newspapers, on his little effort he would not jest again. ' One local paper said T had got the man's name wrong," he said. "Another journal seems to have made exhaustive enquiries throughout the town, for it has discovered that no slater was at work on that day. More, it indignantly declares that it is an insult to the known good qualities of Ulster landlords for ignorant. English journalists, who have never been to Derrv before, to come over and say that roofs leak in Derry. The truth is that nothing flourishes beer bu trade in the towns and old hatreds everywhere. Tt is jesting with death to jest about those old hates. Tt would probably hurt the fact of Ulster to smile at itself, but once the first pain was over and the lines of happy humor formed smiling might come easier afterwards." Certainly a sense of humor would have saved Ulster from Sir Edward Carson's wooden ean*on.