There's a lot of talk I don't like about the elections going round the town.

Let the boys know that just for a while the darker they keep the better." Whereupon the word was passed from the Thomas Jefferson Club to the George Washington Club and thence to the Eureka Club (coloured), and to the Kossuth Club (Hungarian), and to various other centres of civic patriotism in the lower parts of the city.

And forthwith such a darkness began to spread over them that not even honest Diogenes with his lantern could have penetrated their doings.
"If them stiffs wants to make trouble," said the president of the George Washington Club to Mayor McGrath a day or two later, "they won't never know what they've bumped up against." "Well," said the heavy mayor, speaking slowly and cautiously and eyeing his henchman with quiet scrutiny, "you want to go pretty easy now, I tell you." The look which the mayor directed at his satellite was much the same glance that Morgan the buccaneer might have given to one of his lieutenants before throwing him overboard.
* * * * * Meantime the wave of civic enthusiasm as reflected in the conversations of Plutoria Avenue grew stronger with every day.
"The thing is a scandal," said Mr.Lucullus Fyshe.

"Why, these fellows down at the city hall are simply a pack of rogues.

I had occasion to do some business there the other day (it was connected with the assessment of our soda factories) and do you know, I actually found that these fellows take money!" "I say!" said Mr.Peter Spillikins, to whom he spoke, "I say! You don't say!" "It's a fact," repeated Mr.Fyshe.