They
hired halls, opened committee-rooms, made speeches, and thundered
against municipal iniquities in the daily press; but Jacob Metzger,
when he discovered that this was all, possessed his soul in peace, and
even got a good deal of quiet fun out of the canvass. He did not take
the trouble to be angry at the men who were denouncing him, and
supplied Farnham with beefsteaks unusually tender and juicy, while the
young reformer was seeking his political life.
"Lord love you," he said to Budsey, as he handed him a delicious
rib-roast the day before election. "There's nothing I like so much as
to see young men o' property go into politics. We need 'em. Of course,
I wisht the Cap'n was on my side; but anyhow, I'm glad to see him
takin' an interest."
He knew well enough the way the votes would run; that every grog-shop
in the ward was his recruiting station; that all Farnham's tenants
would vote against their landlord; that even the respectable Budsey and
the prim Scotch gardener were sure for him against their employer.
Farnham's conscience which had roused him to this effort against
Metzger's corrupt rule, would not permit him to ask for the votes of
his own servants and tenants, and he would have regarded it as simply
infamous to spend money to secure the floating crowd of publicans and
sinners who formed the strength of Jacob.
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