orchestra pit, overturned the table, trampled and tore the green carpet to tatters, inundated the parquet with water from the carafes intended for the speakers, kicked about the jangling bell of the chairman, and barely refrained from hacking the organizers of the meeting to pieces.
Happily, as they saw the cyclone coming on, these prudent folk beat a retreat, candidates and bosses together, and left the place to the people.
Election day finally dawned; a grey October day. From early morning the drums of the civic guard beat out the call for voters; the city bustled with an unusual life that was not its every-day activity, the business of clerks and tradespeople, cartage and traffic. The voters, in holiday attire, left their houses, and under their stovepipe hats wore a grave and slightly strained expression, citizens conscious of their dignity. With their voting papers in their hands they walked quickly to the election booths, school buildings, foyers of theatres and other public buildings.
Young bloods, rich men's sons, wearing an orange cockade, the party color, at their buttonhole, hired hacks to bring feeble, sickly, or indifferent voters to the polls. They gave themselves airs of importance, consulted their lists, greeted each other mysteriously, gnawed at the pencils which they used to register the voters. Omnibuses left very early to pick up the rural voters in distant little straggling villages. Dumfounded and red with excitement, the peasants grouped themselves according to their parishes, and the black-coated priests went about among these blue-clad folk giving advice and counting the votes. Groups formed in front of the polls. They were reading posters still wet from the press, in which one or the other candi-
