CHAPTER XXIII
A TRUCE
Gen. Varden Waymouth was elected Governor. In spite of the sullen torpor
of his party managers and the snarls of the Reverend Prouty and his
radical ilk, he surmounted by mere momentum of his party a certain bland
and trustful and destructive indifference of the general public, and won
at the polls. The narrow margin by which he won would have scared a
really loyal and conscientious State Committee. But the before-and-after
gloom of Chairman Presson and his intimates was not caused by any
worriment over the size of the plurality. They were languid spectators.
They felt like dispossessed tenants. They took little interest in the
temple of the party faith.
"When they buried old Zenas Bellew up our way (Zenas weighed three
hundred and fifty, and lived in a cottage about the size of a wood-box)
the undertaker found he couldn't get the coffin into the house or get
Zenas out--not through doors or windows. A half-witted fellow we call
'Simpson's Rooster' spoke up, and said they'd better bury the old man in
the house and move the family out into the coffin.
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