* * * * *
Two months after this discussion the late Honorable Thaddeus Perkins,
ex-candidate, and Mayor of Dumfries Corners only by courtesy of those
who honor defeated candidates with titles for which they have striven
unsuccessfully, was strolling through the country along the line of the
Croton Aqueduct, trying to disentangle, with the aid of the fresh sweet
air of an early summer afternoon, an idea for a sonnet from the mazes of
his brain. Stopping for a moment to look down upon the glorious Hudson
stretching its shimmering length like a bimetallic serpent to the north
and south, he suddenly became conscious of a pair of very sharp eyes
resting upon him, which a closer inspection showed belonged to a laborer
of seemingly diminutive stature, who was engaged in carrying earth in a
wheelbarrow from one dirt-pile to another. As Thaddeus caught his eye
the laborer assumed towering proportions. He rose up quite two feet
higher in the air and bowed.
"How do you do?" said Perkins, returning the salutation courteously,
wondering the while as to what might be the cause of this sudden change
of height.
"Oi'm well--which is nothin' new to me," replied the other. "Ut sheems
to me," he continued, "thot youse resimbles thot smart young felly
Perkins, the Mayor of Dumfries Corners--not!"
Perkins laughed. The sting of defeat had lost its power to annoy, and
his experience had become merely one of a thousand other nightmares of
the past.
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