two thirds of the real estate, the candidates favored by him and his
friends received not quite one tenth of the votes cast. The loader of
the opposing forces was a butcher, one Jacob Metzger, who had managed
the politics of the ward for years. He was not a bad man so far as his
lights extended. He sold meat on business principles, so as to get the
most out of a carcass; and he conducted his political operations in the
same way. He made his bargains with aspirants and office-holders, and
kept them religiously. He had been a little alarmed at the sudden
irruption of such men as Farnham and his associates into the field of
ward politics; he dreaded the combined effect of their money and their
influence. But he soon found he had nothing to fear--they would not use
their money, and they did not know how to use their influence. 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.