hurled from a public platform, although I have had a certain amount of
experience of contested elections. In 1868, when I was eleven years
old, I was in Londonderry City when my brother Claud, the sitting
member, was opposed by Mr. Serjeant Dowse, afterwards Baron Dowse, the
last of the Irish "Barons of the Exchequer." Party feeling ran very
high indeed; whenever a body of Dowse's supporters met my brother in
the street, they commenced singing in chorus, to a popular tune of the
day:

"Dowse for iver! Claud in the river!
With a skiver through his liver."

Whilst my brother's adherents greeted Dowse in public with a sort of
monotonous chant to these elegant words:

"Dowse! Dowse! you're a dirty louse,
And ye'll niver sit in the Commons' House."

It will be noticed that this is in the same rhythm that Mark Twain
made so popular some twenty years later in his conductor's song.

"Punch, brothers, punch with care,
Punch in the presence of the passen-jare."

In spite of the confident predictions of my brother's followers, Dowse
won the seat by a small majority, nor did my brother succeed in
unseating him afterwards on Petition.

Another occasion on which feeling ran very high was in Middlesex
during the 1874 election. Here my brother George was the Conservative