contagious excitement inseparable from the occasion. The majority
of the lady inhabitants of the parish declared at once for
Spruggins; and the quondam overseer took the same side, on the
ground that men with large families always had been elected to the
office, and that although he must admit, that, in other respects,
Spruggins was the least qualified candidate of the two, still it
was an old practice, and he saw no reason why an old practice
should be departed from. This was enough for the captain. He
immediately sided with Bung, canvassed for him personally in all
directions, wrote squibs on Spruggins, and got his butcher to
skewer them up on conspicuous joints in his shop-front; frightened
his neighbour, the old lady, into a palpitation of the heart, by
his awful denunciations of Spruggins's party; and bounced in and
out, and up and down, and backwards and forwards, until all the
sober inhabitants of the parish thought it inevitable that he must
die of a brain fever, long before the election began.

The day of election arrived. It was no longer an individual
struggle, but a party contest between the ins and outs. The
question was, whether the withering influence of the overseers, the
domination of the churchwardens, and the blighting despotism of the
vestry-clerk, should be allowed to render the election of beadle a
form--a nullity: whether they should impose a vestry-elected
beadle on the parish, to do their bidding and forward their views,
or whether the parishioners, fearlessly asserting their undoubted
rights, should elect an independent beadle of their own.

The nomination was fixed to take place in the vestry, but so great
was the throng of anxious spectators, that it was found necessary
to adjourn to the church, where the ceremony commenced with due