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To Professor Roberts the remainder of the day was one whirl of restless labour; he hastened from one polling-station to another, and when the round was completed drove to the Central Rooms, where questions had to be answered, and new arrangements made without time for thought. Then he was off again on his hurried round as canvasser. One incident, however, made a definite impression upon him.
I think that his feelings underwent a rally, rather, perhaps, than his understanding, when I was first put forward as a candidate for the University of Oxford in 1847. At least, I recollect his speaking with a real zest and interest at that time of my wife, as a skilful canvasser, hard to resist. I have just spoken of your father as the man on whom I most relied; and so it was.
This being the posture of affairs, the city of Boston, a twelvemonth since, chose for their annual orator a clergyman distinguished for eloquence, and for that important part of patriotism, at least, which consists in purity of life. This gentleman, being neither a candidate for office nor the canvasser of a candidate, ventured upon a new kind of address.
Sometimes twenty, sometimes thirty, members of Parliament were named by him. As a canvasser he was irresistible. He never forgot a face that he had once seen. Nay, in the towns in which he wished to establish an interest, he remembered, not only the voters, but their families.
Apart from direct intimidation the voice of the canvasser, the excitement of one's friends, the look of triumph on the face of one's opponents, or the vague indications of disapproval by the rulers of one's village, are all apt to be stronger than the shadowy and uncertain conclusions of one's thinking brain.
She was the best canvasser in the world, and everybody agreed that Harry Grey-stoke owed his election merely to her insinuating tongue and unrivalled powers of scampering, by which she had completely baffled the tactics of Lady Amarantha. Germain, who thought that a canvass was only a long morning call, and might be achieved in a cashmere and a britzska.
Her husband cut off her monthly allowance, and she had to take employment as a book canvasser, so that she might be able to earn her living. One Mormon who came out openly for us, was superintendent of a business owned by Gentiles. He was somewhat prominent as an ecclesiast, and he was a Sunday School worker in his ward.
Samuel was put into a passion by this carelessness of the printers. He offered Cyril sixpence for every sheet of signatures which the boy would obtain. At first Cyril was too shy to canvass, but his father made him blush, and in a few hours Cyril had developed into an eager canvasser. One whole day he stayed away from school to canvas.
Melhuish, father," was all he said, and I had no idea how much of the story the old man had, as yet, been told. He made a kind of stiff bow and held out his hand. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Melhuish," he said, and his manner struck a mean between respectfulness and self-assertion. It was the kind of manner that he might have shown to a titled canvasser just before an election.
I immediately opened up conversation with him, and learned he was from a small town in Illinois, whence he had started as a canvasser, selling nutmeg-graters. I asked how he was doing. He said he had been out three days, and hadn't sold a grater. I asked if he had worked hard, and he said yes, but he hadn't "nerve" enough for that business. I asked him to show me one, which he did.
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