Well, this fellow bellowed away in the usual ranting style for about three-quarters of an hour; his eloquence was great, but truth was “more honoured in the breach than in the observance.”  So that when he sat down, and my turn came, the audience, instead of being convinced, was fairly rabid.  I was very young at that time, and fearfully nervous; added to which I was never much of a speaker, and, if interrupted at all, usually lost the thread of my argument.

After a bit they began shouting, “Speak up.”  The more they shouted the more mixed I got.  When once the spirit of insubordination is roused in these fellows, it spreads like wild-fire.  The din became so great I could not hear myself speak.  In about five minutes there would have been a row.  Suddenly a bright idea occurred to me.  “Listen to me,” I shouted; “as you won’t hear me speak, perhaps you will allow me to sing you a song.”  I had a fairly strong voice, and could go up a good height; so I gave them “Tom Bowling.”  Directly I started you could have heard a pin drop.  They gave, me a fair hearing all through; and when, as a final climax, I finished up with a prolonged B flat—­a very loud and long note, which sounded to me something between a “view holloa” and the whistle of a penny steamboat, but which came in nicely as a sort of piece de resistance, fairly astonishing “Hodge”—­their enthusiasm knew no bounds.  They cheered and cheered again.  Hand shaking went on all round, whilst the biggest Radical of the lot stood up and shouted, “You be a little Liberal, I know, and the other blokes ’ave ’ired [hired] you.”  Whether we won any votes that evening I am doubtful, but certain I am that this meeting, which started so inauspiciously, was more successful than many others in which I have taken part in a Radical place, in spite of the fact that we left it amid a shower of stones from the boys outside.

I do not think there is anything I dislike more than standing up to address a village audience on the politics of the day.  Unless you happen to be a very taking speaker—­which his greatest friends could not accuse the present writer of being—­agricultural labourers are a most unsympathetic audience.  They will sit solemnly through a long speech without even winking an eye, and your best “hits” are passed by in solemn silence.  To the nervous speaker a little applause occasionally is doubtless encouraging; but if you want to get it, you must put somebody down among the audience, and pay them half a crown to make a noise.

I suppose no better fellow or more suitable candidate for a Cotswold constituency ever walked than Colonel Chester Master, of the Abbey; yet his efforts to win the seat under the new ballot act were always unavailing, saving the occasion on which he got in by three votes, and then was turned out again within a month.  An unknown candidate from London—­I will not say a carpet-bagger—­was able to beat the local squire, entirely owing to the very fact that he was a stranger.