“Feverish?” snapped the leader of his party.  “Who said anything about my being feverish?”

“Nobody, Teddy dear; but what you said about lamps made me think—­made me think your mind was wandering a trifle.”

“Oh—­that!” laughed Perkins.  “No, indeed—­it’s true.  They always give the Mayor a pair of lamps.  Some of them are very swell, too.  You know those wrought-iron standards that Mr. Berkeley has in front of his place?”

“The ones at the driveway entrance, on the bowlders?”

“Yes.”

“They’re beauties.  I’ve always admired those lamps very much.”

“Well—­they are the rewards of Mr. Berkeley’s political virtue.  I paid for them, and so did all the rest of the tax-payers.  They are his Mayor’s lamps, and if I’m elected I’ll have a pair just like them, if I want them like that.”

“Oh, I do hope you’ll get in, Teddy,” said the little woman, anxiously, after a reflective pause.  “They’d look stunning on our gate-posts.”

“I don’t think I shall have them there,” said Thaddeus.  “Jiggers has the right idea, seems to me—­he’s put ’em on the newel-posts of his front porch steps.”

“I don’t suppose they’d give us the money and let us buy one handsome cloisonne lamp from Tiffany’s, would they?” Mrs. Perkins asked.

“A cloisonne lamp on a gate-post?” laughed Perkins.

“Of course not,” rejoined the lady.  “You know I didn’t mean any such thing.  I saw a perfectly beautiful lamp in Tiffany’s last Wednesday, and it would go so well in the parlor—­”

“That wouldn’t be possible, my dear,” said Thaddeus, still smiling.  “You don’t quite catch the idea of those lamps.  They’re sort of like the red, white, and blue lights in a drug-store window in intention.  They are put up to show the public that that is where a political prescription for the body politic may be compounded.  The public is responsible for the bills, and the public expects to use what little light can be extracted from them.”

“Then all this generosity on the public’s part is—­”

“Merely that of the Indian who gives and takes back,” said Thaddeus.

“And they must be out-of-doors?” asked Mrs. Perkins.  “If I set the cloisonne lamp in the window, it wouldn’t do?”

“No,” said Thaddeus.  “They must be out-of-doors.”

“Well, I hope the nasty old public will stay there too, and not come traipsing all over my house,” snapped Mrs. Perkins, indignantly.

And then for a little time the discussion of the Mayor’s lamps stopped.

The campaign went on, and Thaddeus night after night was forced to go out to speak here and there and everywhere.  One night he travelled five miles through mud and rain to address an organization of tax-payers, and found them assembled before the long mahogany counter of a beer-saloon, which was the “Hall” they had secured for the reception of the idol of their hopes; and among them it is safe to say there