Uncle Ith rang the great bell in the high tower for a number of years, with perfect satisfaction to himself and to the firemen.  He took a paper, and he read it, and he found its political arguments so powerful, and so interesting, that he adopted them as his own—­as many another man of greater pretensions has done—­and he got into the bad habit of talking politics in a small way.  It happened, not long after, that there was an election for mayor; and a mayor was chosen who held to a variety of politics quite the opposite of that which was so ably inculcated in Uncle Ith’s favorite journal.  About a month later, Uncle Ith turned to the political column of his paper, and there read that he had been turned out of office, and that one Schimmerfliming—­a German politician of the ——­th Ward, who had been of great service in compassing the election of the new mayor—­had been appointed in his place.  The fact was, that Uncle Ith was highly acceptable to all parties as a no-party man.  But, when he turned politician, he made himself amenable to the harsh laws of political warfare, and became (as his paper phrased it) “the hoary-headed victim of the unprincipled tyrant who, with the cunning of the serpent and the vindictive ferocity of the hyena, weaves his spider’s web of mischief in his dark corner of the City Hall.”  Uncle Ith retired to private life with a snug property, patiently saved up and thoughtfully invested.  But, as Adam went on eating apples, notwithstanding the disaster which had come to him from that species of fruit, so Uncle Ith took his newspaper, and paid for it punctually, and devoured it daily to the last.

While Uncle Ith fell by politics, Coroner Bullfast rose by it.  A judicious distribution of money and liquors, a notoriety for street fights, a singular talent for profanity, and an unstinted adulation of the basest classes of the community, won for him, in succession, some of the best prizes of the Municipal lottery.  He has his small, sunken eyes now fixed on one of the highest offices of the State; and it will take a strong combination to defeat a candidate backed by such powerful agencies and interests.

Mr. and Mrs. Frump lived happily on their country property.  Mr. Frump tried experiments in blackberry raising, which proved a success, and was, at last accounts, concentrating his talents on the development of a new strawberry seedling.  Whenever he went to town, he made a point of carrying back Matthew Maltboy, for whom his regard was inexplicably strong; and nothing gave him greater pleasure than to see his wife, gracefully mounted on the spirited filly, and Matthew, heavily astride of the sober gray, starting off for a morning’s ride, while he stayed at home to push on the seedling.