“And that killed Bill.  They beat him by two hundred majority at the election, just on account of old Mrs. Martin misunderstanding him.  Rough, wasn’t it?  But it don’t seem to me like the fair thing on Bill.”

Mr. Slocum was defeated, despite the fact that he wished to succeed.  Mr. Walsh, it appears, was disappointed, in the same contest, in a wholly different manner.  Mr. Walsh was the predecessor of our present coroner, Mr. Maginn.  How Mr. Walsh was elected he informed me in these words: 

“You know,” said Mr. Walsh, “that I didn’t want that position.  When they talked of nominating me, I told them, says I, ’It’s no use; you needn’t elect me; I’m not going to serve.  D’you s’pose I’m going to give up a respectable business to become a kind of State undertaker?  I’m opposed to this post-mortem foolery, any way.  When a man’s blown up with gunpowder, it don’t interest me to know what killed him; so you needn’t make me coroner, for I won’t serve.’

“Well, do you believe that they persisted in nominating me on the Republican ticket—­actually put me up as a candidate?  So I published a letter declining the nomination; but they absolutely had the impudence to keep me on the ticket and to hold mass-meetings, at which they made speeches in my favor.  I was pretty mad about it, because it showed such a disregard of my feelings; and so I chummed in with the Democrats, and for about two months I went around to the Democratic mass-meetings and spoke against myself and in favor of the opposition candidate.  I thought I had them for sure, because I knew more about my own failings than those other fellows did, and I enlarged upon them until I made myself out—­Well, I heaped up the iniquity until I used to go home feeling that I was a good deal wickeder sinner than I ever thought I was before.  It did me good, too:  I reformed.  I’ve been a better man ever since.

“Now, you’d a thought people would a considered me pretty fair authority about my own unfitness for the office, but hang me if the citizens of this county positively didn’t go to the polls and elect me by about eight hundred majority.  I was the worst disappointed of any man you ever saw.  I had repeaters around at the polls, too, voting for the Democratic candidate, and I paid four of the judges to falsify the returns, so as to elect him.  But it was no use; the majority was too big.  And on election night the Republican executive committee came round to serenade me, and as soon as the band struck up I opened on them with a shot-gun and wounded the bass drummer in the leg.  But they kept on playing; and after a while, when they stopped, they poked some congratulatory resolutions under the front door, and gave me three cheers and went home.  I was never so annoyed in my life.