During the few months intervening between the ax-men’s selection of candidates and the people’s choice between those selected (a period known as the laitnediserp ngiapmac) the Tamtonian character is seen at its worst.  There is no infamy too great or too little for the partisans of the various candidates to commit and accuse their opponents of committing.  While every one of them declares, and in his heart believes, that honest arguments have greater weight than dishonest; that falsehood reacts on the falsifier’s cause; that appeals to passion and prejudice are as ineffectual as dishonorable, few have the strength and sense to deny themselves the luxury of all these methods and worse ones.  The laws against bribery, made by themselves, are set at naught and those of civility and good breeding are forgotten.  The best of friends quarrel and openly insult one another.  The women, who know almost as little of the matters at issue as the men, take part in the abominable discussions; some even encouraging the general demoralization by showing themselves at the public meetings, sometimes actually putting themselves into uniform and marching in procession with banners, music and torchlights.

I feel that this last statement will be hardly understood without explanation.  Among the agencies employed by the Tamtonians to prove that one set of candidates is better than another, or to show that one political policy is more likely than another to promote the general prosperity, a high place is accorded to colored rags, flames of fire, noises made upon brass instruments, inarticulate shouts, explosions of gunpowder and lines of men walking and riding through the streets in cheap and tawdry costumes more or less alike.  Vast sums of money are expended to procure these strange evidences of the personal worth of candidates and the political sanity of ideas.  It is very much as if a man should paint his nose pea-green and stand on his head to convince his neighbors that his pigs are fed on acorns.  Of course the money subscribed for these various controversial devices is not all wasted; the greater part of it is pocketed by the ax-grinders by whom it is solicited, and who have invented the system.  That they have invented it for their own benefit seems not to have occurred to the dupes who pay for it.  In the universal madness everybody believes whatever monstrous and obvious falsehood is told by the leaders of his own ytrap, and nobody listens for a moment to the exposures of their rascality.  Reason has flown shrieking from the scene; Caution slumbers by the wayside with unbuttoned pocket.  It is the opportunity of thieves!

With a view to abating somewhat the horrors of this recurring season of depravity, it has been proposed by several wise and decent Tamtonians to extend the term of office of the Tnediserp to six years instead of five, but the sharpeners of axes are too powerful to be overthrown.  They have made the people believe that if the man whom the country chooses to rule it because it thinks him wise and good were permitted to rule it too long it would be impossible to displace him in punishment for his folly and wickedness.  It is, indeed, far more likely that the term of office will be reduced to four years than extended to six.  The effect can be no less than hideous!