During Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday the twins grew steadily worse; but then the doctor was summoned South to attend his mother’s funeral, and they got well in forty-eight hours.  They appeared on the street on Friday, and were welcomed with enthusiasm by the new-born parties, the Luigi and Angelo factions.  The Luigi faction carried its strength into the Democratic party, the Angelo faction entered into a combination with the Whigs.  The Democrats nominated Luigi for alderman under the new city government, and the Whigs put up Angelo against him.  The Democrats nominated Pudd’nhead Wilson for mayor, and he was left alone in this glory, for the Whigs had no man who was willing to enter the lists against such a formidable opponent.  No politician had scored such a compliment as this before in the history of the Mississippi Valley.

The political campaign in Dawson’s Landing opened in a pretty warm fashion, and waned hotter every week.  Luigi’s whole heart was in it, and even Angelo developed a surprising amount of interest-which was natural, because he was not merely representing Whigism, a matter of no consequence to him; but he was representing something immensely finer and greater—­to wit, Reform.  In him was centered the hopes of the whole reform element of the town; he was the chosen and admired champion of every clique that had a pet reform of any sort or kind at heart.  He was president of the great Teetotalers’ Union, its chiefest prophet and mouthpiece.

But as the canvass went on, troubles began to spring up all around —­troubles for the twins, and through them for all the parties and segments and factions of parties.  Whenever Luigi had possession of the legs, he carried Angelo to balls, rum shops, Sons of Liberty parades, horse-races, campaign riots, and everywhere else that could damage him with his party and the church; and when it was Angelo’s week he carried Luigi diligently to all manner of moral and religious gatherings, doing his best to regain the ground he had lost before.  As a result of these double performances, there was a storm blowing all the time, an ever-rising storm, too—­a storm of frantic criticism of the twins, and rage over their extravagant, incomprehensible conduct.

Luigi had the final chance.  The legs were his for the closing week of the canvass.  He led his brother a fearful dance.

But he saved his best card for the very eve of the election.  There was to be a grand turnout of the Teetotalers’ Union that day, and Angelo was to march at the head of the procession and deliver a great oration afterward.  Luigi drank a couple of glasses of whisky—­which steadied his nerves and clarified his mind, but made Angelo drunk.  Everybody who saw the march, saw that the Champion of the Teetotalers was half seas over, and noted also that his brother, who made no hypocritical pretensions to extra temperance virtues, was dignified and sober.  This eloquent fact could not be unfruitful at the