He found Quimbleton a stern ringleader.  Virgil was not satisfied with the old-fashioned method of stumping the country from the taff-rail of a Pullman car, and insisted on strapping Bleak into the cockpit of a biplane and flying him from city to city.  They would land in some central square, and the candidate, deafened and half-frozen, would stammer a few halting remarks.  He felt it rather keenly that Quimbleton looked down on his lack of oratorical gift, and it was a frequent humiliation that when words did not prosper on his tongue his impatient pilot would turn on the motors and zoom off into space in the very middle of a sentence.

Nevertheless, the campaign went famously.  Bleak had one considerable advantage in being comparatively unknown.  He had never permitted himself the luxury of making enemies:  except for a few ex-reporters who had once worked on the Balloon he had not a foe in the world.  Quimbleton had been eager to import a covey of gunmen from other cities, but when these arrived there was really nothing for them to do.  They were glad to accept jobs from Bishop Chuff, and were well paid for waylaying and sniping the few grapes and apples that had escaped previous pogroms.

There was only one plank in Bleak’s modest platform, but he walked it so happily that it began to look like a gangplank leading onto the Ship of State.  He expressed his doctrine very agreeably in his speech accepting the party nomination; though credit should be given to Theodolinda, who had assisted him by a little private seance before he addressed the convention.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said (looking as he spoke at one of the handbills announcing his candidacy for the dignity of mouthpiece of the nation)—­“I issue dodgers, but I never dodge the issue.  I can Take It or Let It Alone, but frankly, I prefer to Take It.  I hope I speak modestly:  yet candor insists that both by past training and present inclination I feel myself fitted to deal with the problems of this exalted office.  If elected to this high place of trust I shall regard myself solely as the servant of the public, solely as the representative of your sovereign will.  As I raise the glass or peel the lemon, I shall not act in any individual capacity.  My own good cheer (I beg you to believe) will be my last thought.  I shall remember, in every gesture and every gulp, that my thirst is in reality the Thirst of a Nation, delegated to me by ballot; that my laughter and song (if things should go so far) are truly the mirth and music of a proud people expressing themselves through me.  I shall be at all times accessible to my fellow-men, solicitous to hear their counsel and command.  Believing (as I do) in moderation, yet I should not dream of permitting private sentiment to interfere with public interest when more violent measures should seem desirable.