Absinthe makes the heart Grow Fonder vote for Cynthia

    and

    Our slogan is sloe gin

For a while there was quite a probability that the male vote would be so split by Bleak and Purplevein that Miss Absinthe would come in ahead.  But at the height of the campaign she was found in a pharmacy drinking a maple nut foam.  After this her cause declined rapidly, and even her most ardent partisans admitted that she would never be more than an Intermittent Souse.

Purplevein’s followers, in their desperate efforts to discredit Bleak, overplayed their hand (as “practical politicians” always do).  The sagacious Quimbleton outmaneuvered them at every turn.  Moderate drinkers rallied round Bleak.  Moreover, the Bleak party had an irresistible assistant in the person of Miss Chuff, who put her trances unreservedly at Dunraven’s disposal.  In this way Quimbleton was able to produce his candidate before a monster mass meeting at the Opera House in a state of becoming exhilaration.  This forever put an end to the rumor that Bleak was not a practical man.  Miss Chuff also campaigned strenuously among the women, where Purplevein (being a bachelor) was at a disadvantage.  “Vote for Bleak,” cried Miss Chuff—­“He has a wife to help him.”  Purplevein’s argument that the office of Perpetual Souse should be an entirely stag affair fell dead before Theodolinda’s glowing description of the Hostess House which Mrs. Bleak would conduct next door to the little temple which was to be erected by the government for the successful candidate.

Despite the exhaustion of the campaign, Bleak stood it well.  Quimbleton, knowing the disastrous effects of over-confidence, kept his man at fighting edge by a little judicious pessimism now and then, and rumors of the popularity of Purplevein among the hard drinkers.  Day after day Quimbleton and Miss Chuff, after a little psychic communing, would prop the editor among cushions in the big gray limousine and spin him about the city and suburbs to bow, smile, say a few automatic words and pass on.  Over the car floated a big banner with the words:  Let Bleak Do Your Drinking For You:  He Knows How.  The unhappy Purplevein, who had to do his electioneering in a state of chill sobriety, was aghast to see the beaming and gently flushed face of his rival radiating cheer.  At the eleventh hour he tried to change his tactics and plastered the billboards with immense posters: 

    Bleak doesn’t need the job—­he’s soused already