Читать книгу The 13th District. A Story of a Candidate онлайн

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“I have already sent my checks to the chairman of each county committee in payment of my assessments, Mr. McFarlane,” the lawyer said at length.

“Sure, I know that, Judge,” said McFarlane, “but things is changed now—I tell you you’ve got more’n a fightin’ chance to win out.”

“You think this story of Mr. Garwood’s irregularities—his alleged irregularities,” he corrected himself with a lawyer’s absurd habit of care in his words, “will seriously impair his prospects, then?”

“W’y, sure, why wouldn’t it?” McFarlane urged. “We can make it.”

“Ah, make it,” observed Bromley. “But how, if you will oblige me? You must pardon my lack of knowledge of the—ah—technique of politics, Mr. McFarlane.”

“Oh, that’s all right, Judge,” McFarlane hastened to say, with a reassuring generosity of soul. “How’ll we make it? Why, use it—that’s how; we’ll make Jerry defend his record in the House. We’ll get the people to see it—that’s how.”

“But will the people believe it? They are slow, you know, to believe these stories of boodling, as I believe it is called. The newspapers have a good deal to say of it from time to time, but I doubt if the people take it much more seriously than the rest of the current and conventional jokes of the press. Do you think they’ll believe it? That question occurs to me as material at this point of our——”