My experience is anybody can get into Parliament if he will keep pegging away and has plenty of money. Let him keep himself before the public—by writing letters to the newspapers, and by putting in an appearance at all public meetings, and by promising wholesale as to what he will do. If he can bray like a bull, and has a face of brass, and has money or friends who have it, he may be sure of success. As a rule, the best way is to get yourself known to the public in connection with some new development of philanthropic life. But a little money is a great help. Gold touches hearts as nothing else can. The biggest Radical of two candidates naturally prefers the richer. Men who can crowd into all meetings, and shout “Buggins for ever,” are useful allies, and men of that stamp have little sympathy with the poor candidates. Once in Parliament you are useless, at the beck and call of the whipper-in, a slave to party; but you are an M.P. nevertheless, and may not call your soul your own.
At length I am in the home of the free, where all men are equal, where O’Donovan Rossa may seek to blast the glories of a thousand years, where a Henry George may pave the way for an anarchy such as the world has never yet seen, where even Jem Blaine, as his admirers term him, passes for an honest man, and claims to have a firm grip on the Presidential chair.
I am unfortunate on my landing. I have the name of one of Cook’s hotels on my lips, and as I know Mr. John Cook makes better terms for his customers than they can do for themselves, I resolve to go there, but every one tells me there is no such hotel as that I ask for in New York, and I am taken to one which is recommended by a respectable-looking policeman. Unfortunately, it is the head-quarters of the veteran corps of the Army of the Potomac, who swarm all over the place, as they did all over the South in the grand times of old. I am not fond of heroes; heroes are the men who have kept out of danger, while their less fortunate comrades have been mowed down, and who appropriate the honours which belong often to the departed alone. Well, these heroes are holding the fort so tightly that I resolve to leave my quarters and explore the Broadway, one of the most picturesque promenades in the world. Suddenly I meet a stranger, who asks me how I am. I reply he has the advantage of me. “Oh,” says he, “you were at our store last night.” I reply that was impossible. He tells me his name is Bodger, I tell him my name, which, however, he does not catch, whereupon he shakes my hand again, says how happy he is to have met me, and we part to meet no more. I go a few steps farther, and go through the same process with another individual. I bear his congratulations with fortitude, but when, a few minutes after, the same thing occurs again, I begin to wish I were in Hanover rather than in New York, and I resolve to seek out Cook’s Agency without further delay. Of course I was directed wrong, and that led to a disaster which will necessarily shorten my visit to Uncle Sam. Perhaps I ought not to tell my experience. People generally are silent when they have to tell anything to their own discredit. If I violate that rule, it will be to put people on their guard. If I am wrong in doing so, I hope the rigid moralist will skip this altogether.