This time the dramatic culmination of three weeks of immense
effort will be missed. In the long interval between polling-day and the count the several candidates will have had time to reconsider their own speeches and addresses and to think out all the brilliant repartees which they might, had they been more vivacious and less exhausted, have made to questioners. And when the count is finally taken on July 26th it will have about it, not the atmosphere of an exciting climax, but the cold obituary.mood of a coroner's inquest. There will be no midnight orgy of exasperation or triumph, but the votes, it wou'd seem, will have been counted and the result declared by t p.m.; this time there will be no lights and toasting, but only luncheon of spam and soda water and thereafter a long empty after- noon ; and the railway stations of London will that evening witness the return of many successful or unsuccessful men and women. The contrast between the intense activity of an electoral contest and the after-vacancy which ensues is always a depressing contrast. So vast an expenditure of energy and money, of words and paper, is succeeded by a blank hush ; the posters upon the hoardings, if they have not already been defaced, will become as meaningless as a dismantled Christmas-tree ; the committee-rooms will stand empty, with piles of leaflets or voting-cards encumbering the dusty tables ; and the electorate will return to their normal occupations and forget the name of the man for whom they voted or the nature of the issues by which their passions were momentarily aroused.
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