Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 December 1874 — John Cain. [ARTICLE]

John Cain.

THB TALE OF A DEFEATED CANDIDATE. John Cain was a quiet, unobtrusive citizen. He didn’t long for fame and renown, and he didn’t care two cents whether this great and glorious country was ruled by a one-horse Republican or a two-horse Democrat. He had a pew in church, gave sixteen ounces for a pound, and when a man looked him square in the eyes Mr. Cain never took a back seat. He was home at a reasonable how in the evening, never took part in the discussion “Is lager healthy?" and many a man wished that his life rolled on as evenly and peacefully as John Cain’s. But, alas! the tempter came. In an evil hour John Cain allowed the politicians to get after him and to surround him. They said he was the strongest man in the county; that he could scoop out of his boots any man set up in opposition ; that his virtues were many and his faults 00000; that it was his duty to come out and take a nomination in order that this pure and incorruptible form of government be maintained pure and incorruptible. All this and much more they told him, and John Cain became puffed up. It surprised him some to think that he had held his peaceful way- along for forty-odd years, like a knot-hole in a barn door, without anyone having discovered what a heap of a fellow be was, but he concluded that there was a new era in politics and that it was all right. The politicians covered John Camjwith soft soap. They told him that the canvass shouldn’t cost him a red, and that he could still retire at eight o’clock every evening and rest assured that his interests would be properly cared for. It was to be a still hunt—a very quiet election — and he would hardly know what was going on. John was an honest, unsuspecting idiot, and he swallowed their worms as the confiding fish absorbs the baited hook. John Cain was duly nominated and the band came out and serenaded him. With the band came several hundred electors, who filled the Cain mansion to overflowing, spit tobacco all over the house, ate and drank all they could find, broke down the gate, ana went off with three cheers for John Cain. Before the canvass was ten days old half a dozen men called on Cain and gently hinted to, him that he must come down with the “ sugar/’ He didn’t even know what “ sugar” was until they explained. They wanted money to raise a pole, to buv beer, to get slips printed, and to do fifty other things with, all for his particular benefit, and he had to hand out money; In the course of another week they drew Cain out to make a speech at a ward meeting. He tried to claw off, but they told him that the opposing candidate would run him out of sight if he didn’t come out, and he went out. When he got through speaking the crowd drank at.his expense, and Mr. Cain was aston ished at the way the liquor went down and more astonished at the way the bill went up. He didn’t, reach home until midnight and for the first time in his life he was going to bed with his hoofs on. His wife wouldn’t speak to him, the hired girl left the house to save her character and John Cain wished that the politicians had let him alone.

More men came and crooked their fingers at him and whispered “ sugar.” They wanted money to buy some doubtful votes and to hire four-horse teams and to mail his slips, and he had to come down. He hesitated about it, but they sure of victory and that acted as a spur. There was hardly a night that from fourteen to two hundred and forty friends did not call on Mr. Cain to inform him as to the “ prospects.” They drank up the currant wine Mrs. Cain had laid up for sickness, emptied her preserve jars, and there wasn’t a morning that she couldn’t sweep out forty or fifty cigar stubs and a peck of mud. They all told Cain that he would beat the other man so far out of sighs that it would take a carrier pigeon to find him, and he couldn’t very well refuse to go over to the corner grocery and “ set ’em up” for the boys.

The crisis finally came. On the eve of election Mr. Cain’s friends called for “ sugar” again, and he had to sugar ’em. A big crowd called to warn him that he would certainly be elected and the saloon hill was t.wcnty-pight. dnlWa rpr, r » Thirteen or fourteen men shook hands with his wife, a hundred or more shook hands with him, and he had to get up and declare that he didn’t favor women’s rights and that he did; that he was down on whisky and yet loved it as a beverage; that he wanted the currency inflated and yet favored specie payments; that he favored the Civil-Rights bill and yet didn’t, and in his brief speech Mrs. Cain counted straight lies besides the evasions. Mr. Gain wanted to hold popular views and he had to be on all sides at once.

On the day of election they dragged him from poll to poll, stopping at all the saloons on the way. He had to make 256,000 promises, pull his wallet until it was as flat as a wafer, drink lager with some and cold water with others, and when night came he went home and tried to hug the hired girl, called Mrs. Cain his dear old rhinoceros, and fell over the cradle and "went to sleep with his head under the stove. When Mr. Cain arose in the morning and became sober enough to read the election returns he found he had scooped ’em as follows: — — —— Opposing candidate ...... 36,430 John Cain .31,380

Cain's majority (in a horn) 5,040 Mr. Cain went out and sat down under an apple tree in his back yard, and he ?;ave himself up to reflections and so orth. Through the leafless branches sighed the November winds, and ir the house sighed Mr!. Cain, and both sighs murmured gently in his ear: "John Cain’s a perpendicular idiot”— “M. Quad," in Detroit Free Press