3-052-514 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Election Sketches: modest merit, 1880. '...the reader who has had any experience of these scenes and characters at election time will at once recognise their leading types, which are not all "men of light and leading." The gentleman hitherto unaccustomed to public speaking, who finds himself rather shaky on his legs, tremulous and feeble in voice, terribly anxious and oblivious in mind, in face of a sceptical and indifferent assembly, may possibly be an individual of "modest merit" in the esteem of his private friends. Some of these good people, amongst whom may be his father and mother, his uncle and aunt, and the ministering elders of his church, sit on the same platform. Their faces of grim consternation seem to betoken a melancholy persuasion that their proffered candidate will never do for the constituency he has attempted to address'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.