As the member for St. Andrews in the local Legislative Council had
just died, an election was being held in Kingston. Curious as to what
an election-meeting in Jamaica might be like, we attended one. The
hall was very small, and densely packed with people, and the
suffocating heat drove us away after a quarter of an hour; but never
have I, in so short a space of time, heard such violent personalities
hurled from a public platform, although I have had a certain amount of
experience of contested elections. In 1868, when I was eleven years
old, I was in Londonderry City when my brother Claud, the sitting
member, was opposed by Mr. Serjeant Dowse, afterwards Baron Dowse, the
last of the Irish "Barons of the Exchequer." Party feeling ran very
high indeed; whenever a body of Dowse's supporters met my brother in
the street, they commenced singing in chorus, to a popular tune of the
day:
"Dowse for iver! Claud in the river!
With a skiver through his liver."
Whilst my brother's adherents greeted Dowse in public with a sort of
monotonous chant to these elegant words:
"Dowse! Dowse! you're a dirty louse,
And ye'll niver sit in the Commons' House."
It will be noticed that this is in the same rhythm that Mark Twain
made so popular some twenty years later in his conductor's song.
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