Free Freddy the Politician by Walter R. Brooks

I’ll sneeze again. Get up by my ear.”
    So Mr. Webb went up close to her ear, and the other animals waited while he talked. “It’s all right,” said Mrs. Wiggins after a minute. “Webb says he and Mrs. Webb don’t care about voting. Says he’s a bug and proud of it, but he knows it might cause us trouble, and he’s sure it would cause him trouble, what with the other bugs being jealous and all. Now, isn’t that Webb all over?”
    The animals all said it was fine of him and gave him a cheer, and Mr. Webb ran up to the tip of Mrs. Wiggins’s left horn and jumped up and down, which is a spider’s way of showing good feeling.
    â€œNow,” said Freddy, “who shall we nominate for president?”
    Immediately all the animals began speaking at once. “I nominate Robert!” “Jinx is my choice!” “Freddy! Freddy for president!”
    â€œOur Uncle Wesley always said,” quacked Alice, “that he believed I had great executive ability, if I only had a chance to use it. Now, I think—”
    â€œI assure you, ladies and gentlemen,” interrupted Charles, “that if this high honor should fall to me—”
    â€œQuiet!” squealed Freddy. “Quiet! Silence! Shut up! Don’t you see? Don’t you see what’s going to happen? Jinx is going to vote for Jinx, and Charles for Charles, and Alice for Alice, and so on. We’ll all get from one to three or four votes apiece. And the rats will vote in a body for Simon and elect him. We’ve got to agree. Now, I don’t say that Alice or Jinx or Charles or anyone here would make a bad president. I don’t think there’s any one of the old crowd that wouldn’t do a good job. But we can’t all be elected. We’ve got to agree on one.
    â€œAnd I want to say right here that I am not a candidate. For one thing, I don’t like to get up early in the morning. And believe me, the president of this farm has got to get up early and stay up late. Now is there anybody else who doesn’t want the job?”
    â€œWell, I don’t, for one,” said Henrietta. “Haven’t I got enough to do with twenty-seven children and a husband to manage and pick up after without taking on a whole farm? And Charles doesn’t want it either.”
    â€œOh, come, Henrietta,” protested the rooster. “If a wide popular demand should be made for my services, could I in all decency refuse? To the clarion call of public duty the private citizen must respond, no matter how great the sacrifice. And who am I to say that—”
    â€œStuff and nonsense,” interrupted Henrietta vigorously. “The wide popular demand is usually for you to shut up, and you can respond to that right now.” And she glared at him so ferociously that Charles sighed and, leaning his head against the wall, fell into a reverie.
    â€œI guess there wouldn’t be any wide popular demand for me either,” said Hank. “There’s some days I think I’d like to be a king or a president or something, and lead parades and have the people throw their hats up and cheer when I went to the window. And there’s some days I’m glad I’m just Hank, that nobody pays any attention to, and I look out the window and there ain’t anybody there looking back at me. And there’s other days when I got the rheumatism in my off hind leg and it just kind of hurts me even to smile. If I could just be president on the good days, I dunno’s I’d mind. But every day for a year ain’t my choice.”
    Then some of the others said they didn’t want to be president either, and Alice withdrew when she found she’d have to make speeches. “Because,” she said, “I could never stand up in front of an audience, never.”
    Finally the choice was narrowed down to Jinx, Robert, Mrs. Wiggins, Eeny, and Ferdinand.
    And after some