THE Philadelphia machine was a training school for repeaters. Those ten thousand sent to our cause by Morton's friend, went about their work like artillerymen about their guns. Each was good for four votes. As one of the squad captains said:
“There's got to be time between, for a party to change his face an' shift to another coat an' hat. Besides, it's as well to give th' judges an hour or two to get dim to your mug, see!”
Big Kennedy had set his foot upon the gang spirit, and stamped out of existence such coteries as the Tin Whistles and the Alley Gang, and I copied Big Kennedy in this. Such organizations would have been a threat to me, and put it more in reach of individual leaders to rebel against an order. What work had been done by the gangs was now, under a better discipline and with machine lines more tightly drawn, transacted by the police.
When those skillful gentry, meant to multiply a ballot-total, came in from the South, I called my Chief of Police into council. He was that same bluff girthy personage who, aforetime, had conferred with Big Kennedy. I told him what was required, and how his men, should occasion arise, must foster as far as lay with them the voting purposes of our colonists.
“You can rely on me, Gov'nor,” said the Chief. He had invented this title for Big Kennedy, and now transferred it to me. “Yes, indeed, you can go to sleep on me doin' my part. But I'm bothered to a standstill with my captains. Durin' th' last four or five years, th' force has become honeycombed with honesty; an', may I be struck! if some of them square guys aint got to be captains.”
“Should any get in your way,” said I, “he must be sent to the outskirts. I shall hold you for everything that goes wrong.”
“I guess,” said the Chief thoughtfully, “I'll put the whole racket in charge of Gothecore. He'll keep your emigrants from Philadelphia walkin' a crack. They'll be right, while Gothecore's got his peeps on 'em.”
“Has Gothecore had experience?”
“Is Bill Gothecore wise? Gov'nor, I don't want to paint a promise so brilliant I can't make good, but Gothecore is th' most thorough workman on our list. Why, they call him 'Clean Sweep Bill!' I put him in th' Tenderloin for six months, an' he got away with everything but th' back fence.”
“Very well,” said I, “the care of these colonists is in your hands. Here's a list of the places where they're berthed.”
“You needn't give 'em another thought, Gov'nor,” observed the Chief. Then, as he arose to depart: “Somethin's got to be done about them captains turnin' square. They act as a scare to th' others. I'll tell you what: Make the price of a captaincy twenty thousand dollars. That'll be a hurdle no honest man can take. Whoever pays it, we can bet on as a member of our tribe. One honest captain queers a whole force; it's like a horse goin' lame.” This last, moodily.
In the eleventh hour, by our suggestion and at our cost, the Republican managers put up a ticket. This was made necessary by certain inveterate ones who would unite with nothing in which Tammany owned a part. As between us and the labor forces, they would have offered themselves to the latter. They must be given a ticket of their own whereon to waste themselves.
The campaign itself was a whirlwind of money. That princely fund promised by Morton was paid down to me on the nail, and I did not stint or save it when a chance opened to advance our power by its employment. I say “I did not stint,” because, in accord with Tammany custom, the fund was wholly in my hands.
As most men know, there is no such post as that of Chief of Tammany Hall. The office is by coinage, and the title by conference, of the public. There exists a finance committee of, commonly, a dozen names. It never meets, and the members in ordinary are 'to hear and know no more about the money of the organization than of sheep-washing among Ettrick's hills and vales. There is a chairman; into his hands all moneys come. These, in his care and name, and where and how and if he chooses, are put in bank. He keeps no books; he neither gives nor takes a scrap of paper, nor so much as writes a letter of thanks, in connection with such treasurership. He replies to no one for this money; he spends or keeps as he sees fit, and from beginning to end has the sole and only knowledge of either the intake or the outgo of the millions of the machine. The funds are wholly in his possession. To borrow a colloquialism, “He is the Man with the Money,” and since money is the mainspring of practical politics, it follows as the tail the kite, and without the intervention of either rule or statute, that he is The Boss. Being supreme with the money, he is supreme with the men of the machine, and it was the holding of this chairmanship which gave me my style and place as Chief.
The position is not wanting in its rewards. Tammany, for its own safety, should come forth from each campaign without a dollar. There is no argument to carry over a residue from one battle to the next. It is not required, since Tammany, from those great corporations whose taxes and liberties it may extend or shrink by a word, may ever have what money it will; and it is not wise, because the existence of a fund between campaigns would excite dissension, as this leader or that one conceived some plan for its dissipation. It is better to upturn the till on the back of each election, and empty it in favor of organization peace. And to do this is the duty of the Chairman of the Finance Committee; and I may add that it is one he was never known to overlook.
There was nothing notable in that struggle which sent the reputable old gentleman to the city fore as Mayor, beyond the energy wherewith the work required was performed. Every move ran off as softly sure as could be wished. The police did what they should. Those visitors from below turned in for us full forty thousand votes, and then quietly received their wages and as quietly went their way. I saw to it that, one and all, they were sharply aboard the ferryboats when their work was done. No one would care for them, drunken and mayhap garrulous, about the streets, until after the last spark of election interest had expired. The polls were closed: the count was made; the laborites and their Moses was beaten down, and the reputable old gentleman was declared victor by fifteen thousand. Those rich ones, late so pale, revived the color in their cheeks; and as for Tammany and myself, we took deep breaths, and felt as ones from whose shoulders a load had been lifted.
It was for me a fortunate upcome; following that victory, my leadership could no more be shaken than may the full-grown oaks. Feeling now my strength, I made divers machine changes of the inner sort. I caused my executive leaders to be taken from the assembly districts, rather than from the wards. There would be one from each; and since there was a greater number of districts than wards, the executive array was increased. I smelled safety for myself in numbers, feeling, as Big Kennedy advised, the more secure with twenty than with two. Also the new situation gave the leaders less influence with the Aldermen, when now the frontiers of the one no longer matched those of the other. I had aimed at this; for it was my instant effort on becoming Chief to collect within my own fingers every last thread of possible authority. I wanted the voice of my leadership to be the voice of the storm; all others I would stifle to a whisper.
While busy within the organization, deepening and broadening the channels of my power, I did not neglect conditions beyond the walls. I sent for the leaders of those two or three bands of Democracy which professed themselves opposed to Tammany Hall. I pitched upon my men as lumber folk in their log-driving pitch upon the key-logs in a “jam.” I loosened them with office, or the promise of it, and they instantly came riding down to me on the currents of self-interest, and brought with them those others over whom they held command.
Within the twelvemonth Tammany was left no rival within the lines of the regular party; I had, either by purring or by purchase, brought about the last one's disappearance. It was a fair work for the machine, and I could feel the gathering, swelling confidence of my followers uplifting me as the deep sea uplifts a ship.
There was a thorn with that rose of leadership, nor did my hand escape its sting. The papers in their attacks upon me were as incessant as they were vindictive, and as unsparing as they were unfair. With never a fact set forth, by the word of these unmuzzled and uncaring imprints I stood forth as everything that was thievish, vile, and swart.
While I made my skin as thick against these shafts as I could, since I might neither avoid nor return them, still they pierced me and kept me bleeding, and each new day saw ever a new wound to my sensibilities. It is a bad business—these storms of black abuse! You have but to fasten upon one, even an honest one, the name of horse-thief and, behold you! he will steal a horse. Moreover, those vilifications of types become arrows to glance aside and bury themselves in the breasts of ones innocent.
Blossom was grown now to be a grave stripling girl of fifteen. Anne conceived that she should be taught in a school. She, herself, had carried Blossom to a considerable place in her books, but the finishing would be the better accomplished by teachers of a higher skill, and among children of Blossom's age. With this on her thought, Anne completed arrangements with a private academy for girls, one of superior rank; and to this shop of learning, on a certain morning, she conveyed Blossom. Blossom was to be fitted with a fashionable education by those modistes of the intellectual, just as a dressmaker might measure her, and baste her, and stitch her into a frock.
But insult and acrid grief were lying there in ambush for Blossom—Blossom, then as ever, with her fear-haunted eyes. She was home before night, tearful, hysterical—crying in Anne's arms. There had been a cartoon in the papers. It showed me as a hairy brutal ape, the city in the shape of a beautiful woman fainting in my arms, and a mighty rock labeled “Tammany” in one hand, ready to hurl at my pursuers. The whole was hideous; and when one of the girls of the school showed it to Blossom, and taunted her with this portrait of her father, it was more than heart might bear. She fled before the outrage of it, and would never hear the name of school again. This ape-picture was the thing fearful and new to Blossom, for to save her, both Anne and I had been at care to have no papers to the house. The harm was done, however; Blossom, hereafter, would shrink from all but Anne and me, and when she was eighteen, save for us, the priest, and an old Galway serving woman who had been her nurse, she knew no one in the whole wide world.
The reputable old gentleman made a most amazing Major. He was puffed with a vanity that kissed the sky. Honest, and by nature grateful, he was still so twisted as to believe that to be a good Mayor one must comport himself in an inhuman way.
“Public office is a public trust!” cried he, quoting some lunatic abstractionist.
The reputable old gentleman's notion of discharging this trust was to refuse admittance to his friends, while he sat in council with his enemies. To show that he was independent, he granted nothing to ones who had builded him; to prove himself magnanimous, he went truckling to former foes, preferring them into place. As for me, he declined every suggestion, refused every name, and while there came no open rupture between us, I was quickly taught to stay away.
“My luck with my father,” said Morton, when one day we were considering that lofty spirit of the reputable old gentleman, “is no more flattering than your own, don't y' know. He waves me away with a flourish. I reminded him that while he might forget me as one who with trowel and mortar had aided to lay the walls of his career, he at least should remember that I was none the less his son; I did, really! He retorted with the story of the Roman father who in his rôle as judge sentenced his son to death. Gad! he seemed to regret that no chance offered for him to equal though he might not surpass that noble example. Speaking seriously, when his term verges to its close, what will be your course? You know the old gentleman purposes to succeed himself. And, doubtless, since such is mugwump thickness, he'll be renominated.”
“Tammany,” said I, “will fight him. We'll have a candidate on a straight ticket of our own. His honor, your father, will be beaten.”
“On my soul! I hope so,” exclaimed Morton. “Don't you know, I expect every day to find him doing something to Mulberry Traction—trying to invalidate its franchise, or indulging in some similar piece of humor. I shall breathe easier with my parent returned to private life—really!”
“Never fear; I'll have the city in the hollow of my hand within the year,” said I.
“I will show you where to find a million or two in Wall Street, if you do,” he returned.
The downfall of the reputable old gentleman was already half accomplished. One by one, I had cut the props from beneath him. While he would grant me no contracts, and yield me no offices for my people, he was quite willing to consider my advice on questions of political concern. Having advantage of this, I one day pointed out that it was un-American to permit certain Italian societies to march in celebration of their victories over the Pope long ago. Why should good Catholic Irish-Americans be insulted with such exhibitions! These Italian festivals should be kept for Italy; they do not belong in America. The reputable old gentleman, who was by instinct more than half a Know Nothing, gave warm assent to my doctrines, and the festive Italians did not celebrate.
Next I argued that the reputable old gentleman should refuse his countenance to the Irish exercises on St. Patrick's Day. The Irish were no better than the Italians. He could not make flesh of one and fish of the other. The reputable old gentleman bore testimony to the lucid beauty of my argument by rebuffing the Irish in a flame of words in which he doubted both their intelligence and their loyalty to the land of their adoption. In another florid tirade he later sent the Orangemen to the political right-about. The one powerful tribe he omitted to insult were the Germans, and that only because they did not come within his reach. Had they done so, the reputable old gentleman would have heaped contumely upon them with all the pleasure in life.
It is not needed that I set forth how, while guiding the reputable old gentleman to these deeds of derring, I kept myself in the background. No one knew me as the architect of those wondrous policies. The reputable old gentleman stood alone; and in the inane fullness of his vanity took a deal of delight in the uproar he aroused.
There was an enemy of my own. He was one of those elegant personalities who, in the elevation of riches and a position to which they are born, find the name of Tammany a synonym for crime. That man hated me, and hated the machine. But he loved the reputable old gentleman; and, by his name and his money, he might become of utmost avail to that publicist in any effort he put forth to have his mayorship again.
One of the first offices of the city became vacant, that of chamberlain. I heard how the name of our eminent one would be presented for the place. That was my cue. I instantly asked that the eminent one be named for that vacant post of chamberlain. It was the earliest word which the reputable old gentleman had heard on the subject, for the friends of the eminent one as yet had not broached the business with him.
When I urged the name of the eminent one, the reputable old gentleman pursed up his lips and frowned. He paused for so long a period that I began to fear lest he accept my suggestion. To cure such chance, I broke violently in upon his cogitations with the commands of the machine.
“Mark you,” I cried, in the tones wherewith I was wont in former and despotic days to rule my Tin Whistles, “mark you! there shall be no denial! I demand it in the name of Tammany Hall.”
The sequel was what I sought; the reputable old gentleman elevated his crest. We straightway quarreled, and separated in hot dudgeon. When the select bevy who bore among them the name of the eminent one arrived upon the scene, the reputable old gentleman, metaphorically, shut the door in their faces. They departed in a rage, and the fires of their indignation were soon communicated to the eminent one.
As the result of these various sowings, a nodding harvest of enemies sprung up to hate and harass the reputable old gentleman. I could tell that he would be beaten; he, with the most formidable forces of politics against him solid to a man! To make assurance sure, however, I secretly called to me the Chief of Police. In a moment, the quiet order was abroad to close the gambling resorts, enforce the excise laws against saloons, arrest every contractor violating the ordinances regulating building material in the streets, and generally, as well as specifically, to tighten up the town to a point that left folk gasping.
No one can overrate the political effect of this. New York has no home. It sits in restaurants and barrooms day and night. It is a city of noisome tenements and narrow flats so small that people file themselves away therein like papers in a pigeonhole.
These are not homes: they grant no comfort; men do not seek them until driven by want of sleep. It is for the cramped reasons of flats and tenements that New York is abroad all night. The town lives in the streets; or, rather, in those houses of refreshment which, open night and day, have thrown away their keys.
This harsh enforcement of the excise law, or as Old Mike put it, “Gettin' bechune th' people an' their beer,” roused a wasps' nest of fifty thousand votes. The reputable old gentleman was to win the stinging benefit, since he, being chief magistrate, must stand the brunt as for an act of his administration.
Altogether, politically speaking, my reputable old gentleman tossed and bubbled in a steaming kettle of fish when he was given his renomination. For my own side, I put up against him a noble nonentity with a historic name. He was a mere jelly-fish of principle—one whose boneless convictions couldn't stand on their own legs. If the town had looked at my candidate, it would have repudiated him with a howl. But I knew my public. New York votes with its back to the future. Its sole thought is to throw somebody out of office—in the present instance, the offensive reputable old gentleman—and this it will do with never a glance at that one who by the effect of the eviction is to be raised to the place. No, I had no apprehensions; I named my jelly-fish, and with a straight machine-made ticket, mine from truck to keel, shoved boldly forth. This time I meant to own the town.
THE reputable old gentleman was scandalized by what he called my defection, and told me so. That I should put up a ticket against him was grossest treason.
“And why should I not?” said I. “You follow the flag of your interest; I but profit by your example.”
“Sir!” cried the reputable old gentleman haughtily, “I have no interest save the interest of The public.”
“So you say,” I retorted, “and doubtless so you think.” I had a desire to quarrel finally and for all time with the reputable old gentleman, whose name I no longer needed, and whose fame as an excise purist would now be getting in my way. “You deceive yourself,” I went on. “Your prime motive is to tickle your own vanity with a pretense of elevation. From the pedestal of your millions, and the safe shelter of a clean white shirt, you patronize mankind and play the prig. That is what folk say of you. As to what obligation in your favor rests personally upon myself, I have only to recall your treatment of my candidate for that place of chamberlain.”
“Do you say men call me a prig?” demanded the reputable old gentleman with an indignant start. He ignored his refusal of the eminent one as chamberlain.
“Sir, I deny the term 'prig.' If such were my celebration, I should not have waited to hear it from you.”
“What should you hear or know of yourself?” said I. “The man looking from his window does not see his own house. He who marches with it, never sees the regiment of which he is a unit. No more can you, as mayor, see yourself, or estimate the common view concerning you. It is your vanity to seem independent and above control, and you have transacted that vanity at the expense of your friends. I've stood by while others went that road, and politically at least it ever led down hill.”
That was my last conference with the reputable old gentleman. I went back to Fourteenth Street, and called on my people of Tammany to do their utmost. Nor should I complain of their response, for they went behind their batteries with the cool valor of buccaneers.
There was but one question which gave me doubt, and that was the question of the Australian ballot, then a novelty in our midst. Theretofore, a henchman of the machine went with that freeman to the ballot-box, and saw to it how he put no cheat upon his purchasers. Now our commissioners could approach a polls no nearer than two hundred feet; the freeman went in alone, took his folded ticket from the judges, retired to privacy and a pencil, and marked his ballot where none might behold the work. Who then could know that your mercenary, when thus removed from beneath one's eye and hand, would fight for one's side? I may tell you the situation was putting a wrinkle in my brow when Morton came lounging in.
“You know I've nothing to do with the old gentleman's campaign,” said he, following a mouthful or two of commonplace, and puffing the while his usual cigarette. “Gad! I told him that I had withdrawn from politics; I did, really! I said it was robbing me of all fineness; and that I must defend my native purity of sensibility, don't y' know, and preserve it from such sordid contact.
“'Father,' said I, 'you surely would not, for the small cheap glory of a second term, compel me into experiences that must leave me case-hardened in all that is spiritual?'
“No, he made no reply; simply turned his back upon me in merited contempt. Really, I think he was aware of me for a hypocrite. It was beastly hard to go back on the old boy, don't y' know! But for what I have in mind it was the thing to do.”
Now, when I had him to counsel with, I gave Morton my troubles over the Australian law. The situation, generally speaking, showed good; the more because there were three tickets in the field. Still, nothing was sure. We must work; and we must omit no usual means of adding to our strength. And the Australian law was in our way.
“Really, you're quite right,” observed Morton, polishing his eyeglass meditatively. “To be sure, these beasts of burden, the labor element, have politically gone to pieces since our last campaign. But they are still wandering about by twos and threes, like so many lost sheep, and unless properly shepherded—and what a shepherd's crook is money!—they may fall into the mouths of opposition wolves, don't y' know. What exasperating dullards these working people are! I know of but one greater fool than the working man, and that is the fool he works for! And so you say this Australian law breeds uncertainty for our side?”
“There is no way to tell how a man votes.”
Morton behind that potent eyeglass narrowed his gaze to the end of his nose, and gave a full minute to thought. Then his eyes, released from contemplation of his nose, began to brighten. I placed much reliance upon the fertility of our exquisite, for all his trumpery affectations of eyeglass and effeminate mannerisms, and I waited with impatience for him to speak.
“Really, now,” said he, at last, “how many under the old plan would handle your money about each polling place?”
“About four,” I replied. “Then at each polling booth there would be a dozen pullers-in, to bring up the voters, and go with them to see that they put in the right ballots. This last, you will notice, is by the Australian system made impossible.”
“It is the duty of artillery people,” drawled Morton, “whenever the armor people invent a plate that cannot be perforated by guns in being, don't y' know, to at once invent a gun that shall pierce it. The same holds good in politics. Gad! we must invent a gun that shall knock a hole through this Australian armor; we must, really! A beastly system, I should call it, which those beggarly Australians have constructed! It's no wonder: they are all convicts down there, and it would need a felon to devise such an interference. However, this is what I suggest. You must get into your hands, we'll put it, five thousand of the printed ballots in advance of election day. This may be secretly done, don't y' know, by paying the printers where the tickets are being struck off. A printer is such an avaricious dog; he is, really! The tickets would be equally distributed among those men with the money whom you send about the polling places. A ballot in each instance should be marked with the cross for Tammany Hall before it is given to the recruit. He will then carry it into the booth in his pocket. Having received the regular ticket from the hands of the judges, he can go through the form of retiring, don't y' know; then reappear and give in the ticket which was marked by your man of the machine.”
“And yet,” said I breaking in, “I do not see how you've helped the situation. The recruit might still vote the ticket handed him by the judges, for all our wisdom. Moreover, it would be no easy matter to get hold of fifty thousand tickets, all of which we would require to make sure. Five thousand we might manage, but that would not be enough.”
“You should let me finish; you should, really!” returned Morton. “One would not pay the recruit until he returned to that gentleman of finance with whom he was dealing, don't y' know, and put into his hands the unmarked ballot with which the judges had endowed him. That would prove his integrity; and it would also equip your agent with a new fresh ballot against the next recruit. Thus you would never run out of ballots. Gad! I flatter myself, I've hit upon an excellent idea, don't y' know!” and with that, Morton began delicately to caress his mustache, again taking on his masquerade of the ineffably inane.
Morton's plan was good; I saw its merits in a flash. He had proposed a sure system by which the machine might operate in spite of that antipodean law. We used it too, and it was half the reason of our victory. Upon its proposal, I extended my compliments to Morton.
“Really, it's nothing,” said he, as though the business bored him. “Took the hint from football, don't y' know. It is a rule of that murderous amusement, when you can't buck the center, to go around the ends. But I must have a ride in the park to rest me; I must, really! I seldom permit myself to think—it's beastly bad form to think—and, therefore, when I do give my intelligence a canter, it fatigues me beyond expression. Well, good-by! I shall see you when I am recuperated. Meanwhile, you must not let that awful parent of mine succeed; it would be our ruin, don't y' know!” and Morton glared idiotically behind the eyeglass at the thought of the reputable old gentleman flourishing through a second term. “Yes, indeed,” he concluded, “the old boy would become a perfect juggernaut!”
Morton's plan worked to admiration. The mercenary was given a ballot, ready marked; and later he returned with the one which the judges gave him, took his fee, and went his way.
In these days, when the ballot furnished, by the judges is stamped on the back, each with its separate number in red ink, which number is set opposite a voter's name at the time he receives the ballot, and all to be verified when he brings it again to the judges for deposit in the box, the scheme would be valueless. There lies no open chance for the substitution of a ready-made ballot, because of the deterrent number in red ink.
Under these changed conditions, however, as Morton declared they must, the gunners of party have invented both the projectile and the rifle to pierce this new and stronger plate. The party emblems, the Eagle, the Star, the Ship, and other totems of partisanship, are printed across the head of the ticket in black accommodating ink. The recruit now makes his designating cross with a pencil that is as soft as fresh paint. Then he spreads over the head of the ticket, as he might a piece of blotting paper, a tissue sheet peculiarly prepared. A gentle rub of the fingers across the tissue, stains it plainly with the Eagle, the Star, the Ship, and the entire procession of totems; also, it takes with the rest an impression of that penciled cross. This tissue, our recruit brings to that particular paymaster of the forces with whom he is in barter, and a glance answers the query was the vote made right or wrong. If “right” the recruit has his reward; if “wrong,” he is spurned from the presence as one too densely ignorant to be of use.
The reputable old gentleman, when the vote came on, was overpowered; he retired to private life, inveighing against republics for that they were ungrateful. My jelly-fish of historic blood took his place as mayor, and Tammany dominated every corner of the town. My word was absolute from the bench of the jurist to the beat of the policeman; the second greatest city in the world, with every dollar of its treasure, was in my hands to do with it as I would. I drew a swelling sense of comfort from the situation which my breast had never known.
And yet, I was not made mad by this sudden grant of power. I knew by the counsel of Big Kennedy, and the dungeon fate of that Boss who was destroyed, that I must light a lamp of caution for my journeyings. Neither the rôle of bully, nor the bluff method of the highwayman, would serve; in such rough event, the people, overhanging all, would be upon one like an avalanche. One must proceed by indirection and while the common back was turned; one, being careful, might bleed the public while it slept.
When the town in its threads was thus wholly in my hands, with every office, great or small, held by a man of the machine, Morton came to call upon me.
“And so you're the Czar!” said he.
“You have the enemy's word for it,” I replied. “'Czar' is what they call me in their papers when they do not call me 'rogue.'”
“Mere compliments, all,” returned Morton airily. “Really, I should feel proud to be thus distinguished. And yet I'm surprised! I was just telling an editor of one of our rampant dailies: 'Can't you see,' said I, 'that he who speaks ill of his master speaks ill of himself? To call a man a scoundrel or an ignoramus, is to call him weak, since neither is a mark of strength. And when you term him scoundrel and ignoramus who has beaten you, you but name yourself both viler, weaker still. Really,' I concluded, 'if only to preserve one's own standing, one should ever speak well of one's conqueror, don't y' know!' But it was of no use; that ink-fellow merely scowled and went his way. However, to discuss a theory of epithet was not my present purpose. Do you recall how, on the edge of the campaign, I said that if you would but win the town I'd lead you into millions?”
“Yes,” said I, “you said something of the sort.”
“You must trust me in this: I understand the market better than you do, don't y' know. Perhaps you have noticed that Blackberry Traction is very low—down to ninety, I think?”
“No,” I replied, “the thing is news to me. I know nothing of stocks.”
“It's as well. This, then, is my road to wealth for both of us. As a first move, don't y' know, and as rapidly as I can without sending it up, I shall load myself for our joint account with we'll say—since I'm sure I can get that much—forty thousand shares of Blackberry. It will take me ten days. When I'm ready, the president of Blackberry will call upon you; he will, really! He will have an elaborate plan for extending Blackberry to the northern limits of the town; and he will ask, besides, for a half-dozen cross-town franchises to act as feeders to the main line, and to connect it with the ferries. Be slow and thoughtful with our Blackberry president, but encourage him. Gad! keep him coming to you for a month, and on each occasion seem nearer to his view. In the end, tell him he can have those franchises—cross-town and extensions—and, for your side, go about the preliminary orders to city officers. It will send Blackberry aloft like an elevator, don't y' know! Those forty thousand shares will go to one hundred and thirty-five—really!”
Two weeks later Morton gave me the quiet word that he held for us a trifle over forty thousand shares of Blackberry which he had taken at an average of ninety-one. Also, he had so intrigued that the Blackberry's president would seek a meeting with me to consider those extensions, and discover my temper concerning them.
The president of Blackberry and I came finally together in a parlor of the Hoffman House, as being neutral ground. I found him soft-voiced, plausible, with a Hebrew cast and clutch. He unfurled his blue-prints, which showed the proposed extensions, and what grants of franchises would be required.
At the beginning, I was cold, doubtful; I distrusted a public approval of the grants, and feared the public's resentment.
“Tammany must retain the people's confidence,” said I. “It can only do so by protecting jealously the people's interests.”
The president of Blackberry shrugged his shoulders. He looked at me hard, and as one who waited for my personal demands. He would not speak, but paused for me to begin. I could feel it in the air how a halfmillion might be mine for the work of asking. I never said the word, however; I had no mind to put my hand into that dog's mouth.
Thus we stood; he urging, I considering the advisability of those asked-for franchises. This was our attitude throughout a score of conferences, and little by little I went leaning the Blackberry way.
To be sure, the secret of our meetings was whispered in right quarters, and every day found fresh buyers for Blackberry. Meanwhile, the shares climbed high and ever higher, until one bland April morning they stood at one hundred and thirty-seven.
Throughout my series of meetings with the president of Blackberry, I had seen no trace of Morton. For that I cared nothing, but played my part slowly so as to give him time, having confidence in his loyalty, and knowing that my interest was his interest, and I in no sort to be worsted. On that day when Blackberry showed at one hundred and thirty-seven, Morton appeared. He laid down a check for an even million of dollars.
“I've been getting out of Blackberry for a week,” said he, with his air of delicate lassitude. “I found that it was tiring me, don't y' know; I did really! Besides, we've done enough: No gentlemen ever makes more than one million on a single turn; it's not good form.” That check, drawn to my order, was the biggest of its kind I'd ever handled. I took it up, and I could feel a pringling to my finger-ends with the contact of so much wealth all mine. I envied my languid friend his genius for coolness and aplomb. He selected a cigarette, and lighted it as though a million here and there, on a twist of the market, was a commonest of affairs. When I could command my voice, I said:
“And now I suppose we may give Blackberry its franchises?”
“No, not yet,” returned Morton. “Really, we're not half through. I've not only gotten rid of our holdings, but I've sold thirty-five thousand shares the other way. It was a deuced hard thing to do without sending the stock off—the market is always so beastly ready to tumble, don't y' know. But I managed it; we're now short about thirty-five thousand shares at one hundred and thirty-seven.”
“What then?” said I.
“On the whole,” continued Morton, with just a gleam of triumph behind his eyeglass, “on the whole, I think I should refuse Blackberry, don't y' know. The public interest would be thrown away; and gad! the people are prodigiously moved over it already, they are, really! It would be neither right nor safe. I'd come out in an interview declaring that a grant of what Blackberry asks for would be to pillage the town. Here, I've the interview prepared. What do you say? Shall we send it to the Daily Tory?”
The interview appeared; Blackberry fell with a crash. It slumped fifty points, and Morton and I were each the better by fairly another million. Blackberry grazed the reef of a receivership so closely that it rubbed the paint from its side.
WHEN now I was rich with double millions, I became harrowed of new thoughts and sown with new ambitions. It was Blossom to lie at the roots of it—Blossom, looking from her window of young womanhood upon a world she did not understand, and from which she drew away. The world was like a dark room to Blossom, with an imagined fiend to harbor in every corner of it. She must go forth among people of manners and station. The contact would mend her shyness; with time and usage she might find herself a pleasant place in life. Now she lived a morbid creature of sorrow which had no name—a twilight soul of loneliness—and the thought of curing this went with me day and night.
Nor was I unjustified of authority.
“Send your daughter into society,” said that physician to whom I put the question. “It will be the true medicine for her case. It is her nerves that lack in strength; society, with its dinners and balls and fêtes and the cheerful hubbub of drawing rooms, should find them exercise, and restore them to a complexion of health.”
Anne did not believe with that savant of nerves. She distrusted my society plans for Blossom.
“You think they will taunt her with the fact of me,” I said, “like that one who showed her the ape cartoon as a portrait of her father. But Blossom is grown a woman now. Those whom I want her to meet would be made silent by politeness, even if nothing else might serve to stay their tongues from such allusions. And I think she would be loved among them, for she is good and beautiful, and you of all should know how she owns to fineness and elevation.”
“But it is not her nature,” pleaded Anne. “Blossom would be as much hurt among those men and women of the drawing rooms as though she walked, barefooted, over flints.”
For all that Anne might say, I persisted in my resolve. Blossom must be saved against herself by an everyday encounter with ones of her own age. I had more faith than Anne. There must be kindness and sympathy in the world, and a countenance for so much goodness as Blossom's. Thus she should find it, and the discovery would let in the sun upon an existence now overcast with clouds.
These were my reasonings. It would win her from her broodings and those terrors without cause, which to my mind were a kind of insanity that might deepen unless checked.
Full of my great design, I moved into a new home—a little palace in its way, and one to cost me a penny. I cared nothing for the cost; the house was in the center of that region of the socially select. From this fine castle of gilt, Blossom should conquer those alliances which were to mean so much for her good happiness.
Being thus fortunately founded, I took Morton into my confidence. He was a patrician by birth and present station; and I knew I might have both his hand and his wisdom for what was in my heart. When I laid open my thought to Morton, he stood at gaze like one planet-struck, while that inevitable eyeglass dropped from his amazed nose.
“You must pardon my staring,” said he, at last. “It was a beastly rude thing to do. But, really, don't y' know, I was surprised that one of force and depth, and who was happily outside society, should find himself so badly guided as to seek to enter it.”
“You, yourself, are in its midst.”
“That should be charged,” he returned, “to accident rather than design. I am in the midst of society, precisely as some unfortunate tree might be found in the middle of its native swamp, and only because being born there I want of that original energy required for my transplantation. I will say this,” continued Morton, getting up to walk the floor; “your introduction into what we'll style the Four Hundred, don't y' know, might easily be brought about. You have now a deal of wealth; and that of itself should be enough, as the annals of our Four Hundred offer ample guaranty. But more than that, stands the argument of your power, and how you, in your peculiar fashion, are unique. Gad, for the latter cause alone, swelldom would welcome you with spread arms; it would, really! But believe me, if it were happiness you came seeking you would miss it mightily. There is more laughter in Third Avenue than in Fifth.”
“But it is of my Blossom I am thinking,” I cried. “For myself I am not so ambitious.”
“And what should your daughter,” said Morton, “find worth her young while in society? She is, I hear from you, a girl of sensibility. That true, she would find nothing but disappointment in this region you think so select. Do you know our smart set? Sir, it is composed of savages in silk.” Morton, I found, had much the manner of his father, when stirred. “It is,” he went on, “that circle where discussion concerns itself with nothing more onerous than golf or paper-chases or singlestickers or polo or balls or scandals; where there is no literature save the literature of the bankbook; where snobs invent a pedigree and play at caste; where folk give lawn parties to dogs and dinners to which monkeys come as guests of honor; where quarrels occur over questions of precedence between a mosquito and a flea; where pleasure is a trade, and idleness an occupation; in short, it is that place where the race, bruised of riches, has turned cancerous and begun to rot.”
“You draw a vivid picture,” said I, not without a tincture of derision. “For all that, I stick by my determination, and ask your help. I tell you it is my daughter's life or death.”
Morton, at this, relapsed into his customary attitude of moral, mental Lah-de-dah, and his lisp and his drawl and his eyeglass found their usual places. He shrugged his shoulders in his manner of the superfine.
“Why then,” said he, “and seeing that you will have no other way for it, you may command my services. Really, I shall be proud to introduce you, don't y' know, as one who, missing being a monkey by birth, is now determined to become one by naturalization. Now I should say that a way to begin would be to discover a dinner and have you there as a guest. I know a society queen who will jump at the chance; she will have you at her chariot wheel like another Caractacus in another Rome, and parade you as a latest captive to her social bow and spear. I'll tell her; it will offer an excellent occasion for you to declare your intentions and take out your first papers in that Apeland whereof you seem so strenuous to become a citizen.”
While the work put upon me by my place as Boss had never an end, but filled both my day and my night to overflowing, it brought with it compensation. If I were ground and worn away on the wheel of my position like a knife on a grindstone, still I was kept to keenest edge, and I felt that joy I've sometimes thought a good blade must taste in the sheer fact of its trenchant quality. Besides, there would now and then arrive a moment which taught me how roundly I had conquered, and touched me with that sense of power which offers the highest pleasure whereof the soul of man is capable. Here would be an example of what I mean, although I cannot believe the thing could happen in any country save America or any city other than New York.
It was one evening at my own door, when that judge who once sought to fix upon me the murder of Jimmy the Blacksmith, came tapping for an interview. His term was bending towards the evening of its close, and the mean purpose of him was none better-than to just plead for his place again. I will not say the man was abject; but then the thought of his mission, added to a memory of that relation to each other in which it was aforetime our one day's fate to have stood, choked me with contempt. I shall let his conduct go by without further characterization; and yet for myself, had our fortunes been reversed and he the Boss and I the Judge, before I had been discovered in an attitude of office-begging from a hand I once plotted to kill, I would have died against the wall. But so it was; my visitor would labor with me for a renomination.
My first impulse was one of destruction; I would put him beneath the wheel and crush out the breath of his hopes. And then came Big Kennedy's warning to avoid revenge when moved of nothing broader than a reason of revenge.
I sat and gazed mutely upon that judge for a space; he, having told his purpose, awaited my decision without more words. I grew cool, and cunning began to have the upper hand of violence in my breast. If I cast him down, the papers would tell of it for the workings of my vengeance. If, on the quiet other hand, he were to be returned, it would speak for my moderation, and prove me one who in the exercise of power lifted himself above the personal. I resolved to continue him; the more since the longer I considered, the clearer it grew that my revenge, instead of being starved thereby, would find in it a feast.
“You tried to put a rope about my neck,” said I at last.
“I was misled as to the truth.”
“Still you put a stain upon me. There be thousands who believe me guilty of bloodshed, and of that you shall clear me by printed word.”
“I am ever ready to repair an error.”
Within a week, with black ink and white paper, my judge in peril set forth how since my trial he had gone to the ends of that death of Jimmy the Blacksmith in its history. I was, he said, an innocent man, having had neither part nor lot therein.
I remember that over the glow of triumph wherewith I read his words, there came stealing the chill shadow of a hopeless grief. Those phrases of exoneration would not recall poor Apple Cheek; nor would they restore Blossom to that poise and even balance from which she had been shaken on a day before her birth. For all the sorrow of it, however, I made good my word; and I have since thought that whether our judge deserved the place or no, to say the least he earned it.
Every man has his model, and mine was Big John Kennedy. This was in a way of nature, for I had found Big Kennedy in my boyhood, and it is then, and then only, when one need look for his great men. When once you have grown a beard, you will meet with few heroes, and make to yourself few friends; wherefore you should the more cherish those whom your fortunate youth has furnished.
Big Kennedy was my exemplar, and there arose few conditions to frown upon me with a problem to be solved, when I did not consider what Big Kennedy would have done in the face of a like contingency. Nor was I to one side of the proprieties in such a course. Now, when I glance backward down that steep aisle of endeavor up which I've come, I recall occasions, and some meant for my compliment, when I met presidents, governors, grave jurists, reverend senators, and others of tallest honors in the land. They talked and they listened, did these mighty ones; they gave me their views and their reasons for them, and heard mine in return; and all as equal might encounter equal in a commerce of level terms. And yet, choose as I may, I have not the name of him who in a pure integrity of force, or that wisdom which makes men follow, was the master of Big John Kennedy. My old chief won all his wars within the organization, and that is the last best test of leadership. He made no backward steps, but climbed to a final supremacy and sustained himself. I was justified in steering by Big Kennedy. Respect aside, I would have been wrecked had I not done so. That man who essays to live with no shining example to show his feet the path, is as one who wanting a lantern, and upon a moonless midnight, urges abroad into regions utterly unknown.
Not alone did I observe those statutes for domination which Big Kennedy both by precept and example had given me, but I picked up his alliances; and that one was the better in my eyes, and came to be observed with wider favor, who could tell of a day when he carried Big Kennedy's confidence. It was a brevet I always honored with my own.
One such was the Reverend Bronson, still working for the regeneration of the Five Points, He often came to me for money or countenance in his labors, and I did ever as Big Kennedy would have done and heaped up the measure of his requests.
It would seem, also, that I had more of the acquaintance of this good man than had gone to my former leader. For one thing, we were more near in years, and then, too, I have pruned my language of those slangy rudenesses of speech which loaded the conversation of Big Kennedy, and cultivated in their stead softness and a verbal cleanliness which put the Reverend Bronson at more ease in my company. I remember with what satisfaction I heard him say that he took me for a person of education.
It was upon a time when I had told him of my little learning; for the gloom of it was upon me constantly, and now and then I would cry out against it, and speak of it as a burden hard to bear. I shall not soon forget the real surprise that showed in the Reverend Bronson's face, nor yet the good it did me.
“You amaze me!” he cried. “Now, from the English you employ I should not have guessed it. Either my observation is dulled, or you speak as much by grammar as do I, who have seen a college.”
This was true by more than half, since like many who have no glint of letters, and burning with the shame of it, I was wont to listen closely to the talk of everyone learned of books; and in that manner, and by imitation, I taught myself a decent speech just as a musician might catch a tune by ear.
“Still I have no education,” I said, when the Reverend Bronson spoke of his surprise.
“But you have, though,” returned he, “only you came by that education not in the common way.”
That good speech alone, and the comfort of it to curl about my heart, more than repaid me for all I ever did or gave by request of the Reverend Bronson; and it pleases me to think I told him so. But I fear I set down these things rather in vanity than to do a reader service, and before patience turns fierce with me, I will get onward with my story.
One afternoon the Reverend Bronson came leading a queer bedraggled boy, whose years—for all he was stunted and beneath a size—should have been fourteen.
“Can't you find something which this lad may do?” asked the Reverend Bronson. “He has neither father nor mother nor home—he seems utterly friendless. He has no capacity, so far as I have sounded him, and, while he is possessed of a kind of animal sharpness, like the sharpness of a hawk or a weasel, I can think of nothing to set him about by which he could live. Even the streets seem closed to him, since the police for some reason pursue him and arrest him on sight. It was in a magistrate's court I found him. He had been dragged there by an officer, and would have been sent to a reformatory if I had not rescued him.”
“And would not that have been the best place for him?” I asked, rather to hear the Reverend Bronson's reply, than because I believed in my own query. Aside from being a born friend of liberty in a largest sense, my own experience had not led me to believe that our reformatories reform. I've yet to hear of him who was not made worse by a term in any prison. “Why not send him to a reformatory?” said I again.
“No one should be locked up,” contended the Reverend Bronson, “who has not shown himself unfit to be free. That is not this boy's case, I think; he has had no chance; the police, according to that magistrate who gave him into my hands, are relentless against him, and pick him up on sight.”
“And are not the police good judges of these matters?”
“I would not trust their judgment,” returned the Reverend Bronson. “There are many noble men upon the rolls of the police.” Then, with a doubtful look: “For the most part, however, I should say they stand at the head of the criminal classes, and might best earn their salaries by arresting themselves.”
At this, I was made to smile, for it showed how my reverend visitor's years along the Bowery had not come and gone without lending him some saltiness of wit.
“Leave the boy here,” said I at last, “I'll find him work to live by, if it be no more than sitting outside my door, and playing the usher to those who call upon me.”
“Melting Moses is the only name he has given me,” said the Reverend Bronson, as he took his leave. “I suppose, if one might get to it, that he has another.”
“Melting Moses, as a name, should do very well,” said I.
Melting Moses looked wistfully after the Reverend Bronson when the latter departed, and I could tell by that how the urchin regretted the going of the dominie as one might regret the going of an only friend. Somehow, the lad's forlorn state grew upon me, and I made up my mind to serve as his protector for a time at least. He was a shrill child of the Bowery, was Melting Moses, and spoke a kind of gutter dialect, one-half slang and the other a patter of the thieves that was hard to understand. My first business was to send him out with the janitor of the building to have him thrown into a bathtub, and then buttoned into a new suit of clothes.
Melting Moses submitted dumbly to these improvements, being rather resigned than pleased, and later with the same docility went home to sleep at the janitor's house. Throughout the day he would take up his post on my door and act as herald to what visitors might come.
Being washed and combed and decently arrayed, Melting Moses, with black eyes and a dark elfin face, made no bad figure of a boy. For all his dwarfishness, I found him surprisingly strong, and as active as a monkey. He had all the love and loyalty of a collie for me, and within the first month of his keeping my door, he would have cast himself into the river if I had asked him for that favor.
Little by little, scrap by scrap, Melting Moses gave me his story. Put together in his words, it ran like this:
“Me fadder kept a joint in Kelly's Alley; d' name of-d' joint was d' Door of Death, see! It was a hot number, an' lots of trouble got pulled off inside. He used to fence for d' guns an' dips, too, me fadder did; an' w'en one of 'em nipped a super or a rock, an' wanted d' quick dough, he brought it to me fadder, who chucked down d' stuff an' no questions asked. One day a big trick comes off—a jooeler's winder or somet'ing like dat. Me fadder is in d' play from d' outside, see! An' so w'en dere's a holler, he does a sneak an' gets away, 'cause d' cops is layin' to pinch him. Me fadder gets put wise to this be a mug who hangs out about d' Central Office. He sherries like I says.
“At dat, d' Captain who's out to nail me fadder toins sore all t'rough. W'en me fadder sidesteps into New Joisey or some'ers, d' Captain sends along a couple of his harness bulls from Mulberry Street, an' dey pinches me mudder, who aint had nothin' to do wit' d' play at all. Dey rings for d' hurry-up wagon, an' takes me mudder to d' station. D' Captain he gives her d' eye, an' asts where me fadder is. She says she can't put him on, 'cause she aint on herself. Wit' dat, dis Captain t'rows her d' big chest, see! an' says he'll give her d' t'ree degrees if she don't cough up d' tip. But she hands him out d' old gag: she aint on. So then, d' Captain has her put in a cell; an' nothin' to eat.
“After d' foist night he brings her up ag'in.
“'Dat's d' number one d'gree,' says he.
“But still me mudder don't tell, 'cause she can't. Me fadder aint such a farmer as to go leavin' his address wit' no one.
“D' second night dey keeps me mudder in a cell, an' toins d' hose on d' floor so she can't do nothin' but stan' 'round—no sleep! no chuck! no nothin'!
“'Dat's d' number two d'gree,' says d' bloke of a Captain to me mudder. 'Now where did dat husband of yours skip to?'
“But me mudder couldn't tell.
“'Give d' old goil d' dungeon,' says d' Captain; 'an' t'row her in a brace of rats to play wit'.'
“An' now dey locks me mudder in a place like a cellar, wit' two rats to squeak an' scrabble about all night, an' t'row a scare into her.
“An' it would too, only she goes dotty.
“Next day, d' Captain puts her in d' street. But w'at's d' use? She's off her trolley. She toins sick; an' in a week she croaks. D' sawbones gets her for d' colleges.”
Melting Moses shed tears at this.
“Dat's about all,” he concluded. “W'en me mudder was gone, d' cops toined in to do me. D' Captain said he was goin' to clean up d' fam'ly; so he gives d' orders, an' every time I'd show up on d' line, I'd get d' collar. It was one of dem times, w'en d' w'itechoker, who passes me on to you, gets his lamps on me an' begs me off from d' judge, see!”
Melting Moses wept a deal during his relation, and I was not without being moved by it myself. I gave the boy what consolation I might, by assuring him that he was safe with me, and that no policeman should threaten him. A tale of trouble, and particularly if told by a child, ever had power to disturb me, and I did not question Melting Moses concerning his father and mother a second time.
My noble nonentity—for whom I will say that he allowed me to finger him for offices and contracts, as a musician fingers the keyboard of a piano, and play upon him what tunes of profit I saw fit—was mayor, and the town wholly in my hands, with a Tammany man in every office, when there occurred the first of a train of events which in their passage were to plow a furrow in my life so deep that all the years to come after have not served to smooth it away. I was engaged at my desk, when Melting Moses announced a caller.
“She's a dame in black,” said Melting Moses; “an' she's of d' Fift' Avenoo squeeze all right.”
Melting Moses, now he was fed and dressed, went through the days with uncommon spirit, and when not thinking on his mother would be gay enough. My visitors interested him even more than they did me, and he announced but few without hazarding his surmise as to both their origins and their errands.
“Show her in!” I said.
My visitor was a widow, as I could see by her mourning weeds. She was past middle life; gray, with hollow cheeks, and sad pleading eyes.
“My name is Van Flange,” said she. “The Reverend Bronson asked me to call upon you. It's about my son; he's ruining us by his gambling.”
Then the Widow Van Flange told of her son's infatuation; and how blacklegs in Barclay Street were fleecing him with roulette and faro bank.
I listened to her story with patience. While I would not find it on my programme to come to her relief, I aimed at respect for one whom the Reverend Bronson had endorsed. I was willing to please that good man, for I liked him much since he spoke in commendation of my English. Besides, if angered, the Reverend Bronson would be capable of trouble. He was too deeply and too practically in the heart of the East Side; he could not fail to have a tale to tell that would do Tammany Hall no good, but only harm. Wherefore, I in no wise cut short the complaints of the Widow Van Flange. I heard her to the end, training my face to sympathy the while, and all as though her story were not one commonest of the town.
“You may be sure, madam,” said I, when the Widow Van Flange had finished, “that not only for the Reverend Bronson's sake, but for your own, I shall do all I may to serve you. I own no personal knowledge of that gambling den of which you speak, nor of those sharpers who conduct it. That knowledge belongs with the police. The number you give, however, is in Captain Gothecore's precinct. We'll send for him if you'll wait.” With that I rang my desk bell for Melting Moses. “Send for Captain Gothecore,” said I. At the name, the boy's black eyes flamed up in a way to puzzle. “Send a messenger for Captain Gothecore; I want him at once.”