Homepage eBook Readers eBook Resources PDA Resources Book/Magazin Shop Travelling to Europe? Check out our german partnersite Travina, with local info...

Order this and 12,000 more free eBooks on DVD as PDF, Microsoft Reader, etc.

Being the letters (non-partisan) of Hon. William Bradley, Governor and former veteran of practical politics, written to his friend and protege Ned, who is still busy "carving a career back in the old state"

BY FORREST CRISSEY

Author of The Country Boy

THOMPSON & THOMAS, CHICAGO

Copyright, 1903
SAMPSON-HODGES CO.
Chicago

Copyright, 1904
THOMPSON & THOMAS
Chicago

This book is affectionately dedicated
to my dear friend
HON. LUTHER M. DEARBORN
of Illinois

FOREWORD.

For years the writer of Tattlings of a Retired Politician has enjoyed a somewhat wide and intimate acquaintance with those men who play the game of politics and who have, in various degrees, demonstrated their skill and leadership in that kind of contest. He has listened with unfailing entertainment to the anecdotes, stories, and incidents of their struggles for place, power and preferment. But most of all has he enjoyed the bits of homely philosophy, the picturesque aphorisms and the shrewd observations which have dropped from the lips of these Americans who, from varied and complex motives, have been drawn into the game of popular government.

To focus this phase of American character as faithfully, as vividly and as entertainingly as possible into the following pages has been a pleasing and a fascinating task. Looking back upon it from the final word, the author believes that the actual motives, conditions and methods that obtain wherever a caucus is held or a ballot box opened have been fairly portrayed and that the viewpoint he has presented is the one actually taken by any American who has had a wide and first-hand experience in practical politics.

This is not so much because many of the stories embodied in these familiar letters from William Bradley, the retired political veteran, to his friend Ned are drawn from actual experience and have a substantial foundation in fact, as because the observations of the former legislator, Congressman, Governor and United States Senator reflect the spirit of the practical politician and reveal his motives, methods and characteristics.

That form of literary expression known as the "letter" has been chosen for this work because it affords the most natural medium for terse, homely and unconventional expression in strict keeping with the character of the subject. In writing to a familiar friend one may go directly to the theme in hand without formality or introduction; epigram, anecdote and story come naturally within the scope of the friendly letter and the handicap of conventionality is less upon the pen of the writer of such a letter than upon the hand of the writer who uses any other literary medium.

During the serial publication of a portion of the papers which make up this book, the writer has been cheered by expressions of approval and appreciation from many men who have achieved places of high political distinction.

To this generous and discriminating encouragement from such authoritative sources he is especially indebted, for it has helped him to hope, with increased confidence, that, in some measure, he has been able to put into the letters of William Bradley something of the humor, the philosophy, the romance and the tragedy of actual politics as the game is played in every portion of our Republic, and also that this delineation will have interest for the men who are intimately familiar with the game as well as for those for whom it has a touch of mystery.

Sincerely,

Forrest Crissey.

Chicago, April, 1904.

	Being the remarks of "Bill" Bradley, former legislator, congressman, Governor
	and United States Senator, to his younger friend Ned, who has written that
	he has a cinch on a re-election and that he proposes to take it easy in this
	campaign, as there is no need of hustling. Incidentally the retired "party
	warhorse" expresses himself on the irksomeness of "existence by corporate
	courtesy" and the delights of retirement.

CHAPTER I. STILL-HUNTS AND STOLEN MARCHES.

Brokenstraw Ranch, ——, 19—.

Dear Ned: —

Of course I'm glad that nothing short of an epidemic of sudden death can shut you out of a re-election. It's good to be comfortably sure about things of this sort.

But my observation reminds me that straight roads to the State House have an amazing way of wandering off into the underbrush and that public sentiment can blow more different ways, at one and the same time, than the flame of a campaign torch in a Fall wind. Any good, average ballot-box has thrown down more cock-sure men than ever won election bets or saw the man that struck Billy Patterson. And you may draw sight drafts against the fact that when there's a whole lot depending on one of these Heaven-insured "certainties" it's time to get scared and hustle.

The man who lies down and goes to sleep on the soft side of a political cinch stands a good chance of waking up just in time to see his hide nailed to the barn door by the fellow who couldn't sleep because he had to whistle in the face of expected defeat in order to keep his courage up.

Perhaps you've forgotten the story of "Old Gab" Hitchcock, down in Hebron County. He got his name from his "gift of gab" on the auction block. There hadn't been a sale "at public vendue" in his territory for thirty years at which he hadn't officiated. He could talk the burrs right off the back of a Southdown sheep; but there were two subjects on which he was as silent as a tombstone.

Politics and religion tied knots in his tongue and when they were mentioned he closed up tight. But he knew the name of every baby in the three counties that he traveled and how many teeth each youngone had cut up to the time of his last call; he never failed to remember the special brand of cookery on which each housewife was particularly strong, and even the savagest dogs wagged their tails in a friendly way when Old Gab rode in at the front bars.

But when it came to politics, everybody counted the auctioneer out and considered that he didn't cut any figure. In fact, being a Republican, he seldom took the trouble to vote, as Democrats were thicker in his district than thistles, and voting was mighty discouraging exercise. He said he was glad he was on the off side and belonged to the "hopeless minority," because it saved him the bother of going to caucuses and the polls, knowing that his party didn't stand any more chance to get out alive than a national prohibition bill in Congress.

One Winter, as you will remember, there was a deadlock in the legislature on the election of a United States Senator. An actual gain of one vote on the Republican side would have settled it; but sometimes one bird is harder to bag than a whole flock on other occasions—and this was one of those times!

Day after day, and month after month, the thing hung fire. All that money and pull and poker and highballs could do had been done—and still the joint ballot stuck at the same old figure! The shiftiest campaigners that ever cracked the party whip had done their best and couldn't budge the count. Every dark horse in each party had his ears pricked up and was ready to snort like a freight engine the minute there was a sign of a break. But no sign was given, and the big bosses simply held on, waiting for something to happen and lift the spell.

And, finally, it happened all right! One morning the member from Hebron County was found dead in his bed. That left the situation just where it was before, for the Republicans still lacked one vote of enough to elect and the Democrats had a three-to-one cinch on electing the member to fill the vacancy.

A special election was called, but the Republican newspapers sorrowfully announced that there was no more hope of defeating the enemy in the Hebron district than of raising the late lamented to life. And the minority party didn't take interest enough in the contest to name a candidate—simply conceded the whole thing to the Democrats and lay down without a kick. Of course, that was in the days before the new-fangled Australian ballot had entered its appearance on the state statutes.

Spring plowing opened up particularly early that year and the contest for the United States Senatorship had dragged along through the Winter until it had become an old story.

Generally speaking, there was more interest in the farming counties in getting in a new crop than in sending a new Senator to Washington.

About that time, down in the Hebron district, auction sales fell off to such an extent that Old Gab Hitchcock had to take to shipping cattle in order to keep up his end, and he did a right smart bit of riding in his new calling. There wasn't a road in Hebron or the adjoining counties that he didn't travel and he managed to pick up an amazing number of shipments of likely cattle for the Chicago market.

When the special election day came he was out in the back towns buying stock, and most of the farmers of the district were walking in furrows behind their plows. They knew that their candidate, the Democrat, had a copper-riveted cinch on the election, for there was no one running against him. So they stuck to their Spring plowing and made the most of the fine weather.

But about 4 o'clock that afternoon, the Republican voters began to rattle out of the back towns as if the woods were on fire. It took an hour for the Democrats at the polling places to get their systems permeated with the suspicion that something was doing—and by the time they had waked up, it was all done!

They sent out an alarm to the Faithful, but before the stay-at-homes could pull their boots on and hitch up the teams, the polls had closed. There wasn't even time to put up a counting-out scheme—and when the ballots were counted a district of frantic Democrats faced the fact that foxy Old Gab Hitchcock had been elected to the legislature on the Republican ticket.

The first day he took his seat he settled the United States Senatorship—and went out of the auction business for keeps! The party, as you know, has taken good care of him ever since, and he doesn't care how many babies are cutting teeth back in old Hebron, either!

Then, again, after you've hustled hard and got everything into your wigwam, snug and tight, you can't be sure that the other fellow will not sneak in, over night, and stampede all your braves.

If you don't think this is true, remember the history of Old Sanctity, who tried to break into politics up in the city, from Little Danny's ward. There was a healthy colored population in that ward and the old man had been running a mission Sunday School and private bureau of charity so long there that he thought it was easy. He wanted to shine as a white-enamel reformer, and so he opened the campaign early and held meetings every night in the Heart of Africa. To all appearances, he had the whole colony spellbound, and it looked as if he would carry the Dark Continent with a whoop.

There wasn't enough political guile in the old man to keep him from opening a mass meeting with family prayers, and it was all his campaign committee could do to get postage funds and hall rent out of him. At his final pow-wow fully three hundred kinky-haired voters were present.

Old Sanctity, as the boys called him, dismissed the meeting with a smile of satisfaction and the feeling that the Mission School had been vindicated as a political power.

But down at the bottom of the stairs Little Danny had stationed a few business agents whose pockets bulged with half dollars. An hour later the whole dusky gang was gathered at a banquet of pork chops and fried chicken, across the street, and every guest at the board had one of Danny's fifty-cent pieces in his pocket. After the votes were counted Old Sanctity hardly knew whether he had been a candidate or not.

Of course it wasn't clean politics for Danny to do this, and I only mention it to point the moral that certainties in politics are about as slippery propositions as greased pigs at county fairs, and that is isn't safe to carry elections on the somnambulistic basis.

There's a good deal more human nature than patriotism in the average citizen and when you bill him on any other valuation you're going to have a big shrinkage in the ballot box.

Livery hire and hustlers are cheap in comparison with eloquence and exalted hopes, and the man who calculates to keep in politics and come out on the heavy side of the polling list would better make up his mind to spend his money for buggy grease before the polls close instead of saving it for red fire and Roman candles with which to celebrate his election.

So, Ned, if you've decided to take things easy, and let the campaign "take care of itself" this time, as your letter suggests, it will not be necessary to wire me that the enemy put up a still hunt or there has been an unaccountable landslide "owing to a revulsion of sentiment on national issues," and that you have gone down as a victim of the revolt of the people against the "stubborn attitude of the party leaders on the tariff question." I'll understand, without this, that you've been catching up on the sleep you lost in the other campaigns.

You want to know if I don't sometimes have a hankering for the flesh-pots of Egypt and long to take a little hand in politics out here. Not by a jug full! A fellow who has put in the best years of his life in the political game and has been state legislator, Congressman, Governor and United States Senator and retired when he didn't have to isn't going out to a new country and begin the game all over again—not at my time of life. I'm out of it for good and all. I'm just a plain man and elected for life, too!

You remember how old General Gully used to look when he came out to the annual encampment ball in full regalia, with his breast hung with badges and medals so thick they looked as if they had been pinned on with a choke-bore shotgun? Well; one day when I was cleaning up to get out of the Executive Chamber, I struck the "Frank and Pass Department" of my desk. Just for fun, I pinned those badges of corporate courtesy on the front of my coat. Alongside the picture which I made, old Gully would have looked as innocent of decorations as an eel. It made me squirm with shame as I looked in the glass and actually saw that I had been simply an official scrapbook for petty corporation favors.

By checking up I found that I did not hold a frank entitling me to breathe through the courtesy of a corporation.

Perhaps you don't recall how the harness of official favors used to gall me. Let me refresh your memory. Of course you remember John Bent, the "hired hand" member from Cottonwood Corners. All through the first session he sat over at the Speaker's right, surrounded by the gang that came down from the city. When they found out that he was only a farm hand, the boys who were running things priced him at about two hundred and fifty. Little Danny was told off to fix John for the Electric bill. He never did give the particulars of his interview, but he put it plain that for all time to come it would be safe to pass up the farm hand and put him down on the other side without any special effort to "see" him.

Bent didn't introduce but one bill in the whole session and that was killed quicker than a water snake in a swimming hole. From that time on, the member from Cottonwood Corners had just one interest in legislation: to know what bills were off color and vote against them. He didn't make a single speech or offer a resolution; but he could spot a crooked streak behind a bill as quick as he'd smell a taint in a batch of butter. That was enough for Bent. Whatever happened, one thing was sure: John would "vote right."

I don't know that he made any particular profession of religion but he stood square on everything according to the gospel rule, without a shadow of turning.

Although he didn't give it out through the papers, he actually returned all passes and franks and he didn't ask for the appointment of a single committee clerk or assistant janitor. All he did was to "vote right," and he came back again for three terms.

I used to sit there and envy the man from Cottonwood, who had no sails to trim, no measures to push, no backs to scratch.

One day I pointed him out to you and said: "There's about the only 'real man' here."

You know I've kept my "hands clean," Ned, but like the boy in the story, I've had to bandage them and tie them to the bedpost a good many times to do it. And when it comes to trimming sails—well, I have a training that would fit me for Commodore on a Cup Challenger.

But it's all over now! I'm going to bow the knee to no living person excepting the wife and the house servants. The rest of the world will get its toes tramped on whenever the humor takes me.

And you can put it down on the title page, old boy, that hereafter I'm going to pay the freight—and pay it in hard money! No more "existence by courtesy" for me!

Some time, perhaps, you'll come out from among them, too, and be separate, return your passes and taste the joy of being able to pay for what you get—like the men who sign the passes and put up the campaign funds.

But if you're determined to play the game to the finish, you know you can count on me for any side-lights I can give. Unless you get out voluntarily, I want to see you win out; and every forward step in your career will give me as much pleasure as it will you. I guess I don't need to say that, do I, Ned?

By the way, are you still keeping company with Kate Hamming? or have you switched to the young widow ? From some of the letters that come to the wife, I figure that politics isn't the only game that interests you. Come now, 'fess up and make a clean breast of it!

Yours as ever,

William Bradley.

	In which the retired politician writes to his younger friend Ned, who is
	still in the political harness, giving a few practical pointers on the game
	of "Legislative Poker," otherwise known as graft.

CHAPTER II. PARABLE OF THE WIDOW'S MITE.

Brokenstraw Ranch, ——, 19—.

Dear Ned: —

I see by the papers that things are doing in the franchise line at the legislature, this Winter, and that you stand a good chance of lifting the mortgage off your place if you practice a little statesmanlike economy.

But, as you never were any good at Legislative Poker, I conclude that it may strike you as a little late to come into the game, now.

However, if you should be tempted to take a hand, let me give you the tip to remember the modern Parable of the Widow's Mite and keep in mind that this is the great day of Consolidation. Both these observations point the same moral: "A bribe in the hand is worth two in the safe-deposit vault—to which the other fellow holds the key!"

Probably you have forgotten the little episode of the Widow's Mite. It happened that Winter when the Red School House issue left you at home, along with several other rural statesmen, to fodder the stock and reflect on the heartless ingratitude of the average country constituency.

Up to that time every corporation tub had stood on its own bottom and the "attorney" of each franchise grabbing scheme had settled his own score in his own way. But at the opening of that session the lobbyists were thicker than rabbits in a tree-nursery and the boys had their pockets enlarged to the size of meal sacks in order to take care of the prospective shakedown.

They had just begun to get out their clubs—in the shape of bills to regulate the powers and emoluments of the various corporations, when a hatchet-faced lawyer, with a Highland Scotch burr in his speech, entered his appearance and made a quick round-up of the representatives of the corporate interests and vested rights of the state. He wouldn't so much as whistle a psalm-tune on Sunday, but he could dispose of more smooth business on week days than an axle-grease factory.

It was said that the Gas Company had brought him on from New York to put through the consolidation bill. Anyhow, he took to the Consolidation Idea easier than his ancestors did to golf and Scotch Whiskey.

The morning after the Lairds of the Lobby had met in his room, the word was passed down the line, among the boys, that things were going to be done on a brand new basis; that the great Consolidation Idea was the order of the day and that it was a Good Thing.

Then the fellows who were running things in both houses were told to get together on the close-communion basis and be ready to take care of all business bearing the consolidation tag that came along.

Old Hi' in the Senate and Little Danny in the House gave it out that everything was fixed and that every man who climbed into the band wagon would get his proper share of the great consolidation water melon—and that it was to be the biggest ever set up in the history of legislation.

This time, so they told the boys, things were going to be handled so slick that there weren't going to be any stray seeds scattered around to make talk on the part of pestering reformers and newspapers. For this reason the melon was going to be put away on ice until the close of the session—when it would be carved the week after adjournment.

Little Danny was appointed custodian of the melon fund, and he passed out the word that he had it put away snug and tight.

Every man knew the size of the piece he was to get at the end of the session, and all stood pat on the agreement and delivered the goods on roll call, without flinching.

Day after day little Danny grew thinner and yellower. But he kept up on whiskey, increasing the dose as the session drew to a close. In the last days he was as shaky as a new-born calf; but he hung on like grim death and kept the boys in close line.

Of course most of the loaded bills were rushed through with a whoop in the last week of night sessions, and mighty few of the members wasted much time in sleep. So, when the whole thing was over, all agreed to go home and rest up for three days before dividing the spoils. Then they were to meet in the city, in Little Danny's office, and carve that melon.

But, the second morning after adjournment, the Honorables of the state were jolted out of bed by the news that Little Danny had dropped dead in his own home.

His funeral looked like a joint session of the House and Senate, and there were more statesmen among the mourners of Little Danny than ever will be got together again outside the cover of a capitol dome.

For the next few weeks the black-eyed widow of Little Danny held a continuous reception. Finally she closed the house and retreated to her father's home up in The Patch, three miles away from a railroad, in a back township. But the tide of emigration, on free passes, followed her, and more distinguished statesmen got off at that little jerkwater station while she was there than had ever been in the county before.

She broke all the records of widowhood on the score of delicate attentions from men who were entitled to write Honorable in front of their names.

When one legislator met another he grinned sheepishly and asked:

"Seen the widow?" or "What's the news from the Lady in Black?"

Finally, it filtered along down the line that Mrs. Danny had found a key in the trousers of the deceased and that in the safe deposit box which it fitted she had discovered a hundred thousand dollars. Danny had often told her, she said, that he had made some good investments and a lucky strike or two on the stock market and had salted down a snug sum.

While she coyly admitted that she was a little surprised at the size of the pile that Danny had saved, she was not wholly unprepared for the shock. It was only his quiet way of providing for his family! In fact he had, in almost his last words, told her, she said, that she'd find enough to keep the wolf from the door after he was gone.

At last the anxious attendants upon the demure and tearful little widow held a grand pow-wow to see what was to be done.

The first item of regular business transacted at the meeting was to formulate a water-proof lie for the widow's benefit, to the effect that Danny had been the custodian of a pool fund with which he had speculated successfully and that the money in the safe deposit vault represented the principal and profits of the venture in which all were to share.

All agreed to this except one young man. He stood out. Then some one happened to get a hunch that he was the only unmarried man in the combination. It was plain that he had intentions on the widow and planned to copper the whole pile by a matrimonial coup. The rest of the gang made short work of him. They found out that he was engaged to a girl in his district. Then they called him into open meeting and gave him just a week in which to get out the invitations—told him that if he didn't make good at the altar on schedule time the young lady would get a round-robin, or something of that sort, giving him a character that would last the rest of his life.

He came to taw quick, but inferred that he should expect to be handsomely remembered by his friends on the happy occasion. And he was. He received enough pickle castors, web-footed cake forks, spoons and table ware to stock the best jewelry store the little town had ever seen—and he opened business right away after the honeymoon. The other fellows thought they had done something mighty slick.

Then a committee of three legislators waited on the widow. They thought she'd cry and then compromise, for she was too wise not to know what Danny had been up to. But she didn't. She simply stood pat—told them she'd fight their claim to finish in open court. That settled it. The boys swallowed their grief, cursed the great Consolidation Scheme and threw up the sponge.

From that time the relict of Little Danny was the most offensively cheerful widow in ten states—especially whenever she happened to meet any of his old comrades of the session.

So you see, Ned, that the old C. O. D. plan is the only safe one. If the modern siren of Consolidation tempts you, remember the parable of the Widow's Mite and stand out.

Seriously, old man, wouldn't it be a revelation to the dear Trustful People if they could trepan a legislature and see what's going on under the skull of their Honorable Representatives? Just to uncover the real "works" and watch the secret wheels of legislation go round for the last days of a session would make them throw bricks at every state house in the country and put up signs over every Senate and House reading: "This place has changed hands!"

Things weren't so bad when we started in—and thank God I got out of it before the boodle disease became universally epidemic! I couldn't look my old dog Bluff in the eye if I'd been mixed up in that sort of mess, Ned, and I'd rather catch my son stealing scab sheep than see him elected to a legislature. And that's honest, too!

In the course of time I hope to live down the fact that I once held a seat in the lower House, back in the old state. But I'll have to raise a good many chickens and fancy cattle out here on the ranch before I'll quite get the taste out of my mouth!

Write when you get time and let me know if you're still in the strait and narrow path.

You'll be less lonesome for writing if you are hanging to the old-fashioned notions of square politics with which we started in.

I see that you are inclined to hedge in answering my question regarding Kate and the widow. To my mind that's as good as a frank confession that the young widow is in the lead, for there's nothing that quite equals a blooming young widow, in a heart-to-heart campaign, excepting a younger and handsomer widow. I shall expect to hear something from you besides glittering generalities on this score.

Yours as ever,

William Bradley.

	Wherein William Bradley offers Ned his ideas of the kind of moral backbone
	that is entitled to flowers, speaks his mind on the subject of official
	temptations and tells how "Old Cal" Peavey acquitted himself under the offer
	of a million dollar bribe.

CHAPTER III. A MILLION DOLLAR BRIBE.

Brokenstraw Ranch, ——, 19—.

Dear Ned: —

No doubt the new Governor is all of the moral athlete you set him up to be; but somehow I can't quite go into spasms of enthusiasm over the chief executive of a great state who allows his friends to cackle like a bevy of Shanghai pullets simply because he has managed to turn down a temptation that a Chicago alderman would scorn. Of course it was a very virtuous performance on the Governor's part; but he would pull heavier on my admiration if he hadn't allowed you fellows to draw the inference that he had felt any temptation to be resisted.

When a man admits to himself that he is tempted he marks down his own moral backbone about twenty per cent.; and when he brags that he didn't yield to the temptation he unconsciously puts himself on the bargain counter and classes himself along with the unsold goods in stock. At least that's the way a good many discriminating people, who have had their eye-teeth cut, are inclined to look at the matter.

In all my recollection, I can recall just one man who could afford to admit, without cheapening his own character, that he was subjected to a downright temptation—but he didn't admit it! And when the story leaked out, after his death, there wasn't a man in the state who didn't take off his hat to the moral stamina that the Governor had shown. That little incident made the eulogies of the pulpits and the newspapers look cheap.

It happened while you were kicking a pigskin at Princeton. There never was a better campaign than the one in which Uncle Cal. Peavey knocked out the machine and landed in the Governor's chair. It made a bigger rumpus than a fox in a henhouse, and there was a mighty shaking of dry bones in the fat places on the pay-roll.

Almost the whole press of the state was against him and he was hounded as an anarchist, a calamity-howler and a general enemy to society, capital, vested rights and a whole lot of other sacred and civilized things. But Cal. kept his nerve and continued to talk right out in meeting. The harder they pounded, the more he showed his teeth and stuck out his bristles.

That was the Winter before the United Traction's franchise expired, and a new charter was simply a groundhog case.

Times were tighter than a February freeze. Every cent that the Governor had made in a series of nervy speculations in city real estate had been put into the big Empire Building, just before the hard times set in. Tenants were scarcer than rats, rents fell like snowflakes, and the old man was in the hole for twice what he was worth, with big payments coming due in the course of the Winter. He didn't know which way to turn, as the money market froze tighter and tighter, and it was a certainty that he stood to lose the fortune he had made in years of hard hustling, unless some unexpected stroke of Providence should come to his relief.

But he was made of stern stuff and never gave out a whimper, although he couldn't keep his condition from the wise ones on the street.

Just as he was driving ahead to the last ditch in his private affairs, the United Traction was making hay at the session. The Governor wasn't the only man in politics that Winter who had been caught in the financial squeeze. Plenty of the legislators were worrying over mortgages and investments—a fact that didn't escape the attention of the Traction Company's lobby agents.

Although the Governor and his forces put up a strong and crafty fight against the bill, the franchise measure passed both houses by a big majority—and the men who held mortgages on the assets of the members concerned stopped worrying about payments.

Then the calcium light was suddenly shifted to the Executive Mansion, and the question in every mouth was: "What will the Governor do?" The situation was strained up to concert pitch and there were all sorts of speculation as to the course which Uncle Cal. would pursue. Generally, however, it was agreed that there were enough votes to pass the bill over his veto and that probably, as a sensible man who knew enough to know when he was licked, he would let the measure become a law without his signature. This was considered the proper way for a Governor to surrender under protest when there were not enough votes at his command to sustain his veto.

A day or two after the bill had gone up to the Governor, one of the smoothest mechanics in the fine art of "fixing" ever on the confidential pay roll of the Traction Company dropped in at the office of the Empire building for a little chat with Mike Boylan, the Governor's business partner and general handyman.

Now Mike had knocked about town a good deal, been up as late as midnight several times and was fairly well acquainted with the landscape in the neighborhood of the City Hall; but for all that he didn't really know that his caller was a scout for the Traction Company. In other words, the fellow was the man for the hour; he had just enough shady reputation to arouse in Mike's mind a suspicion of his connection with the company and save awkward explanations. On the other hand, he had not made himself common so that his name was known to the members of the gang generally. In short, he was an artist and accepted about one commission in four or five years, but made that one something handsome.

"Mike," he finally said, after they had chatted awhile, "if you're not too busy I'd like you to do me a little favor."

"Certainly," responded Mike.

"I'd like you to introduce me to the man in charge of the safety deposit vaults of your building. I want to get the right sort of accommodations, and if you take me in tow it'll insure me proper attention from the general-in-command down there in the basement."

"Sure, I'll fix that," said Mike, taking his hat and wondering if it really were true that his caller was mixed up with the traction people, as he had heard.

They were starting away from the largest wall-safe or "box" when the new patron of the institution called Mike into one of the private stalls. On the table were two good, fat telescopes.

Up to that time Mike bad been merely an interested spectator; but this move gave him a jolt. Could it be that the fellow had trapped him into a position that might be made to reflect on the Governor if it should ever get out?

Mike's conscience had been trained in the kindergarten of the street-paving contract business and never swung a danger signal short of the question "Will it get out?" Nothing but that possibility presented a moral problem to him. The next semaphore which was swung by his acute spiritual sensibilities operated on the question of whether or not a certain course would bring him under the heel of the law.

"If this chap makes a straight proposition," reasoned Mike, as his companion was unstrapping the telescopes, "and it should ever get to the Governor's ears, it'll be all day with me. He'll raise my scalp."

"I hope you'll not think I'm suspicious of the boys down here," said the caller, "but I'm taking care of a whole lot of cash for a pool I'm interested in; the fellows who are with me are afraid of banks in these times and insist on planting our funds in a safe-deposit vault. That puts the whole thing on my shoulders and it occurred to me that it would be a safe precaution to ask you to come down here and check up with me the amount I'm planting—it won't take but a minute."

"You chaps going to make books on the races?" laughed Mike.

His answer was a knowing wink and Mike heaved a sigh of relief at the thought that he was well out of a disagreeable scrape in which a quarrel with the Governor was almost a moral certainty—and Mike was more afraid of old Cal. than of any other being in the whole universe. In fact the Governor had become a sort of god to Mike, although Cal. didn't know it himself.

Half the packages were in thousand-dollar bills and the rest in five hundreds, so it was an easy job to check them up, according to the figures on the paper bands pinned about the packages. Mike's eyes fairly stood out of his head as he looked from the figures on his tab to the currency on the table. One million dollars! He had never seen that much money in one heap before in his life, and his nimble, acquisitive mind began right away to figure out the things that could be done with that money. It almost stupefied him and he made no objection when asked to help stack it away in the big wall-safe.

Then they started upstairs and the caller suddenly remembered that he had left his umbrella in Mike's private office. He got it, and started for the door, then stopped and began to draw on his gloves. Mike had not yet come out of his trance. He was still saying to himself: "A million dollars!"

"You're satisfied as to the amount in the vault?" casually inquired the caller.

"Yes;" absently responded Mike, writing the figures on the desk blotter.

Suddenly the key to the big deposit drawer fell on the desk in front of him and he heard the words:

"Well—you know what to do with this!"

For a second he stared hard at it. Then he grabbed it up and made a plunge for the door and out into the hall. But his smooth caller had gone down the stairs to the floor below, taken the elevator which served the side entrance to the building and was gone!

From that time until Friday afternoon, when the Governor came to the city to give two or three days to his private affairs, Mike scoured the town for a trace of the man who had dumped a million dollars of bribe money into his hands. And in that time he felt more stings of conscience than he had ever known in all his life before. He was the worst scared man in the city and it seemed to him he'd rather jump into the crater of a volcano than face the wrath of the Governor.

Or could it be that, under the certainty of complete financial ruin the old man was facing, he might possibly weaken? And why shouldn't he take the money? He would be doing nothing for it—not so much as signing his name! Hadn't the Governor fought the bill tooth-and-nail? And wouldn't his failure to sign it be a protest against it? This was just what the Party and the public expected him to do; then why shouldn't he keep the money that had been thrown at him?—and without a possible tracer attached!

But even Mike's moral obtuseness was not so great that he didn't recoil from the possibility that the Governor might look at the matter in this way. If it should be so, he would know that there wasn't a man on earth who couldn't be reached if all the circumstances were right.

When the Governor came in Mike was looking uncommonly pale, but the old man was too preoccupied to notice it. His grizzled old face was as haggard as if he had just got up from a run of fever, and his eyes shone with a grim, unnatural brightness.

He slumped into a big leather chair and, in a shaky voice, said:

"Mike, it's all up! I stopped in at the Trust Company's office on my way from the station, and they say we can't have any more time. Then I went over to the other place and thrashed it out with fellows we hoped might come into the thing as a last resort. But they're scared, and nothing can move 'em to furnish the funds."

He choked up for a minute but finally continued:

"But there's one consolation. The property's worth the money, and no one'll lose a dollar. And there'll be no scandal attached. Thank God I never wronged a man out of a cent that I know of, but it's kind of tough to see the work of years swept away in a second! And then there's the little woman at home—that's the hardest part of it!"

Then Mike knew that it was up to him to make a clean breast of the safe-deposit business—and he did it, too.

The eyes of the old man seemed to bore Mike right through as the story came out in a shaky voice. For a minute or two, the old Governor sat with his chin resting in his hands, the muscles of his face twitching like a spider's legs.

But it was all over in a minute. Slowly rising to his feet, the old man pointed his long bony finger at Mike and in a voice that had the grit of iron in it, he said:

"Young man! I'd advise you to take better care of that damned scoundrel's money than you ever did of any money in your life."

That night the Governor wrote a veto message on the traction bill that fairly scorched the rails of the line. Then he called in the real scrappers of his political camp and began a fight against foregone defeat that ripped up the whole state and made history. He didn't stop at anything that came under the head of things "fair in love and war."

Before the fight was finished he was forced practically to kidnap two or three weak-kneed members of the opposition and take them out of the state. And there were a few others that had to be given a close-range view of the penitentiary before they experienced a change of heart. But when the vote on the veto was taken the old Governor won out by three votes—and he celebrated the triumph by surrendering to his creditors and backers all the property that he had accumulated in fifty years of harder work than a stone-breaker ever put in.

In less than a year from that time I acted as a pall-bearer at Calvin Peavey's funeral and joined in a subscription to buy the widow a home.

That's the sort of moral backbone that is entitled to flowers, according to my notion. And there isn't much of anything short of that brand that is. When I go into hero-worship I'm going to cap my shrine with a bust of honest old Cal.

But I've run on to such a length about this temptation business that you'll veto this letter without reading if I don't quit short off.

The cattle are looking fine and I'm getting young and frisky, now that I don't have to keep a gang of office-seekers in good humor or steer the ship of state between the rocks of party politics. There's nothing to put ginger into a man quite up to the liberty of speaking his mind without figuring on how it's going to affect the vote.

Yours ever,

William Bradley.

	Replying to Ned's letter proposing to follow up one "reform victory" with
	another bill to "purify the state" by legislative enactment, the old Governor
	frees his mind on the subject of world-spankers and says a few pointed things
	regarding professional reformers, that are illuminated by two pertinent stories.

CHAPTER IV. POLITICAL SPANKS AND SPANKERS.

Brokenstraw Ranch, ——, 19—.

My Dear Ned: —

After you've shot your rocket don't play with the stick. Start something new. Even the importunate widow of the parable had the good grace to let up after she'd landed what she was after. And it's mighty risky for politicians to rush in where widows fear to tread.

Your little reform game was all well enough and came out a lot better than most schemes to spank the world "by statute made and provided." Of course, we've got to have corrective legislation, but three feet of holdback strap, taken on emergency from the nearest fill of the family buggy and applied at the nerve center of my youthful conscience, did more to make me a good citizen than all the statutes in all the books of the Law since the days of Moses or the Medes and Persians.

And now that you open the way, I'd like to offer a few remarks on the subject of political spanks and spankers. Your notion that you have a divine call to keep everlastingly at the reform work puts you on a par with most other spankers. Mighty few of them know when to begin, and not one in a thousand has sense enough to quit at just the right point. This spanking business is a good deal like tempering steel—the whole trick's in knowing the right minute for cooling off.

When my father used to start in with the buggy strap I was powerful proud and cocky; I knew that I was in the right. But as things continued to warm up, my feelings always reached a point of complete humility. I was licked and I knew it. And what was more, I knew that I ought to be licked. I "conceded everything to the opposition" and was willing to come back into the party fold without asking for any representation on the steering committee. If father had stopped right there he would have had me in a state of total and unqualified surrender. But he didn't. He always kept right on with the reform business, just as you seem bent on doing.

Gradually, on these painful occasions, my feelings underwent another change until I didn't care whether I was right or wrong. All I did care for was to get even with the power behind the strap. And generally about that time, I'd let out a yell loud enough to be heard by some of the neighbors. They usually did hear, too, and then the news would circulate that I'd been "shamefully whipped." That kind of sympathy made me swell up like a martyr and feel that I was the victim of the oppressor.

Now, Ned, the time to let up on spanking the community is at the humble point. When you keep on until the victim gets the secret sympathy of the neighbors and is able to pose as the object of persecution you're overdoing the job just a little. It's all right to be thorough, but stop at a point where you can keep the moral support of the neighbors.

A good many reformers are like pointer pups—they don't get sense enough to work with until they're beyond the age at which a bird dog of any other breed ought to have become full of burrs and honors. I never see a reformer start in, full of his first run of political sap, without thinking of "Pug" Hansom. They called him that because he looked as if part of his face had been left off and kind of squared up in the rough with a meat ax, like a pug dog's.

He had bullyragged a fair sized fortune out of the manufacturing business before he was 35. Then he concluded that he would cover himself with glory by larruping the world into a state of political righteousness. He was willing to start in a small way, just for practice, on his own city of more than a million inhabitants. After he had cleaned that up he would begin on the real job and show the world what he could do when once he got his hand in.

Just then a new man was reaching for a foothold on the party ladder and was doing a clever stunt in the shape of organizing young men's clubs. When the young world spanker came to him asking for work, just to save himself from ingrowing patriotism, the request was granted. The General Overseer said:

"You organize a dozen clubs in your part of town, get them right where you can change them from a singlefoot to a canter at the turn of your hand, and then you'll have political capital to do business with that'll start you on a real career."

From that time until he was all in, this young reformer was busier than a cock partridge on a drumming log—and he strutted around in about the same style, too. I've never seen anything quite so important of its age as that young chap. But he was a hustler and he went at the organization of young men's clubs in his neck of the woods in the same way that he had invaded a competitor's territory and put in his own goods.

According to his report to the General Organizer, "the work" was coming on in great shape; the petitions were signed upon sight, and there was enough party enthusiasm aroused by his oratory to drive a sawmill with lath and shingle machines to boot. On the surface everything looked all right to the General Organizer and he had about concluded that he had picked a winner when the great night of the actual organization and election of officers came on.

There was no doubt about enthusiasm or activity. Every young man in the party under 80 years of age was there and doing business. When the ceremony of electing officers was over the young reformer was so hypnotized by the applause that greeted his oratory that he actually didn't recognize the fact that the enemy had come in like a flood and swept all his work right into the opposition camp. He wasn't a high private in the organization that he had built up—and he didn't realize it until the General Organizer heard of the news and explained it to him with a diagram.

Some of these little things are calculated to give a real politician the feeling that it's about as sensible to hunt prairie chickens with a hound pup as to go after votes with a reformer who wants to make the party into one large bible class, with himself as teacher and substitute.

I notice that lately you have been sending up quite a few fireworks directed at the bosses of your party. What's the matter, Ned? You haven't been trying to get frisky with the old crowd of fellows and ring in new rules on the boys without giving due notice, have you? When I hear that kind of talk from a man who has been in the political game as long as you have and has as much horse sense as you usually carry about, I can't help suspecting that something like this has happened.

It's all right to put up a howl against the boss, but the outcry would be a whole lot more convincing if it did not come from a throat that has sung in his choir since it was organized. There has been more nonsense talked on both sides of the boss question than on the tariff and free silver combined. I guess that I have said enough to indicate that, to my notion, a reformer isn't to be accepted as having a divine call simply because he can pound the pulpit and shout loud enough to start the nails in the mourners' benches. I look at it about this way:

A boss is frequently a reformer who has finally grown up, got on to the rules of the game and is willing to play it square. And the professional reformer is often only an appetite for power that mistakes itself for moral courage.

Since cutting my eye teeth I have had a good chance to learn considerable about how a reformer can grow up into a boss, and how a boss can get cocky and exceed his privileges. One experience has shed a good deal of light on the subject for me, so I give it to you for what it's worth.

It was the second year after I came back to the city. A young married man out in the newer section of the town saw that certain things in his line of trade ought to be protected by stricter laws. He kept the drug and school book store right next to the schoolhouse.

When he asked the local boss for representation on the ward committee and for some other reasonable things that would help him to make a strong fight for his reform legislation he was turned down.

He was green in politics, but you didn't have to tell him a thing but once—and sometimes not at all. Because his was the only drug store in the region and was close to the schoolhouse, he knew practically every man, woman, and child in the ward. When the smoke cleared away from the primaries this little druggist had fourteen of the delegates to the county convention and the local boss had one.

That night the druggist didn't feel sleepy, and so he managed to see the fellows who were doing things on his side of the river. He was just as easy and modest in his way as if he'd never thought of going out after a little reform legislation. Somehow the boys who held the whip hand took a shine to him and concluded that he'd play square. Then they were so tickled over the way he had drubbed the boss that they fell right in with his plan for doing things in the convention.

When he walked into the room where the "Big Three" slate makers were figuring out things he was abruptly asked: "How many delegates have you?"

"One hundred and thirteen," he answered.

"No; how many delegates do you control? We're not asking how many there are on your side of the river," was the impatient return.

"I control 113—all there are on my side of the creek, just as I said. We all got together last night, and I'm sent up here to treat with you and find out just what can be done."

"Done!" exclaimed one of the veteran bosses. "Why, we can simply control that whole convention without another vote. Now, what do you want, young man?"

He told them precisely what things on the ticket would have to go to his side of the river, and he capped the whole business by demanding that his men must be nominated first.

"Because," he explained, "you see, this game is all new to me, and I can't take the chances that you old hands can."

Right then one of the big leaders looked up and said:

"I thought that you were just a reformer—but, by mighty! you're a boss, and a real boss, too."

From that time to this the little druggist has played a gentleman's game and played it on the square. Some folks don't approve of games at all, and others don't like that kind of a game, but all are agreed that the way to play it is according to the rules.

So, Ned, if you're going to cast your lot with the world spankers, just try and be as decent and square with your political partners as you have been while just a plain politician, playing the game for the fun of it and because you like it better than golf, poker, pingpong, or pinochle. If you do this you're likely some time to break your chrysalis, "leave your low vaulted past," and find that you have changed from a professional political spanker to a boss whose word is good to the limit of the game with all who know how to play it.

Yours as ever,

William Bradley.

	Responding to Ned's confession that he has become engaged to Kate Hamming
	and feels that a wife will have a "great influence on his career," William
	Bradley tells the story of one good woman's tragic influence in the life
	of a young politician—and points the conclusion that one guess is as good
	as another in a political situation with a woman in it.

CHAPTER V. A WOMAN IN IT.

Brokenstraw Ranch, ——, 19—.

Dear Ned: —

And so you've decided to take unto yourself a wife in the person of Kate Haming? Good! That part of the departure isn't open to debate. And neither is your observation that you feel your wife will have a "decided influence" on your political career. But no being short of the Almighty is able to give anything like a safe guess on whether that influence will be of the sort you are counting on. This is one of the things as inscrutable as the mystery of godliness.

Any fair sample of common American womanhood is a prize package for a bachelor politician to draw; but when it comes to the question of her influence on his career, one guess is as good as another. And this uncertainty isn't a matter of the particular kind of feminine loveliness that the woman in the case happens to represent. She may be as attractive as a lost bargain and as tactful as brook trout and still manage to warp your political destiny until it cracks.

I never see a young politician push his head into the matrimonial lariat without thinking of young Flournoy, one of the first speakers out here after the territory became a state. His story shows how a woman's presence in the background of a politician's life can change the whole face of the landscape.

When the Almighty put the finishing touches to young Flournoy's makeup and hitched him up for life's heat, He checked him high. You remember that thoroughbred Kentucky colt I used to drive the first year I occupied the Executive Mansion? Head up, ears forward, set on a hair trigger and ready to shy at a butterfly, and so sensitive that a harsh word would throw her into the dumps for a whole day? If I had that little mare now I'd call her Flournoy.

The young man was as proud as a girl with her first long skirt and as ambitious as Lucifer. He had a good ranch and kept severely to himself until a little school teacher with snappy gray eyes, dimples, and a cleft chin came from New York to teach district No. 10. I never saw a bucket of water bring a gopher out of his hole quicker than that mite of a schoolmarm brought Flournoy out of his shell! He spruced up amazingly, and never passed the schoolhouse or the place where she boarded without wearing clothes that would have graced a wedding.

Right at the start the young man got it into his head that Miss Dove was made of superior clay and that her blood was bluer than a royal whetstone. It never occurred to him for an instant that a good, clean, young chap like himself was worthy to come into her presence or could be of the slightest possible interest to her unless he could do some knightly stunt that would specially entitle him to her condescension. There's no doubt that the girl was so dead lonesome and homesick that she would have given her shoes for the companionship of a man like Flournoy, and would have primped in front of the glass for an hour if she had been given any reason to suspect that he might call.

But the young rancher continued to adore at a distance and to lie awake nights scheming about how he could distinguish himself in her eyes.

There wasn't much doing in the way of opportunity for old fashioned heroics just then and there. The prairies refused to burn, tramps kept shy of the country for fear of being set to work, not a dog went mad, no villain offered insult to the little school teacher, and altogether there wasn't the slightest chance for her knight to rush in and rescue her from insult or peril.

Perhaps you think Flournoy didn't figure on any of these things. That's because you never saw him. One glance into his big black eyes was like reading a whole historical romance at a gulp. You may take my word for it that there wasn't a dramatic possibility that this adoring lover hadn't figured on. He saw the whole situation through age-of-chivalry eyes, and all he needed to fit him for a knight was a little scrap-iron clothing and a good deal of bad language.

But in the absence of any better field of valor, he decided to take to politics. We've been told, until we're tired of it, that "all the world loves a lover," but it's gospel truth just the same—and when Flournoy intimated to the boss of his district that he wanted to go to the House the old Platt-in-overalls decided that for once he'd indulge the luxury of a little sentiment. So he put the thing through and landed Flournoy on the ticket. The opposition was mighty strong that year, and if it hadn't been for the quiet way in which the boss put forward what the literary critics call the "romance element," his candidate certainly would have been skinned at the polls. But the love affair caught the fancy of all the old boys and some of the young ones, and Flournoy found himself elected, addressed as "honorable," and petted by the whole community.

Before the smell of the fireworks celebrating his election had been blown out of the main street of Bullseye, Flournoy began to receive telegrams and delegations from the various factions fighting for control of the House. He was just wise enough to play safety and not tie up with any particular crowd, but he was kept so busy returning the evasive answer that he didn't have a chance to call on the little school teacher and throw his future at her feet. In fact, the night when he had put on his best garments and his statesman's smile and was walking the floor in a mild effort to screw up his courage for a call on her, a male siren from another district dropped in and delicately intimated that stranger things had happened than the selection of Robert Flournoy as speaker of the House. And when the political siren closed his dark-horse song he left a book of parliamentary rules for young Flournoy's perusal and inspiration.

The poison worked so swiftly that instead of treading the cottonwood lane that led to Squire Baldwin's house, where the school teacher boarded, as he had intended, Flournoy sat straddle of a kitchen chair, his head resting on its back, and his mind working on the splendid possibilities ahead. It didn't take him long to figure that if a membership in the House was a strong card to play in his suit for the hand of the school teacher the speakership would be a royal flush. If the stake had been his own life he couldn't have been in more deadly earnest, so he concluded to wait a bit and make a try for the speakership before he showed his hand.

Consequently, he sent his love affair into committee for future report and struck out for the capital. There he found things split up into three bunches, with party lines lost in the scramble for power. The regulars and the insurgents were evenly divided and three hungry scouts held the balance of power. The scouts stood out until the last minute before the formal opening of the House, and it looked as if the deadlock might be good for half the life of the session.

But just then the hatchet-faced old warhorse of the Insurgents, who had whispered the siren song to Flournoy, took a grip on the situation and showed that he could spell organization with a big "O." He had an under jaw like the lower blade of a rolling mill shears, the sort that snips off steel rails as easy as a small boy bites stick candy. And his eyes had about as much of the glow of human kindness as the points of two diamond drills. "Old Jawbone," as the boys called him, was a seasoned terrier, who had been waiting for years to set his teeth into a "good thing." He saw his chance and made a lunge for it.

Suddenly, out of the chaos of things, came the word that he had whipped the three scouts into line and with their votes the Insurgents would put young Flournoy into the speaker's chair. And they did it, too, in short order, after the state patronage had been parceled out to meet the demands of the scouts.

Probably no speaker ever carried into the big chair at the head of a state House of Representatives a happier heart that Flournoy's. He fairly perspired beads of joy. A kitten with a dozen balls of yarn would have made a solemn spectacle alongside the young speaker. And a kitten presiding over a pack of timber wolves would have been an example of the eternal fitness of things compared with young Flournoy as the ruling officer of that House. He had no more idea of the nature of his job and the powers that were playing with him than a cock sparrow caught in a cyclone has of the thing he is up against.

It meant just one thing to Flournoy—the girl! Beyond her he saw nothing, knew nothing, cared nothing. His sudden political honors were only trophies to be flung at her feet.

Just before adjournment at the close of the first week he wrote Miss Lucy Dove, asking if he might take the liberty of calling upon her Saturday evening. And he didn't lose sight of the probability that she would be duly impressed by the imposing official stationery upon which his note was written.

Of course, just what he said to her that night, as they walked up and down between the two long rows of cottonwood in the light of the Autumn moon, isn't of record, excepting as it was written on his face when he showed up at the beginning of the week. One of the boys who was in his open secret read the speaker's face with the remark: "He's had his petition hung up in the hands of a friendly committee, with an intimation of speedy and favorable action."

Sometimes the whole front of his countenance was hung with the bunting of assured hope, only to be changed in the space of an hour to the dark draperies of threatening despair. But the game that was put up to him in the course of the week was swifter than anything he had ever thought of, and, together with the worry about the young woman, it wore him to a frazzle.

But at last the members adjourned for another Sunday at home, and he packed his grip and made for Bullseye on the first train. The sight of young Flournoy's face when he returned was something to warm the heart of a cobblestone. Even "Old Jawbone" actually thawed for an instant under the radiance of it. The wedding card was spread on Flournay's countenance in plainer terms than on the engraved announcements that were opened by the members. He had won the heart of the little school teacher as suddenly as he had landed the speakership. There was an irrepressible "young Lochinvar" look in his eye, and he rapped his gavel with a new ring of confidence.

"Old Jawbone" figured that the right minute had come to spring his biggest game on the "boy speaker," as he sometimes called Flournoy when talking with the "gray wolves" of the Insurgent gang. Consequently, he had a private conference with the knight of the chair, and laid out the lines of the gang program. And the layout was as rotten and high handed a deal as was ever put up by a bunch of Black Hills road agents.

There wasn't any more duplicity in Flournoy's composition than in an antelope's, and he shied openly at the proposition. Then the under jaw of the Insurgent chief set tight and sudden, and he said: "Give me your last word on this tomorrow noon."

If Flournoy intended to take his bride into his confidence on the matter he changed his mind and fought it out inside himself. Probably he was ashamed to show her what a dirty mess was being brewed among the men who belonged to his political camp. But he knew, all right, what the thing would look like in her eyes, and that was enough for him. He stood by the white plummet line of her conscience, as he saw it, and prepared to abide by the results.

Although he recognized that he was up against the biggest bout he had encountered since he had gone into the knighthood business, he had as little conception of what could happen to him as a baby left on a railroad track.

That noon, after he had kissed his wife a dozen times and received her promise that she would come to the House in the course of the afternoon, he cinched up his armor and went into the speaker's private room, ready for the joust with the Hon. "Jawbone." And he had it hot, too! A member passing the door overheard the voice of the "boy speaker" declaring: "Sir, you're a contemptible scoundrel—a disgrace to your state and your race! I'd rather die than do the infamous thing you demand." And as the eavesdropping member belonged to the Insurgent gang, he told this snatch of stolen conversation as a good joke. In five minutes everybody in the House knew that the war was on.

"Old Jawbone's" face was the color of stale liver when he came out into the open—and the speaker's as white as a sheet. Flournoy's legs faltered as he climbed the stairs to his chair and watched "Old Jawbone" scurrying to the seats of the faithful, like a pirate passing orders for the scuttling of a ship.

Suddenly the lieutenant of the Insurgents arose and received the recognition of the chair. With a sperm-oil smile on his face he slowly and calmly moved the adoption of a resolution deposing the speaker on the ground of "gross incompetency."

"Shame!" "Outrage!" came the cries from the Regulars—and in the next minute the word went down the line from their leader to vote for the retention of the man who had been seated by their opponents. For the next few minutes things centered about the three scouts. As the young speaker stood there, dumbly holding on to his desk, a dazed, wild look in his eyes, the clerk put the motion in a foghorn voice. At that instant a smiling usher appeared in the doorway beside the speaker's platform, followed by three women. They stopped suddenly. The speaker's chalky face turned in their direction just long enough for one glance. He quivered for an instant, then dropped.

"The motion is carried," bellowed the clerk—but the scream of the woman who leaped up the stairs of the speaker's platform cut the uproar like a knife. It was a good thing that "Old Jawbone" had made himself scarce before the Regulars realized what had happened. They would have made short work of him just then !

When the young speaker was revived it was only to rave wildly about his wife—and she was about as stark mad as he. It was real tragedy with a vengeance. The strain had snapped the taut cord of Flournoy's mentality. He lasted a week—but never saw a sane minute. And if ever a broken heart looked out of a woman's face—like a lost soul—it looked from the face of the little school teacher, the Lady of the Lost Knight, as I have always called her.

And so, Ned, do you wonder I say you can't tell what is going to happen when a woman—no matter how fine and good—comes into the life of a man who is in the scramble of politics?

Yours ever,

William Bradley.

	Ned has written his old friend and counsellor that the piece of legislation
	he has just put through will make him "eternally solid" with his constituents
	and that hereafter he has only to say "thumbs-up" and the whole party strength
	of the entire district will follow the word. William Bradley replies with
	the story of the boss of Pinhole politics who banked on the gratitude of
	the public and later saw a great light.

CHAPTER VI. HOW THE DEAR PEOPLE FORGET.

Brokenstraw Ranch, ——, 19—.

Dear Ned: —

You seem to feel that the bill you have put through has given you a mechanic's lien for life on the franchises of your constituents. Perhaps it has. But let me tell you this: A boy who has played hookey and wound up with a secret raid on the jam closet, and is then called into the woodshed to interview father, is a novice in the gentle and convenient art of forgetting compared with the average political constituency. Any ordinary bunch of voters can forget to remember more things than a village money lender can remember to forget in making up a schedule of his personal property for the tax assessor. The affections of a frisky girl in her first year of boarding school life are sermons in constancy alongside of the fluctuations of popular esteem which are recorded at the ballot box.

Of course, the fellows who are pushing for the appropriation which you landed have told you that the passage of your bill would make you eternally solid with the horny handed voters in your district; that so long as grass continues to grow and water to run in the old Eighth you could just say "thumbs up" and the votes would be yours. Then they pounded you on the back, gave you a stag dinner, and presented you with a gold watch engraved with sentiments from your "grateful constituents." I've had several of these, and my experience is that they'll run longer without cleaning than most constituencies will without a change of heart.

This cow country out here hasn't any more than its share of quitters, but a little incident just occurred over at Pinhole that sheds light on the subject of the amount of faith a man is warranted in placing on the political constancy of a constituency to which he has given the one thing that it desired above all others. Now, Pinhole isn't strong on the traditional means of grace; it's short on churches; the W. C. T. U. and Y. M. C. A. and other alphabetical agencies of civilization haven't been able to cut a wide swath there. But for all that, there is a good deal doing in Pinhole right along and the people have been accustomed to point with pride to the fact that its bars, faro banks, and other local institutions are the best in the state and never turn away the enterprising patron at any hour of day or night.

At the last session of the legislature, however, there was a tidal wave of moral sentiment that made the boys hold their ears to the rails and listen. A good many of them concluded that the "water wagon" was coming in earnest and they couldn't see much difference between a blue ribbon and a ballot. The W. C. T. U. forces certainly did make a powerful showing, and for a while it looked as if some mighty restrictive legislation would go through. That was the time when "Big Mike," the member from Pinhole, took off his coat and began to saw wood. He knew that his town would look like a Sunday school after that kind of legislation had begun to get in its saving work. A big delegation of business men came on from Pinhole to make a showing. They were sure scared and begged Mike to turn back the enemy at any cost. He buckled right down to business, sacrificed everything else, and traded right and left for anything that would cut into the votes of the reform party. And he was a shrewd trader, too!

If the missionaries who have gone out to spread the gospel had worked half as hard as "Big Mike" there wouldn't be an unconverted heathen on the earth. If he had sworn not to eat or sleep until he had killed that bill he couldn't have hustled harder. Day and night he was on the rampage, cutting out a member from the reform bunch at every possible opportunity and putting the Pinhole brand on him.

When the final roundup came he had picked up enough strays, by hard riding, to defeat the cold water measure. Judging by the noise that Pinhole delegation made over him, you would have expected to see "Big Mike" sent to congress. They loosened the underpinning of the capitol building and painted the town until it looked like a horse show poster. And the whole thing was done over again when Mike made his triumphal return to his own town. All the brass bands in the county were there and the blowout that was had in his honor went down in history.

A few months later a young stranger with a baritone speaking voice, a smile that made the dogs wag their tails, and a string of good stories, struck the town and opened a law office. When the municipal election came around the opposition ticket nominated him for mayor. Then the "business element" waited on "Big Mike" and asked him to run in order to "save the day." They assured him that he was the one man who could snuff out the young invader without batting an eye.

Of course, being mayor of Pinhole looked like small potatoes to a man who had held the center of the stage through a whole legislative session and who had his eye on a seat in the State Senate. But the boys begged him to make the sacrifice and urged that the mere use of his name would put the other man out of the running. Finally he yielded. The music which had celebrated his triumphal return was still sounding in his ears and he looked upon the whole municipal campaign as a matter of form. In fact, he didn't consider it necessary even to remind the people that he had given them the one thing they wanted. They could never forget that! So he just kept on handing out hardware to his customers while the young lawyer worked his smile and his stories from one end of the street to the other.

Somehow, before anybody particularly realized it, there was a sort of general inquiry as to whether "Big Mike" ever would be able to satisfy his appetite for office. Even one or two of the men who had been in the Pinhole delegation that went up to the capital during the session for the purpose of holding up "Big Mike's" hands and giving him moral support were heard to insinuate that the political leader of the business element so hated to see an office get past him that he'd be running for justice of the peace or constable next, rather than have some other fellow fill the place.

Then the women and the dudes of Pinhole society began to whisper that it would be real nice to have a mayor who didn't spit on his shirt front and who used at least three handkerchiefs in a week.

Well, before the polls opened you could walk from one end of the street to the other without hearing a solitary word on the subject of how "Big Mike" had stampeded a whole legislature and saved Pinhole from being crushed under the wheels of the water wagon bill. But every time you listened in at a little political talk you were dead sure to hear how many spots were once counted on "Big Mike's" shirt bosom and how tiresome a thing it is to see a man make a political glutton of himself.

"Big Mike" didn't hear much of this talk, and he simply snorted with complaisant contempt at the stray fragments of it that did reach his ears. He allowed that a man could wear a shirt front of solid plug fringed with one-cut if he could only give his constituents their heart's desire and give it to 'em quick—when they called for it.

The people, he said, knew all about him, and he knew the people of Pinhole so well that he didn't have to get out and run a campaign with a dude on a shirt front issue. But a bear on a floor sanded with carpet tacks would be a calm and peaceful object compared with "Big Mike" when the ballots were counted that night and the election of the smooth young lawyer announced.

Mike plowed up both sides of the street in his wrath, sold out his business, and moved into another frontier town in an adjoining district, which had been as much benefited by his work in the legislature as had Pinhole. Then he started in for a long campaign. He is working at it now, day and night, and you may depend upon it that he will be back again in the legislature with a long knife out for any legislation that the Pinhole district may want. He says that he is now a reformer—and that the first thing he proposes to reform is the memory of his dear friends, the people of Pinhole.

All this, I admit, is discouraging to a man who has put up really a great fight for a good measure that ought to entitle him to an eternal mortgage on the support of his district for anything he may choose to ask. However, there may be a sneaking streak of satisfaction to some fellows in the fact that a constituency is about as quick to forget his sins and blunders as his triumphs of statesmanship in their behalf.

Perhaps you have forgotten the episode of "Gumshoe Smith," in the session when you were laid off. Let me jog your memory. Gumshoe represented one of the river districts. Although he had a whole lot of farmers in his bailiwick, he was out for any substantial assets he could fasten on to without making too much noise about it. And, what's more, he didn't hold himself at a cheap price, either. He always stuck for something worth while, and if he did not get it he was a bad man to deal with. He had the courage of his immoral convictions and showed a daredevil nerve when any of the corporate interests tried to throw him.

One of the biggest franchise bills that came up during the session was engineered by a transplanted New England Yankee who hated to see a cent slip through his own fingers. This made Gumshoe mad, and he fixed a price on his support that threw the Yankee into the cramps. They dickered and haggled up to the last minute before the bill was to come up for third reading; but Gumshoe wouldn't budge an inch or discount his price a dollar.

At the last ragged minute before roll call that Yankee, who was hid away in one of the committee rooms, turned to a young fellow from his own town, whom he had put on the pay roll, and handed him a long envelope containing $5,000 with the remark: "Just hustle into the House and quietly hand this to Mr. Smith. It contains some papers he wants to use right away."

The young fellow was as green as a June pasture, so far as his knowledge of inside legislation was concerned, and besides that he didn't have any more than his share of brains, anyway. He slipped into the House and asked the doorkeeper, "Where is Mr. Smith?"

"Right down the aisle there," answered the doorkeeper, pointing. "Standing with his hand on his desk."

The young fellow slipped quietly down the aisle and laid the envelope on the desk indicated. Before the roll call actually began Gumshoe slipped out of the door and began to look anxiously about. In a moment he found what he was looking for, and he and the Yankee held about two minutes of mighty animated conversation. Then the young man who had been sent with the envelope came up. The Yankee grabbed him by the arm and asked in an undertone: "You gave those papers to Smith, didn't you ?"

"Yes," answered the young man in a scared voice.

Then Gumshoe turned on the little fellow and said:

"You're a liar, you never gave it to me. You've salted it down in your own pocket, you little thief."

"You?" was the astonished response. "Of course I didn't give it to you. I gave it to Mr. Smith, that grizzle-headed little old man with the whiskers, on the right hand of the center aisle, third seat down."

In one second Gumshoe made a rush for the meek little old farmer from the southern end of the state, who hadn't said a word during the whole session excepting to answer on roll call. About half of the members hadn't discovered that his name was Smith—and those who had distinguished between him from the other Smith by giving him his right surname, while they always spoke of the main Smith as Gumshoe. This was how the doorkeeper happened to send the innocent young man to Farmer Smith instead of Gumshoe from the river district.

With a fierce grip on the old farmer's shoulder Gumshoe blurted out:

"Here, you old pious sneak thief, just fork over that stuff right quick or I'll smash every bone in your body."

With a shaking hand the scared farmer made a dive into his inside pocket, pulled out the long envelope, and handed it over. When Gumshoe saw that it had been opened he gave a nasty laugh and said:

"If you ever peep on this I'll teach you that there's such a thing as honor among thieves."

On the roll call Gumshoe voted for the bill, and voted hard. As several of the members sitting near had heard snatches of the conversation an inkling of the story leaked out and got into the newspapers. Of course, Farmer Smith put up the defense that he wasn't going to keep the money.

Some believed this and some didn't. Anyhow, both of the men were roasted to a crisp in the newspapers and any one would naturally have concluded that neither of the Smiths would ever dare to run for pathmaster. But the records show that they were both back again in the House inside of four years and Gumshoe, as you probably remember, was later sent to the Senate.

And so, Ned, you will see why I don't put quite as much confidence in the memory or the constancy of the ordinary constituency as your letter leads me to think you do. The average American king can forget benefactions and forget crimes about as nimbly as any other kind of a king. My advice is: Don't scrimp your next campaign fund because you have turned a good trick for your people; get hold of some new issue and convince them that it's their only salvation and just as necessary as the thing you have already landed.

I'm mighty sorry that I can't be on hand for the wedding; but I want to say that I'd rather see you married to Kate than witness your entrance into the United States Senate. You may think the latter is a long way off—and so it may be—but I like the way you've trotted your trial heats and I'm expecting more of you than some fellows who can't see beyond the lines of a printed pedigree.

Yours as ever,

William Bradley.

	The new joys of home life have caused Ned to feel the responsibility of making
	substantial provision for his family in the way of going out after a fat
	Federal job—and he intimates that he has a political pull which will do
	the work of a steam derrick. This spurs the old Governor to offer a few
	observations on the reliable uncertainty of pulls in general and proves his
	point by a story of a pull that outdid all expectations.

CHAPTER VII. PUPPETS AND PULLS.

Brokenstraw Ranch, ——, 19—.

Dear Ned: —

I'm mighty glad that you find the present joys of your new home better than any picture of a future paradise painted in the sermons that Elder Ripp used to preach to you in the little old Free Will church those Sundays when you opened the campaign by taking up your devotional duties again. I always did think you were put on the light running domestic order and that you'd drop gracefully into the responsibilities of married life.

Consequently, I'm not surprised to have you write in a strain that shows you are disgustingly happy and that you have some earthly interest beyond the glory of representing a constituency and being an exalted errand boy for a bunch of folks you wouldn't hire out to for day wages. It's good for you to feel that there's something in life beyond pulling and being pulled—and for that which "profiteth not."

Your decision to make a try for some good fat appointment that will put you in position to provide for your wife is a practical resolution—but it recalls to me a certain speech which you delivered at Canada Corners, on the fourth of July, in which you magnified the glories of an elective and representative once and dealt out high scorn for the "political pot hunters" who "prostituted ambition for public service and made it a matter of ignoble commerce."

Those were your words, Ned; but I can forgive your change of heart when I remember that you were dealing a side cut to the boss of the other machine, who let the other fellows take all the elective, bandstand places while he dropped quietly into the kind of a nest you are now looking for. Then, again, you're just married—and that is enough to account for almost any sort of a stampede in the direction of settled income and "secure tenure of service."

But the man who can plunge into matrimony and at the same time stake his future on the efficacy of political pulls is so full of faith that he ought to be talking from behind a pulpit instead of prancing around on the stump.

In all the calendar of "long shots," the political pull is the rangiest and most cocksure uncertainty. Of course, you're going to come back at me with the statement that the political pull may be depended upon not to realize more than the candidate's expectations. Generally that's so—but such is the consistency of this splendid uncertainty that I'll have to tell you what happened to my friend Driggs, just over the state line. He's recently been out to visit me, and so the matter is fresh in my mind.

Now, Billy was always on the other side of the fence from me, politically, and I used to rally him about being always out in the cold. But he kept right at the mourner's bench, leading the faithful and exhorting the political sinners to come forward and get the true light. And all this time Billy's law practice continued to grow lighter and his line of credit and longtime notes heavier.

Well, as you know, his side finally came in on the great tidal wave. I never saw a pastor who had prayed and sowed and watered and waited for the increase who was more surprised when a real red hot revival actually opened up right at his feet and made the rafters ring with the shouts of the saved than was Billy when he heard that the country had gone his way. Naturally, he had the pulchritude of a singed cat. What came out of his face, when he talked to a crowd, however, was so much beyond the promise of the face it came from that the people took to him like women to religion. It seemed as if they had tired of the handsome, "black eagle," imposing type of political hero, and were ready to find relief in the plain, red headed, pug nosed, freckled, and sawed off sort of a leader that came under the head of Billy Driggs.

Anyhow, he was given credit for carrying his part of the state—and his other line of credit began to pick up considerably, too, as the war horses gathered at the county seat and talked over the office that Billy would probably be appointed to.

Well, he finally went on to Washington with all the pulls that he could scare up working overtime in his behalf. He had made up his mind to strike high and ask for the position of United States marshal for his end of the state. The marshalship paid $6,000 a year—and that was more money than he had handled in six years. Every little while, before Billy went up to Jerusalem to the great feast of the chosen, he would stop and say to himself, "Too good to be true! Too good to happen to me!"

Now, while Billy had always been a twelve hour laborer in the vineyard, he was so absorbed in the conversion of sinners that he didn't know what the fat places on the circuit paid—and he had to ask what was the best paying appointment ever held by a man from that district before he knew what to apply for. "Topnotch or nothing," was his battle cry when he went out for the indorsement of the party leaders.

He had seen so many lean years of faithful service when the enemy held the corner on all the official cribs that, now in the days of his party's fatness and of his own righteous reward, the habit of good, honest hustling stuck to him, and he lined up an array of pulls and indorsements that made him swell with happiness every time he went over the list. "Some folks have to die before they can get that sort of thing," he would say as he tapped the bundle of indorsements.

In Washington he kept right on hustling just as if he'd only started out with his petition. The public men seemed to take to his style of beauty, and even the President was uncommonly gracious to Billy when Congressman Skipp introduced him. The wise ones told Billy that he was all right, and that nothing short of an O. K. on an application ever went with that peculiar brand of smile.

But somehow the appointment didn't come out quite as quickly as Billy had hoped—and this delay only made him hustle the harder. His only antidote for "hope deferred" was more hustling. And he did it in a quiet, unobtrusive way that didn't stir up opposition.

One day, however, when Billy was about to cinch himself up again for another "pull" campaign, he got word that something was going to happen at the Senate that afternoon which might be of particular interest to him. He was there in the gallery listening to every word that fell from the lips of the oracle of the chair. Finally he heard his own name read off in connection with the words, "To be collector of the port."

Billy jumped to his feet in a minute as if he were back home in a county convention and some Indian was trying to commit the party to a hopeless heresy.

"It's a mistake," he started to shout, when the friend who was with him laid violent hands on his coat tails, yanked him back into his seat and said:

"Shut up, you fool! What if it is a mistake! Don't you know the collectorship pays $12,000 a year! Mistakes of that kind don't happen to anybody but fools and the elect—and you're not anybody's fool!"

Well, it turned out that Billy's appointment stuck, and he made good in such a way that a bunch of big fellows in his party took an interest in him and put him in the way of making more money than he had ever dreamed of seeing. And he made it honestly, too. Then his fame as a party oracle spread with the growth of his bank account until now he is known in every state in the union among the solid moneyed men.

I hope, Ned, that your pull will be of this "thirty baskets of fragments" kind, but I'm afraid that you're not quite enough of a singed cat to have a claim to that kind of luck.

When it comes time to put on the screws and really come to a showdown, I hope you'll not have quite the experience that came to a young chap from my old home town, who went out into the sheep country, made friends as fast as he lost money, and finally landed the comfortable little job of reading clerk in the house.

Jim had a voice like the sound of many waters, the presence of a Presidential possibility and the nerve of a goat. He fitted into the place as handy as a hoe into dirt, and made friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness right and left. Before the session was fairly under way he had done a trick or two that made him solid with the strong minority and he was considered a sort of consulting pilot for any difficult piece of legislative navigation that came up. Beside him, the Wobbly Willie speaker was small potatoes.

One day a member came to him and said:

"Jim, how in tunket am I going to get that bill of mine through creating the office of state oil inspector? You see, they killed my measure in the Senate, and I got even by burying the Senate bill, to the same effect, here in the House."

"Looks a great deal as if the state would worry along awhile without an oil inspector," said Jim, "but if there's a ghost of a show to, I'm going to help you out, Tom, for I've made up my mind to land that particular job myself."

"Well," replied Tom, "my goose is cooked if I don't get that bill through. I can't support you for the place when it's made; but I won't do anything in particular to keep you from getting it."

"There's just one bluff that may work," said Jim, "if the measly parliamentary sticklers don't catch on to the game. Spring a resolution for a conference committee of five—two from the Senate and three from the House—and have the bill revised and put through."

This scheme worked, the bill was passed, and inside of a week every member of Jim's political faith in the House, with two exceptions, went before the Governor in a body and asked for his appointment to the new position, which was worth $20,000 a year.

"This is the strongest indorsement any man has ever had for any appointment," replied the Governor, "and the request of this delegation shall be granted if it is within my power to do so."

Privately the Governor explained to Jim that he made this slight reservation for fear that possibly he might have given the Senator who introduced the "oil bill" to understand that he was favorably inclined toward a friend of the Senator's. Later, Jim was informed that the records of executive correspondence showed no such entanglement and that his appointment would be made as soon as circumstances would permit. But, somehow, there appeared to be a regular glut of executive circumstances, and the big plum still stuck to the tree in spite of all the shaking Jim could do. Finally, months afterward, when Jim's bank account was wasted to a shadow from an acute attack of creeping consumption, he got a straight tip from a square politician, who had one leg in the grave, that the Governor had appointed another fellow. Then Jim went up to the mansion and put his case strong. He got a square in the eye assurance that all was well and that the delay was simply for reason of executive policy.

Next day, while the man with the pull of practically a solid party at his back and working overtime was pondering and guessing, he was called to the chamber.

"Your state needs you," said the Governor, "in another capacity, sir, and I shall not take 'No' for an answer. I am about to make up a commission to exploit to the world one of the greatest industries of our commonwealth. You know that industry, as few of our citizens do; true, there is no salary attached to the position, but your labor will bring you in contact with the great captains of finance, and the way will speedily open for you to make a great deal of money. Your sacrifice in letting the other position pass will be only temporary and you will soon come into your reward."

Before Jim could catch his breath and get his bearings he had accepted a tinfoil honor. When the announcement of the appointment was made the state boss came to Jim and explained:

"You old ninny! Two months ago the Governor gave his absolute pledge that he would make you oil inspector, but bound me not to tell you because you might tell your wife and let the thing leak out before he could fix his fences for the United States Senatorship. And now he's worked you into trading $20,000 a year for a tin horn."

Jim meditated for a while on the perverseness of dead sure pulls and then started in on a campaign that cost the Governor the Senatorship.

But that didn't pay his grocery bills, and before the next session he saw several hungry days. And I could tell you a dozen other incidents that show as clearly how a double riveted pull can taper off into thin air and an empty stomach. So, don't rent a new house, buy bonds, or throw over your present job until you have the commission that you hanker for actually in your hands.

Yours as ever,

William Bradley.

	Commenting on Ned's surprise that a seasoned politician has "sold himself
	for thirty cents," William Bradley gives his notions of grafters and indulges
	in a story and a few epigrams to drive home the point, taking his text from
	his boyhood experiences in breaking up "bumble bees' nests."

CHAPTER VIII. GRAFTERS AND STINGERS.

Brokenstraw Ranch, ——, 19—.

Dear Ned: —

When you size up a bunch of aldermen or a new legislature, just remember the simple little fact of natural history that a "bumble" bee is always biggest right after it's hatched. The average alderman or legislator—especially if he's inclined to be "on the make"—is about seven times larger and more important in his first term than he will ever be again.

You seem to be surprised that our old friend Kite sold himself for about 30 cents after having been in politics for as many years, and that he hates and fights the decent men who wouldn't do the same trick. If the corporation had attempted to land him at that price in his first term he would have been so mad that likely he'd made a bluff at exposing the attempt to tamper with his "honor"; but the passage of time is likely to make a little shrinkage in most things, including the importance of an alderman or a legislator. There's nothing I know of that loses so much of size in the seasoning process as a politician—excepting a "bumble" bee and a basswood log.

Your story about Kite Hendee puts me in mind of a little chapter in the gentle art of grafting that bears right on this "bumble" bee point and is worth remembering. Up in the city a plumber was elected to the board of aldermen. He didn't calculate to put in his time in the council just to cure himself of hay fever, and there wasn't a fresh baked city father in the bunch that felt his oats like Barney Brennan. The flowers on his desk that first night looked like a composite of all the Dutch posey beds in Little Germany, and one of the newspaper boys remarked that the corporations would have to pay for that floral display at Easter prices.

Being a plumber, Barney naturally was used to pretty stiff prices anyway, and had acquired the habit of charging up time from the minute he began to look for his tools till he returned and had sharpened his pipe cutters ready for the next job.

Now, the little Hoosier who was looking after the interests of one of the street railroad companies had broken up enough "bumbles'" nests in his boyhood to know something about the law of shrinkages, and, as he had been in the house building business for several years, was fairly familiar with the general habits of plumbers.

There was a little trick that the Hoosier wanted to put through the council, but there wasn't enough involved to make it really a first class object from an aldermanic standpoint. Consequently, as the council contained a lot of new members who were mightily impressed with their own importance, the scout for the street railway company had to figure close and make up in cunning what he lacked in available coin with which to grease the job.

All the hold-overs that could be done business with were lined up quick, and at the regular discount-in-large-quantities rate. But he was considerable short of the required number of votes, and had to raise his prices in several instances to get the new men that could be seen at all. He sent one of the old members to sound Barney, the plumber, but that dignitary sniffed at the offer of $500, and swore by the great Gas Pipe Cinch that he wouldn't consider anything less than $1,000.

According to the little Hoosier's score card, the game was up with him unless he could get Barney into line—but, of course, Barney didn't know that his vote was the key to the whole situation. Some of the Hoosier's advisers got anxious about the situation and kept asking if he wasn't going to come to Barney's terms "just for a starter."

"Nope," said the Hoosier, "can't afford that. It establishes a bad precedent—and, besides, he'll come around all right when the time comes."

"Don't you think it," said the fellows. "He's bigger in his own mind right now than the Mayor himself. You'd better settle with him this once, and after a while he'll get some sense and come down to hardpan prices like the rest of us."

But the Hoosier only shook his head, grinned and said that Barney would drop into line without any trouble. The night the resolution came up for final vote there hadn't been a change of a figure on the little Hoosier's score card. He confided this to the friend who sat right behind Barney, and, handing him a long manila envelope, he said:

"If that plumber pirate gets up to make a spiel against our resolution, just keep one eye on me; the minute I take off my eyeglasses and start to rub them with my handkerchief, you reach around in front of Barney and put this envelope on his desk. I guess he'll take a twist on his tiller and round his bow into the wind when he sees what's put up to him. I'll be up by the clerk's desk with the newspaper boys."

Things were run quite wide open in those days in the council and bolder hands had been played than the showdown the Hoosier outlined. Well, sure enough, Barney arose in his seat to speak on the resolution. Like most new members he hung on to his desk with a death grip and seemed afraid the whole floor would slide out from under him if he should let go for a second. But he had set himself to sail the eagle a little and at the same time to let the fellows who were doing things understand that they had a heavyweight to deal with when they didn't come to his terms. They couldn't trifle with his affections without getting a blow with a lead pipe that would make itself felt!

After his throat was cleared and the buck fever had got out of his voice, he began to lay the foundations for a forty minute indictment against the street car company calculated to put that "bloated incubus" out of business for all time. He had sunk the piles and put in the underground stonework of his speech when the little Hoosier calmly took off his glasses and began to rub them with his handkerchief.

Instantly the alderman behind Barney caught the signal, reached forward and laid the long envelope on the orator's desk. The speaker continued for a few minutes and then paused for a drink of water. As he did so he Stole a glance at the envelope and saw a figure "1," followed by three ciphers written in pencil on the corner of the envelope. He put the drinking glass down over the figures and then proceeded in the same strain. The face of the Hoosier's friend fell like a batch of sour dough. And it didn't change until the speaker paused and took a new grip with the words:

"An' now, gentlemen, this is one side of the situation. There are always two sides to every case, and a spirit of judicial fairness compels me to present the other side. Between two evils we must choose the least. While the resolution would benefit a graspin' corporation, its defeat would deprive the people of rights and privileges that are of inestimable value."

Then he went ahead and put out as plausible a line of argument as the little Hoosier himself could have furnished. And he wound up with the declaration:

"I have not hesitated to expose the motives that have influenced this monopoly to ask for the resolution before us; but, gentlemen, I am compelled to vote for its passage because it is the best thing for the people. Experience should teach us that when this hungry corporation gives us three-quarters of a loaf we should grab it before it is too late."

When Barney sat down some one nudged the little Hoosier and whispered: "Must have met his price, eh? Or, mebbe, he raised on you the last minute. But it hain't fair to us fellows who stand by you right along to get the small change while the fancy sums go to these goslins that are fresh from the nest."

"Just you go out with Barney," says the Hoosier, "and watch him when he opens up his envelope over in Billy Ryan's place. Take him into a private stall—you two alone—and give him champagne until his tongue is loosened. I'll stand the bill."

"A wink's as good as a nod to a blind horse," said the member as he started for Barney's seat and cinched the invitation. After adjournment the two went into retirement together in one of Billy Ryan's stalls and opened a few bottles of extra dry and ate a beefsteak on the side. Every once in a while Barney's fingers would stray into his inside coat pocket as if to make sure something was there. Finally, the friend said:

"Old man, you're one of the Ancient and Honorable Gray Wolves now. If you don't know that they're a mighty square set and always pull together you'll find it out soon. There's no squealing and no secrets in the pack. Better pull out that envelope and see what you draw. I never saw anything so slick as the way you brought 'em to time."

Barney stiffened up, said something about being able to play the game if he hadn't been long in it, and drew out the envelope. "I guess none of the boys did any better 'n that," he added, pointing to the figures. "One thousand ain't so bad for the first meeting."

"One thousand—cents!" exclaimed his companion. "I guess you'd better have your eyes tested for glasses, old man. A decimal point, if it is mighty small, cuts a big figure in this business, I can tell you, where we've got to take things on their face and count the goods afterwards."

"Cents!" yelled Barney, ripping open the envelope and dropping a bright, new $10 bill into his plate. Barney always ordered his steak extra rare but they say that when he had got done using the Irish language that night his steak was burned to a crisp and crinkled up around the edges like a German pancake. He made such an uproar that the other aldermen who had dropped in after the session to take a little nourishment and sit up and notice things, came rushing into the stall.

Of course, the whole story was out in a minute—just as the Hoosier had intended it to be, only without the necessity of giving it away himself.

But you may be sure the Hoosier spread the gospel of the $10 bill in every precinct club in Barney's ward until the alderman couldn't go up an alley without being grinned at by the wise ones. Then the Hoosier sent a trim little bruiser who was handy with his fists down into the ward to finish the job of making a monkey of the Hon. Barney. The lightweight happened into a place where the alderman was attempting to recover lost ground by flooding the ward with beer. After an introduction the slugger gayly started in to joke Barney about the $10 ordinance.

Instantly the alderman, who was a big fellow, thought he saw a way to make good with his people and he struck right out from the shoulder. But the little athlete dodged, and when he finished up with Barney that city father looked like a slice of fresh liver.

That winter Barney scattered Christmas turkeys among "his people" as lavishly as if they were sparrows. But the whole ward continued to grin whenever his name was mentioned, and it was carried against him at the next primaries by a young chap who had once been a theological student and was suspected of being a half-baked prohibitionist.

But, to go back to the "bumble" bee proposition: I've broken up enough nests in the old south meadow, when I was a boy, to prevent me from seeing out of both eyes for a week; but the lessons I learned while nursing my stings have stood me in good stead in many a campaign. One of the things that has stuck to me, from those sore reflections, is the observation that the coward who dodges behind the fellow that does the fighting is the one that wants most of the honey and howls loudest when he happens to get stung.

If that isn't the way in the world of politics, then I never led a certain fight back in the old state that is still remembered by the seasoned warhorses of the party! Find a fellow whose mouth waters to catch the drippings from a piece of political honeycomb, and who wants the other boys to be contented with "bee bread," and you've got a man that'll hide behind your back when you're under fire. Our friend Kite was of just that sort.

Then, again, the "bumblers" taught me that when the chief end of existence is to plant a stinger where it'll do the most good there may be a whole lot of savage satisfaction in the process—but it's sure death to the one that lands the stinger! The whole highway of politics is scattered with the carcasses of bright politicians who acquired a passion for stinging; they finally got in their work but every boy that has broken up a "bumbler's" nest knows that the bee that lands a stinger gives up his life along with it.

So, Ned, don't mind the Grafters or the Stingers. You'll outlive them all.

Yours as ever,

William Bradley.

	Ned has told his troubles to his old friend and confessed that he is considerably
	torn up by the discovery that there are several traitors and a bunch of
	weak-kneed camp followers in his ranks. This stirs the old veteran to vent
	his feelings on the subject of the various stripes of politicians to be found
	in every camp. He gives his opinion of their relative importance and illustrates
	his meaning by an anecdote of politics "up in the Hill Country beyond Judea."

CHAPTER IX. QUITTERS AND STAYERS.

Brokenstraw Ranch, ——, 19—.

Dear Ned: —

I'm glad that my passing remarks on the general cussedness of grafters and stingers gave you the consolation they were intended to carry. Judging from the letter before me, you seem to be learning a good deal in a short space of time about the different species into which the general family of Politician is sub-divided; and it strikes me that the particular breeds now claiming your attention are the Quitters and the Stayers.

The atmosphere of politics doesn't seem especially suited to the raising of spiritual orchids; but there isn't another field of human effort in which the rougher virtues shine to better advantage or the meanness of the human mind can crop up in a more contemptible way. The thing best loved in a politician is that which makes a burdock the best hated weed on earth—the quality of sticking through thick and thin. A good old fashioned dock burr is the sort of a floral emblem for me when going into the ups and downs of politics; no matter whether your campaign fund is 50 cents or $50,000, the burrs and the real stayers will stick so tight you can't separate them from you without individually pulling them into pieces. The Stayers may want you to go some other road than the one you're set on traveling, but they'll stick with you to the end and not pester you with a lot of nagging questions and arguments. They aren't forever reminding you that they expect you some time to square accounts with them on a Santa Claus basis; and they don't rattle off from you like chestnuts after a hard frost, when the first wind of political adversity strikes you.

I've sat up a good many nights and burned a heap of strong tobacco trying to figure out just where a Stayer leaves off and a Quitter begins, and I've about come to the conclusion that the line of separation shifts itself about as often as the bed of the Missouri river. However, I've sized it up about this way: When your political bedfellow personally and at first hand proves to you that he's more kinds of a hog, liar, and general all-around traitor than his worst enemies set him out to be, you're warranted in cutting him out of the bunch on giving due notice of your intentions—and the boys can't rightly call you a quitter for doing it.

This question of the ethics of quitting and staying was never better illustrated to my mind than in a township election when I was a boy back in York state. Up in the region called the "hill country beyond Judea" Luman Dodd, a young buck who had more relatives in the valley of Gahunda than a rabbit, was the leader of the choir in the little Disciple church, and figured that, being the best singer and the handsomest and most numerously connected young man in the whole hill country, he stood a good chance, in time, to go to the legislature if he could only get the right sort of a start. But the start was what bothered him, for it had to be a regular run-and-jump in order to land him in Albany among the lawmakers.

Over in the valley of Gahunda, in the same township, was Watt Ely, a solid old Yankee who had run the Republican politics of the settlement for several years. Young Lume had had sense to make up strong to Watt and "ride the town" whenever there was a close fight on, and his tenor voice was a star attraction at every Republican rally. Old Watt took a shine to the boy and nursed Lume's political ambitions, telling him his day would come sometime. And it did come at a certain town caucus, when Watt got the old boys together and put Lume on the head of the ticket for supervisor. There was a streak of tenor melody from the townhouse to Lume's home as the young candidate left the caucus to carry the news to his wife.

But after the first burst of song the leader of the choir got busy meditating on how he was to make the big start that would give him the impetus for a leap into the legislature. Nothing commonplace, like a good record, would answer the purpose, to his notion. He must do something to startle the natives and show them that they needed a tenor voice in the councils of the state at Albany.

He went out into the woodshed until the plan of campaign gradually took shape—for Lume's mind was about as nimble as a cove oyster's. But when he had once bedded himself down in a new set of ideas he was there to stay. At the end of a three hours' communion with himself, Lume saw the way from the townhouse to the capital; he would roll up a majority for himself that would make the other figures on his ticket look sick and prove that he was the most popular man that had ever showed his head above the waters of politics in the "country beyond Judea."

And the way he planned to accomplish this feat proved to himself that he was cut out from the beginning of creation for a statesman. O, but it was a cunning trick! He was sure that nobody else had thought of such a smart turn. Moses Siler, who was named for justice of the peace, had taken a collection at the close of the caucus from all the candidates and had gone over to Slippery Elm to get the Republican tickets printed, so they could be distributed among the voters during Sunday and Monday. But Lume had decided to do a little ticket business on his own hook, so he sent his younger brother over to the Burg, the other side of the hills, and had a batch of Democratic tickets printed on the same kind of paper as the Republican ballots, only the name of Luman Dodd was substituted in the place of the Democratic candidate's name. These he'd use where they'd do the most good.

On Sunday Lume was in his place at the head of the choir, behind the organ, and he celebrated the occasion by singing a solo that made some of the sisters wipe their eyes. You couldn't have thrown a contribution box in any direction in that audience without hitting an aunt, uncle, or cousin of Luman Dodd's—and they were all proud of the new distinction that had come to the family in the shape of Lume's nomination. Out in the horsesheds, after the services, Lume held a reunion of the male members of the Dodd line, and it was agreed that every one of them suspected of having the slightest influence in the community should get out and "ride" from Monday's sunup until the close of the polls on Tuesday. Lume told them, of course, he'd be elected—no question about that—but he wanted to roll up the biggest majority ever carried by a candidate in Bethlehem township.

On Monday he started out to ride the township himself. All was smooth sailing until he struck the valley of Gahunda and drove in at Mose Siler's bars to discuss the outlook and plan for some special hustling on Tuesday. In about a second after Mose planted his foot on the hub of the buggy he took from his wallet one of the special Democratic tickets that Lume had hired a tin peddler to distribute among the wives of the hill country Democrats along with some