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Richard Croker

Richard Croker.

By Courtesy of McClure's Magazine.
¦^Copyright, i90f, The S. S. McClure Company.

Richard' Croker

'By
Alfred Henry Lewis
i/luthor of
"Wolfville," "Sandburrs"

New York

Life Publishing Company

1901

Copyright, 1901,
by
Life PuBLisHiNa Coiifaky,
New York City.

Entered at Stationers' Hall, London,

Printed in the United States.

AU righis reserved.

CiS^A3'dV

THE CONTENTS.

^=*"IiK PAGE
An Author's Argument, .... xiii
I. An Ancestry,  1
n. Croker's Parentage,  13
in. School Days— A Trade, .... 30
IV. Athletics — Self-Defense, .... 42
V. The Prize Fighter,  54
VI. Some Small Change,  69
VII. A Character Study,  82
VIII. More Subsidiary Coin,  97
IX. Some Church Thoughts, . . . .117
X. Ballot Dcties,  134
XI. One Hundred Years Ago, . . . .169
Xn. Burr and Tammany,  181
XIIL The Vengeance,  202
XIV. John Kelly,  224
XV. An Ex-President,  251
XVI. Snobs, My Masters I  272
XVn. Hill and Gorman,  288
XVIII. Bryan and a Presidency, .... 310
XIX. The Reformers,  333
XX. The Trusts,  348
Tli

THE ILLUSTRATIONS.

Richard Croker,  Frontispiece.
Richard Croker as a Youth, . . Facing page 26
Tammany Hall, ... . " 42
Richard Choker's Office at Tammany Hall, " 74
John Kelly,  " 90
The Tammany Hall Portrait of Richard
Croker,  " 106
Exterior of the Democratic Club, . " 122
Main Hall of the Democratic Club, . " 154
John J. Scannell,  " 170
Fireplace in Cafe of the Democratic Club, " 186
Statue of St. Tammany from the FAgADE
OF Tammany Hall, .... " 218
Arthur Pue Gorman, .... " 250
Meeting Room of the Executive Com
mittee of Tammany Hall, . . " 282
Grover Cleveland, .... " 314
David B. Hill,  " 346
The Tammany Monument at Gettysburg, " 363

K

DEDICATION.
To the Hon. Oliver H. P. Belmont.
Dear Sir: As a mark of my respect and friendship,
sentiments which find root in those several years we
were together in relations of close social and business
kind, I dedicate this volume to you. And thereby I
more especially desire to testify my admiration of those
qualities of honesty, courage, generous energy, and a
fair and democratic Americanism which move you
to strive in the general interest rather than the nar
rower service of yourself. Often I have considered
that the most desperate test to which man's nature
can he subjected is the inheritance of great wealth.
To begin poor, and amass riches and retain them, and
he safe from life's commencement to its close, are
common and, indeed, natural conditions. But to be
horn with great wealth — to be wealthy without effort
and when young, blights more frequently than it ben
efits, and becomes the very reason of ruin of tener than
anything else. One has but to call the roll of one's
own acquaintance to be taught the perils that lie in
ambush in a cradle full of gold. Beyond other effects
such condition of earliest wealth is prone to sap one's
energy and destroy one's hard capacity for toil. I
do not now speak of him who picks up a system of
gainful commerce when it falls from the dead hands
of a forbear; who goes on with an existing enterprise
which runs of its own momentum; and who offers the
spectacle rather of being conducted by a business than
of conducting one. There are herds of these, of any
xi

xii DEDICATION.
one of whom it might be said that a fortune inherited
him and not he a fortune. No; I mean an energy that
is original and a toil that plows new fields. And it
is the assertion within you of this virile energy, and a
work-willingness, and that despite the handicap of
riches yours from the first, that challenges my ap
plause. Work when one feels the spur of need in
one's flank or shoulder is a leap we all will take. But
to toil when no selfish occasion compels, and when the
coaxing idleness of some pleasant pleasure allures, is
a thought too hardy for most of us who must be
driven to every field of effort and held there under
guard. So rare are folk of this sort that, aside from
yourself, of those scores of Eich-when-born whom
I've encountered, I noted but three who, with tempers
fine enough to resist those moral delinquencies that are
the seeds of a sweet destruction, had also the honesty,
courage, and energy of initiative in combination
which will attempt new paths, and strive in a great
enterprise for a reason not self. These were Messrs.
Hearst of the Journal, Eoosevelt of the Vice-Presi
dency, and Cable, one time Congressman from the
Eock Island District, Illinois. You, or any of these,
are, to my mind, among the best examples of man,
and a far nobler headland for our youth to steer by
than is he who, adding to a healthful and coercive
poverty some genius for voracity and to make a prey,
has conquered to himself a mountain of money to no
one's good but his own. It is for these qualities I
touch my hat to you; and hoping for your future that
success which I do not doubt it will have, I remain,
Sincerely your friend,
Alfred Henbt Levtis.

AN AUTHOE'S AEGUMENT.
First among the arts is the art of existence. And
one may make of one's life a picture whereof the
framing shall be one's birth and death. The picture
in its making will be much within one's own hands.
It may show bright or dark, sunshine or storm,
tragedy or comedy; and it will entertain, or teach a
lesson, or be a warning. And in this life-picture, for
either its beauty or interest, that trade or purpose to
which one betakes one's self, wherewith to live or to
kill one's time, is not of so much moment as those
who only casually regard the subject might appre
hend. All that is requisite in order that one's life
may go " on the line " as of the best pictures is to be
best and first of one's degree.
There is a good story in the life of every man. But
the best stories will be the stories of those selected as
the best lawyer and farmer and preacher and pirate
and soldier and doctor and writer and politician and
mechanic and fop and wit and what else one will.
Whatever one's class, and whether the world call it
humble or high, if one be but particular to stand at its
head, one's story will be worth the telling, and hailed
as of first and purest merit as a tale.
Of course, according to a taste, one onlooker will
affect this picture and another that; one will peruse
the dominie while another burns oil to read the bucca
neer. Some, even, will prefer the fop. Byron was of

XIV AJSr AUTHOR'S ARGUMENT.
these, and solemnly protested that he would rather be
George Brummel than Napoleon. And, truly! where
is the better picture, or the better story, than a fop
who is perfect in consistency and complete in each
respect? There was Scrope Davies, for example, whom Byron
loved as well as he did Brummel and to whom he dedi
cated his " Parisina." Scrope was a neat and for
midable contestant against Brummel for the crown of
the Kingdom of Dandy; and, holding his own in all
else — for Scrope was wit and scholar as well as beau —
was only at last defeated by the desperate perfection of
his rival's cravats.
Byron speaks of Scrope, and amuses one with his
brief sketch of an evening — " At the Cocoa with
Scrope Davies. Sat from six till midnight. Drank
between us one bottle of champagne and six of claret.
Offered to take Scrope home in my carriage; but he
was tipsy and pious, and I was obliged to leave him on
his knees praying to I know not what purpose or
paged." Scrope was quite as difiBcult a picture, and just as
perfect, as was Caesar at the head of his Eomans. The
story of Scrope would be as interesting as that of
CfEsar, and worth as much to men.
Become of the best of one's sort, and one will be
entitled to go on the shelf as of the best books, or on
the wall as of the best pictures, and hold one's own
with competition.
Eichard Croker is a politician and peerless of his
kind. Which is why this book is written. Hate may
deny and Envy frame a sneer and Defeat appeal the
gods in contradiction; yet Eichard Croker, the most

AN AUTHOR'S ARGUMENT. xv
potential figure of the greatest city of the greatest
State of the greatest country of the world, can be no
too-little subject for any page or pen.
New York City,
May 10th, 1901.

RICHARD CROKER

AN ancestry.
Mar. My Lord Aumerle, is Harry Hereford armed?
Aum. Yea, at all points, and longs to enter in.
— King JSicJiard II.
This work is to have concern with Eichard Croker.
And while, by all known rules of book-building, what
immediately follows should be named for its most
part, "Preface," it is deemed well to make of it a
chapter. There is a wisdom in this. A preface,
commonly, is nothing set forth in from two hundred
to ten thousand words, dependent for length on the
writer's genius for preface. It is barren of idea,
bankrupt of fact — a desert of inky desolation. This
preface-waste of types, thrown between the reader and
the hook, does harm. It sucks up not infrequently
those streams of popular interest which might other
wise have reached the book. No, of a verity! a
preface is a disaster to reader and to writer both. It
is a scarecrow to frighten timid fowl from that corn
of fact or fancy lying just beyond. Therefore, let us
have no prefaces. Let us in pleasant stead have chap
ters, as matters much more likely to win the eye of
general interest. There was never the man save one

2 RICHARD CROKER.
who might with safety hail himself master of preface
— that was Walter Scott. He threw out and managed
these skirmish lines of literature with a skill as rare
as brilliant. With Scott the preface was often better
than the book.
This volume, then, is to deal with Eichard Croker,
and in measure tell his story. Still, one is not to call it
a biography. I, who write, have neither the bent nor
yet such load of detail needed for one of those painful,
hair-line etchings known to book-commerce as biogra
phies. Again, your biography, worth the term, should
have deference to a day at least a quarter of a century
after its subject is successfully dead — until he who
is to be biographed is locked in that sure stronghold
of the grave. This work, as agaiast all other titles,
might best be styled a sketch. And while there is
nothing in a name there is much in an example, and it
would be well if, of writers past and present, we might
pick on one to guide by. Macaulay did this sort of
thing for a stout list of gentlemen, all good and dead
to-day. Macaulay named them " Essays." But one
may not go too close in imitation of Macaulay. Our
perfervid Scot was much warped of partisanship.
Macaulay was thrilling, but untrue. Carlyle, another
Scotchman with a French pen, left cords of similar
contribution, doubly amazing for vigorous phrasing
and aniemic veracity. Hazlett was another who, in
his " Spirit of the Age," followed this trail to market,
and sold a deal of good wormwood to make a bad,
poor living withal. Of the world's sketch-writers,
Plutarch succeeded the highest. Our Roman, like
Izaak Walton, who, three centuries ago, was a later
Plutarch in a little way to Wotten, Donne, and others,

TRUTH IS SOUGHT. 3
baptized his efforts "Lives." But we forage too far
and to no good end among these dust-heaps of dead
time. None of them is a model. Let us get hack to
our task and depend on ourselves.
In dressing the stone, and mixing the mortar, and
laying the walls of this story, there shall be but one
purpose: The sole, lone target aimed at shall be truth.
It may be well to wear this statement in one's mind.
A procession of mendacity, in a very lock-step of lies,
will follow Eichard Croker to the end. It will be
marshaled by partisanship, recruited by jealousy, and
led by his foes. It is worth while, therefore, since
none cuts coupons from any bond of error, to create
a place in print where the truth of Eichard Croker
can be had. This is to be no attack, no defense; it is
neither to blame nor to praise. " Sir Oliver," quoth
Sir Peter Teazle, " we live in a damned wicked world,
and the fewer we praise the better." The ill-used
baronet's wisdom in this last fulsome behalf shall be
to us a chart. No, there's to be neither love, nor
hate, nor praise, nor censure, nor bouquets, nor brick
bats, nor interest personal or political, from one cover
to the other. Truth shall be the watchword, first as
last. 'Tis a commodity grand, popular, and scarce —
that Truth. There's little of it told; there's little of
it sold. For which reasons. Truth, where and for
what cause it comes to market, should carry that in
terest and selling quality commonly stated of hot
cakes. It is a fashion when one writes of folk of eminence,
advertisement, and power, to plant some space with
their pedigrees. Whether the subject be some kinless
loon, or one rich in ancestry, is ever of deep im-

4 niCHARD CROKER.
portance; especially in America, emphatically in New
York. There are — by averment of the sole agents of
these shores — more " Burke's Peerages " sold each
year in New York City than in London and all
England. There are more carriages to be seen in any
New York City day bedight with the coat-armor of
the free and democratic American inside, than would
roll by one in London in a week. And wherefore
not? The veriest pessimist of lineage and heraldry
would fain concede you full two thousand families of
this city, whose rights rest on the Four Hundred, and
who trace themselves to forefathers who " came over
with the Conqueror." True, not a few of these, our
American nobility, have no knowledge of the " Con
queror " ; whether of his name, his person, or that
day of which he lived. They know not what he " con
quered," nor what he " came over " ; they ken neither
his start nor his stop — where he was nor where he
went. Nor why. Admit it all: what then? Our hope
ful patricians are still clear as to the coat of arms,
and that forbear who " came with the Conqueror."
One is not to suppose, however, for that it is com
mon as a genealogical feat in New York City, Eichard
Croker in his ancestry is here to be back-tracked to
the Norman. One is sure of the Croker line no
further away than Cromwell. Still, this is well; for
Cromwell himself in his day was quite a comfortable
form of conqueror; and it is better than an even
chance, had he been at Hastings that far hour instead
of Harold, bold William with his ambitions would
have gone limping back to France.
Eichard Croker was born in 1843. He saw his first
sun in Ireland, not over far from Cork and in the

CASTLETOWNROGHE. 5
farm regions about the hamlet of Castletownroche.
His father was Eyra Coote Croker. In their original
the Crokers were English, and came into Ireland with
Cromwell as officers in his army of invasion. These
Cromwell Crokers had celebration in their time for
much soldierly stubbornness of heart and arm. They
would face anything, fight anything, whether in pub
lic or in private war; and stood touchily upon their
honor. There were Crokers in the army, in literature,
in law, in parliament. They were of the gentry; but
lacking thrift and prudence, and with an overpower
ing bent to wager their substance on dice, cards, and
horses, no Croker of the olden time was very rich for
very long. For two centuries and a half after Crom
well, those Crokers who remained in Ireland and their
descendants, when not in the law or the army, were
" gentlemen farmers." But whatever they were, they
raced and rode and hunted and wagered and fought.
Withal, they were strong in an inherited Presby-
terianism; than which last-named virtue, "there is
nothing," says some sage of arms, " so good to stiffen
a line of battle."
Speaking of duels, it is said by some that it was a
Croker who challenged that Castlereagh who was Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland in the earliest years of last cen
tury. The firebrand Croker aforesaid had been in
sulted by a beggarly gauger; and not caring to fight
so low a fellow, and reflecting that Castlereagh as the
highest civic authority must own the gauger for his
minion, he sent a cartel to that nobleman as to one
who by his agent had worked the offense. Castlereagh
was discouraged. He opposed the construction of such
a precedent. If he, as Lord Lieutenant, was to be

6 RICHARD CROKER.
paraded at ten paces for the misdeeds of every ignoble
gauger on his lists, his days would be filled with pow
der smoke, and his trusty " saw-handles " kept bark
ing from morning till dark.
Castlereagh submitted these views to the hostile
Croker. They, in no sort, appealed to the latter. He
insisted that Castlereagh answer for his derelict
gauger in the Phoenix. The question was referred to
an Irish Court of Honor composed of gentlemen as
ardent as the Crokers. The Court of Honor went
heavily into the controversy. It heard Croker. It
listened to Castlereagh and weighed the latter's de
fense. Then it gave decision:
" Castlereagh was right," said the Court, " in re
fusing to be held for the mal-deeds of the gauger.
There were no such relations of confidence and near
ness," argued the Court, " between a Lord Lieutenant
and a gauger, which forced the first to the field to be
shot at for the transgressions of the other. Castle
reagh was to be upheld in his pose. But," continued
the Court, with a fineness of perception born of its
native greed for trouble, " there was another side to
the case in hand. Castlereagh was not alone Lord
Lieutenant; he was also a soldier. And a soldier,
pugnacious by profession, was bound to accept all
challenges without reference to the cause, and be
ready to go to the field with any gentleman who had
a mind for blood. It was the Court's unanimous voice
that, on this argument, Castlereagh should fight."
Castlereagh, however, declined the decision and re
fused to be controlled. Croker was in despair, and
the Court of Honor scandalized. They regarded the
Lord Lieutenant as no better than a fool in his folly

THE WELLSTEADS. 1
for failure to have advantage of a quarrel offered with
such integrity, and upheld with such skill. Lever, I
believe, makes some use of this story in one of his
tales of Ireland and the Irish. But Lever claps the
narrative on the shoulder of one of his people of
fiction, and not at all on that Croker to whom it prop
erly belongs.
Eichard Croker, on his mother's side, deduces his
descent from Scotland. His mother's family, even
before the Crokers came in with Cromwell, left their
sterile, half-fed Scottish glens and pushed into
Ireland, where, with a more lenient climate, and a
gentler, richer soil, a man might take more for his
tillage. Their family name was Wellstead.
Being equally of the gentry with the Crokers, the
Wellsteads were on social par with them. With more
mood to plow a field than train a dog or mount a
horse and hunt a fox, and with nothing of that taste
for quart-pots, wars, and wagers which so shone in the
case of the Crokers, the Wellsteads far outtopped
the others in point of fortune. The Wellsteads did
not have so good a time as the Crokers; but they had
more money. While there is no instance of angry
collision between the two families, it is not understood
in the traditions of Castletownroche that the Crokers
or the Wellsteads found in the others much of deep
delight. " Ten years ago " — said Mr. John Scannell, a
gentleman who has known Eichard Croker since his
boyhood, and of whom there will be more or less to
say throughout these pages — " ten years ago I made a
tour of Ireland. I called on Croker's uncle. His
name was Eichard Wellstead. The old gentleman was

8 RICHARD CROKER.
the favorite brother of Eichard Croker's mother. She
named her son for this brother. This Wellstead was
a ' gentleman farmer ' of the type one reads about.
He was hale and firm of mind and fiber. His farm
had about one thousand acres. His business, and as
well his joy, was to raise blooded cattle and swine,
and show them in all the great fairs throughout the
four kingdoms. He had a good library and a great
wine cellar, and when not about his cattle, divided
time between his bottle and his hooks. Well-educated
and much-traveled, the old gentleman made the two
or three hours I put in with him not the worst I saw
abroad. I asked him about the Crokers: he shook his
head; he didn't like them.
" ' I never liked the Crokers,' he said; ' the men of
the family, while gentlemen, were sad roysterers.
They had no turn for business and despised it. They
couldn't keep money. They had but one ambition —
the army. They held your swashbuckler officer, drink
ing and dicing away his patrimony, making vain
wagers on the issues of a horse race, and all to the
ruin of his fortune, in greater esteem than some
honest farmer who, reaping his fields in peace, could
win his pounds and count his pounds and keep his
pounds with any of the land. No, no; it was a case of
fire and water; at no time in two centuries have the
Crokers and the Wellsteads overwell agreed. I did
what man might to keep my sister from marrying one.
But girls are hard to guide; she had her way.'
" The old gentleman," continued Scannell, " took
a deep drink after this. Being refreshed, he went
over an interminable list of Crokers who squan
dered their fortunes before middle age, and then

LOCKHART— CAMPBELL. 9
passed a want-bitten existence to the end of their days
on the narrow pay of a captain. He seemed a bit
mollified in the instance of Eyra Coote Croker, who
married his sister and became the father of Richard
Croker. He spoke better of him than of the others,
saying that he was the best of the lot; alb'eit he, too,
had been guilty of that family crime of the Crokers,
and lost his money before ever he saw thirty years."
It will strike the calmer mind that in this matter
of family we have done enough. Walton with his
" Lives " will in five pages have you his pet Donne —
family tree and all — to his twentieth year. Campbell,
in his " Lives of the Lord Chancellors," deals out the
genealogy of his wigged, grave heroes with but a
scurvy scantiness. Even in the instance of the
bloody Jeffries, about all that Campbell tells one is
that Jeffries' father was a Welshman who took early
occasion to prophesy a headless ending for his son
with block and ax on Tower Hill; and then, as one
who washes his hands of a bad matter, never spoke
to his son again. Lockhart, in his " Life of Scott,"
an indomitable work which extends itself in ten
volumes, disposes of the " pedigree " and the
" parentage " of his noble hero in twenty-five
pages. And as Sir Walter was father of Lockhart's
wife, the author was bound to warm to his subject,
and hold for it a filial love by sheer artifice of law.
And yet " pedigree " and " parentage " in twenty-five
brief pages!
One is not, however, to blame Walton, nor Camp
bell, nor Lockhart, nor those others of our biographers
who expend not themselves generously in affairs of
pedigree. It's jiot so much neglect as caution. And

10 RICHARD CROKER.
to you who read, and who, at this time, for aught one
knows, may be sowing the seeds of the pedigree habit
within your own breast, a word of warning should be
flung. Beware! The appetite for ancestry lately de
veloped in America is as pernicious as the poppy.
Have a care as you climb the family tree, lest your
sensibilities should heir a fall. One must not crowd
one's ancestry to the wall, nor harass it with too strict
a search, lest it turn and rend one. It has been the
fault of every age that more folk were hanged than
crowned. By that token! one should go warily about
the heretofore. There lives none but who is bound,
by the very argument of opportunity, and as one
thousand is to one, to face the risk of an ancestry,
which, with the last word, will climb a gallows rather
than a throne. And doubtless this wisdom was in the
thoughts of our historians of men when they disposed
of the " family " in each coil with so much of a sharp
suddenness. Those of us will be cunning who heed
their examples. Let us, therefore, end this our search
into the annals of past Crokers with a story of Eichard
Croker's great-grandsire. It may serve as a partial
picture of the hardy home-love of the breed.
Our old gentleman lay dying; the preacher sat by his
bedside comforting his departure with the loveliness of
Paradise. "Is heaven so beautiful, then?" asked the dying
Croker. " Aye! is it," quoth the dominie.
"Have you seen the Eiver Blackwater that sweeps
by us that handful of miles to our south? "
"Aye! have I," quoth the dominie; "I mind the
Blackwater well."

BLACKWATER BANKS. 11
"And do you know the land and the scenes of it
that lie between Blackwater and Castletownroche?"
" Those scenes are dear and fragrant to my mem
ory," quoth the dominie. " None knows them better."
" And is heaven so beautiful? "
"Aye! is it," quoth the dominie, folding his hands.
" Blackwater banks, and the scenes about Castletown
roche, are by comparison as a fiend-infested desolation
— a sand-blown, awful waste."
" It's a lie! " whispering the dying old man, while
wrath lit its torch in each eye. " It's a lie! Out of
my house! None so false shall find shelter within
four walls of mine! "
Having thus thrown out the dominie, the old man,
with the gripe of death upon him, turned to the wall
and passed without further speech. But he died
sturdily as he'd lived, maintaining that in no most
favored nook of the universe could a picture so fair
be found, as that which spread from his door — the
fields between Blackwater and Castletownroche.

II.
choker's parentage.
Farewell to the land where the clouds love to rest,
Like the shroud of the dead on the mountain's cold breast ;
To the cataract's roar where the eagles reply,
And the lake her lone bosom expands to the sky.
— Walter ScoU.
It was in 1846, then, that Eyra Coote Croker and his
household spread sail for America. With him as his
most valued possession came young Eichard Croker,
at the untried age of three. One didn't " step across "
in those days, and the Crokers were two weeks in their
coming. History is noiseless on the subject of that
voyaging, and whatever of watery adventure was en
countered is lost and not preserved. It is to be
assumed that the Crokers met fair weather and foul,
head winds and flattering gales, sunshine, and again
those lowering clouds burned with leven flashes and
split by the storm's hoarse voice, together with what
ever of further phenomena are common to eyes which
go down to the sea in ships.
It does not appear that at this hour Eyra Coote
Croker was decided to make New York his abiding
place. Evidently he had been taught that the Eldorado
he came seeking lay westward and beyond. This
seems plain; for after landing, no sooner was his family
sheltered in safe comfort than the head of the house
explored as far as Cincinnati in search of some place

THE CROKER FORTUNES. 13
that might cope with his hopes of a home. It was not
to be. In that day, as in this, there was nothing to the
West that quite repaid one for New York; and, follow
ing a few weeks of going about, Eyra Coote Croker, like
many another of parallel experience, came back to New
York to remain. The West held no offer which New
York didn't double; and thus it was that Eyra Coote
Croker made conclusion to live where he came ashore,
and with that set up his lares and penates, and was at
rest. We will not continue in exhaustive recital the com
ings in and goings out of the parents of Richard Croker.
They were folk of repute, law-abiding and industrious;
and while they lived in circumstances of slender for
tune — for Eyra Coote Croker, like all Crokers past and
present of whom one hears a lisp, was born with both
hands open, and had such hold of money as a riddle has
of water — they were of good moment and respect in
their neighborhood and day. Richard Croker's
mother, the once Miss Wellstead, was peculiarly a lady
of refinement and culture. In every role of life she
was a star to steer by, while her deep sentiment of re
ligion shone in her life like a grace.
Eyra Coote Croker, who had worn sword and epau
let as an officer of the Queen, threw away his commis
sion when his money was gone, and brought to this
country no method of bread-winning save a profound
knowledge of veterinary, an art to which all Crokers
are congenitally bent. What in Ireland had been the
leisure of an amateur became here the profession by
which he lived, and for many years following his ad
vent in America Eyra Coote Croker practiced the mys
tery of horse-surgery with much resultant comfort of

14 RICHARD CROKER.
money. When our civil battle broke in the war-wrung
sixties, the old fighting spirit of those Crokers who
rode at the back of Cromwell was roused, and Eyra
Coote Croker struck in for the Flag and the Union.
He came to no military eminence — for there is a poli
tics in war as well as peace, and Eyra Coote Croker, a
Democrat then as is his son to-day, had not that
" interest " at Washington without which commissions
walk slow as doom to meet one — and his quality as a
soldier is now recalled only by some old, belated com
rade, or those others who hold unfashionably with the
song that, " The boys who do the fighting are the pri
vates of the arm)'."
It is probable that the child-years of young Richard
Croker would scarce repay a ransack in quest of the
unusual. Childhood in most of its experience and ex
pression is ever the same. It is a period of savagery,
with only a half-threat of that eclipse which culture,
arriving with years, will confer upon it. Childhood,
whether it be white, or red, or black, or wheat-hued, as
in China, is marked by a squalling impatience of re
straint, and to mothers with moods for cleanliness, a
maddening anxiety to embrace the earth: there to roll,
and welter, and wallow, and collect a spirit, and lay up
funds of health. Young Richard, one may be sure,
attended to these important matters, and worked along
to days when one loses one's first teeth, and acquires
one's first roundabout, by trails which have been trav
eled by every healthy, young male child of the race
since Adam flung Eden away in a passion of experi
ment. Young Richard Croker's earliest schooldays were
passed in an edifice which stood at the corner of Madi-

HIS FIRST SCHOOL. 15
son Avenue and Twenty-sixth Street, on ground now
covered by Madison Square Garden. At that time his
home was on Twenty-eighth Street near Fourth
Avenue. It has been the frequent effort of those who, by virtue
— or vice — of an opposition in politics, were from time
to time critics of Richard Croker, to intimate rather
than set forth that he found his babyhood, and as well
his boyhood, in an atmosphere of evil. They would
have one believe that he had his upbringing in the
" slums." They do not define " slums " in this con
nection, but concede the term to be a synonym for all
cesspools of general sin; and, proceeding on the assump
tion that naught good may come from Nazareth, they
attain by graceful swoops to the conclusion that every
one, crop and output of the " slums," must perforce be
vile. Without pausing to contend with these notable
moralists who provide this theory, one will go straight
to the fact that in the fifties the region indicated as
young Richard's home-spot was one most reputable and
quiet of the town, with the same claim to be distin
guished as a " slum " as have the present corners of
Fifty-eighth Street and Fifth Avenue. Young Rich
ard's home was a scene of quiet and peace, the hall
of order and religion, as must be homes where such
spirits as his mother prevail as chief influences. And
the neighborhood to surround it had similar decorous
atmosphere. It has been said that young Richard Croker's first
school was at Twenty-sixth Street and Madison Avenue.
This seminary was of the quasi-primitive character of
fifty years ago. There was but one teacher, the
scholars sat on benches, and a box of clean white sand.

16 RICHARD CROKER.
wherein the letters of the alphabet might be traced
with the finger of the young idea a-learning, had the
place of blackboard. Young Richard continued to
take his young draughts at this well-spring of learning
for divers years; indeed until he'd attained the age of
twelve. He was not in this day famed for that book-
hunger which devours knowledge by chapters. Young
Richard didn't like books; he felt the lot of the stu
dent burdensome. He was a true Croker, and his
thoughts ran to horses and dogs, and his heart was full
of a love of athletics. School was hateful; lessons
were exercises of pain. Young Eichard found his joy
in small explorations and those adventures by flood
and field which Upper Manhattan and the East Eiver
afforded. Bearing in thought the above, it goes the
more to the credit of young Eichard, when, conquer
ing that spirit of outdoors which possesses him, he
sticks stubbornly to his bench and his book until his
lesson is in hand and the approval of the pedagogue
obtained. Whether or no one is to believe with Campbell that
" coming events cast their shadows before " will hang
partly by one's ability for the reasonable, and partly by
that hard-pan of superstition whereon the foundations
of one's nature are laid. The subject surely will gain
no illumination here. Apropos of this, however, many
who in boyhood were schoolmates of young Eichard,
and who have since borne witness to him as that " un
checked autocrat," to borrow an enemy's description,
who, with a firm wisdom and a wise mildness, has di
rected the government of hardby four millions of folk,
declare that his boyhood gave abundant hint of that
talent of domination which in later years has so filled

THE PHARISEE. H
his hand with affairs. I confess myself victim to a con
siderable distrust of this. It is an easy and a popular
exercise for many, sometimes led by fondness and again
by hate, to roam away to the youth of folk confessedly
powerful, and read in their baby-pages the story of tre
mendous deeds to come. It was so with Cffisar, with
Cromwell, with Churchill, with Napoleon, with Wel
lington, vidth Washington, with Franklin, with Lincoln,
with Grant. And it's as natural in the case of Croker.
Be sure I am well aware of the risk to be run while
coupling the name of Croker with that procession of
monumented leaders which precedes it. Only the dead
are great. No arm is mighty until touched of that
palsy of the bier; no tongue speaks wisdom until
dumbed with the gag of the grave. And in Croker's
instance there is a political opposition to find fault.
There be those who, for a disappointment of place or
a fear of defeat hereafter — they whose partisanship is
their intelligence, and who feel with their spleen — will
writhe in sneers at such hooking-up. Napoleon and
Croker! Grant and Croker! they will almost die at it!
And there is the tribe of the Pharisee, a prevailing sept
in these streets, who thank Heaven they are not as
other men; who, clothed of a white shirt and a snivel,
pretend to patronize the race; whose notion of respect
ability is a notion of riches, and who, with that
thought in their souls, would rather be respectable
than right; whose belief goes to it that the best dressed
citizen is the best citizen — these will scoff mightily at
this. Csesar and Croker! Wellington and Croker! it
will eat into their ears as blasphemy!
This is a time of snobs in a town of snobs, and the
pole-star of snobs is fashion. Democracy is unfashion-

18 RICHARD CROKER.
able, Tammany Hall is unfashionable, Croker is un
fashionable with these bandarlog — thank Providence
and Kipling for the word! — rehearsed above. It may
move to one's composure to remember that here in this
very town Washington and Franklin, and later Jeffer
son, Burr, and Jackson, and in our own day Lincoln
and Grant, were similarly chattered and mouthed
against by these folk and their forbears. Such critics
should be silent for a word. Their own clamorous and
resentful tale of Eichard Croker should put them
down. By their story he dominates the town — their
town — like a Colossus, and has for years; he holds it
helpless in his hand; drives it north, or south, or east,
or west, like cattle at his will. He may bury it with
taxes or batter it to pieces with its own ordinances; in
short — such is their story — he controls them and mil
lions more in all they hold publicly dear, and of mo
ment and civil, good value. By this, their relation
and that of their tin-pan press, Croker, among nearly
four millions of people defended by their ballots and
with Albany in the hands of his enemies, has conquered
to himself a coign of absolute autocracy. And all with
out pedigree or pocketbook, or any kindred influence
so potent in this town's abjection, wherewith to make
his way. Eome in the time of Caesar was .a hamlet to
New York; Paris in Napoleon's day a village. By their
very slanders his foes force Croker's name upon the
roster of the world's conquerors, and make him great
before his friends have moved.
Nor do they solve defeat by epithet; they but despite
themselves. To say that Croker is corrupt, or dis
honest, or ignorant, or of inferior and little girth in
mentality or morals, is to call him weak five times.

KEED ON STATESMEN. 19
None of these is an element of strength; one and all
they make for downfall, not success. And as a pro
posal it seams clear that, once one concedes one's own
conquest, whatever of a vile weakness one may charge
upon one's conqueror, one but makes one's self both
viler, weaker still. Croker's foes picture him a fashion
of mal-Jupiter, who, if he would, could blast all good
city things by the mere lightnings of misrule. If this
be sooth, then failing fame for what he is, he should
be given it for that which he is not; if he's not to have a
niche for what he has done, he should at least gain one
for what he doesn't do. But what accounteth argu
ment! As was said above, the great are ever dead; and
in the fact of a tomb there often hides the fact of a
re-baptism. "What is a statesman, Mr. Speaker?"
asked Thomas Brackett Eeed on a House occasion when
he had been much quoted to, not to say belabored, in
debate with the utterances of " statesmen " not one of
whom then breathed. " If we are to be controlled by
what ' statesmen ' have said, then let me ask again,
Mr. Speaker, what is a statesman? I'll tell you what
a statesman is. A statesman is a dead politician."
But we must pause. Where were we when this
squall struck to drive us so far to leeward of a course?
We were, I recall, in the midst of certain distrusts con
cerning stories told of Croker's boyhood deeds which
foreshadowed his present generalship of men. And
these distrusts are just. Never does one note an adult
Hercules going about, clothed of power, club, and lion-
skin, but one encounters a crowd of courtiers tagging
at his hocks, ready with romance of how in his cradle-
days he choked some python sent by some hate-moved
Juno to coUfully compass his destruction. Thus it is

20 RICHARD CROKER.
well and cautious to lay aside without retelling not a
few traditions touching Croker's youth which have been
offered. His boyhood, as well as one may know, was
usual and commonplace. If attributes there were em
phatic in him, they were traits of a quiet, steady, pains
taking intelligence; honesty, a soul for justice, and a
courage that never swerved.
Coupled with these was a physical strength uncom
mon to the point of the phenomenal. Young Eichard
as a boy was what is termed " small of his age." Even
at full growth he weighed but one hundred and
forty pounds. Now, as he nears sixty years, grown
broader, thicker, and heavier of limb, the scales tell his
story with one hundred and eighty-five. But while
physically small as a boy, — and by no means gargan
tuan as a man, with a stature of five feet, seven inches,
— young Eichard was proportioned with such accuracy
and nice purpose of power that his strength of limb
and body was a proverb before he'd gained his fifteenth
year. This muscle-force among savages and boys has
ever been a pedestal of dignity, and frequently marks
the leader; and the fact that young Eichard from his
pinafore days was a captain among his companions, by
virtue of some tacit commission granted by them, may
find its source therein.
This element of physical strength is not to he de
spised. It sits on the front row with other forms of
genius. Nor is it bound to modesty and to be uncov
ered in the presence of mere intelligence, or a genius of
some other, gaudier hue. Your Tom Cribb takes his
place with your Newton, your Lely, your Phidias, your
Wren, your Handel, or what champion you will. He
got his brawn where Newton got his brains, — at the

PHYSICAL GENIUS. 21
same bargain counter of Nature, and paid the same
price. Why, then, may he not wear the one as proudly
as the other does the last? Or why should some genius
of ear, or eye, or hand of nerve-fineness, look over the
poor fist-genius who is born to batter those features of
mouth and nose and ears and eyes which a Lely is born
to paint, a Phidias to carve, a Handel to compose a
hymn for, and for which a Wren or an Angelo is to
build a church? Even that poor thing, a millionaire,
one vulgarly such from his cradle, is warranted of as
much pride in his money as any of these in his gift.
He came to his special capital of a million by the same
effort that each of the others came to his — that is,
none at all.' Wherefore, then, should any be swollen
when so brief a comment exhibits that the fat man
of a sideshow is born heir to as much of honest honor
as any Columbus sailing, or any Herschel staring at a
star? There is one story of young Richard Croker which
tells favorably of his progress. At the age of eleven
he was by his preceptor installed "late monitor" of
that school which, as aforesaid, daily droned at the cor
ner of Twenty-sixth Street and Madison Avenue.
Here was credit; because no pupil not prompt and
perfect in his studies, and on time at the morning bell-
tap, ever rose to such a height. Yet there dwelt a peril
in such eminence. It was the " late monitor's " duty
to seek forth the truant in his desertion and bring him
to school and to justice. And if the truant-felon were a
sturdy rogue, one older, stronger, taller than the " late
monitor," it might well befall that the latter would win
much sore fortune in his work. This fact opened sadly
to the eyes of young Richard on the first day of his

22 RICHARD CROKER.
high trust. Elate with promotion, young Richard
came to school clothed with his Sunday vestments, the
better to glorify his exaltation. On this morning it
had pleased the worshipful taste of the " biggest boy in
school " — he was a turgid, sullen villain of a boy, and a
bom battle hawk — ^to turn truant. Young Richard
as " late monitor " was dismissed to his arrest.
"And, Richard," observed the teacher by way of part
ing counsel, " if Bobby doesn't come peaceably, I'd let
him alone. He is bigger, older, and stronger than you,
and a bad, quarrelsome boy; and if he refuses to re
turn with you, it's no matter. I can tell his father
to-night, and rest secure he'll flay him rarely."
That the malefactor was older and bigger than he,
young Richard knew; that he was stronger, he much
doubted. Moreover, the suggestion to tamely accept
refusal of arrest from the derelict, and return without
him, met with no grace from young Richard, who was
himself of a proud stomach, and in whom dwelt a war-
willingness none the less healthy for being generally
asleep. He made private decision to engage the enemy
if he showed his teeth. However, he offered no retort
to the teacher's cautious advice, and felt nothing be
yond regret that in a foolish weakness to be splendid
he'd worn his " new clothes," and so exposed them to
that present rough weather whereof the overture was
at hand.
Young Richard located his quarry in Thompson's
Tavern, a hostelry just across Madison Square from the
schoolhouse, and which stood on the now site of the
Fifth Avenue Hotel. As the teacher had fore-feared,
Bobby refused every suggestion of school. He would
have none of it for that day; and waived aside the com-

THE LATE MONITOR. 23
mand of the " late monitor," and as well his argument,
as trifles light as air.
With a sigh for his " new clothes," but never a hint
in his young heart of quitting his capture now it was
made, the " late monitor " unbuckled to his task. The
war was long, desperate, and red; for Bobby, obdurate,
strong, and hard of temper, stiff-necked and perverse,
was no simple enterprise. But the "late monitor" had
his way. His soul was as immitigably set against de
feat in that day as it has been since. With the last
word, Bobby, broken-hearted, subjugated, and with a
face like a scandal, was haled to that teacher and
those books on which he'd turned his morning back.
But the "late monitor's" costume had forfeited its title
of "new." Tatters, rags, and earth-stains, the pride
had gone from it, a sacrifice to duty. Bobby was no
better off; and as he pillowed his errant head that night
he could look back on a day busy with desolation. The
" late monitor " had mauled him, the teacher had fer
uled him, and his parent, a teamster, had gridironed
his hide with the ancestral cart whip.
This tale of boyish chance-medley would have but
idle use save for that it tells, at an early age, of the
high heart and that incapacity of failure which has
brought the subject of this sketch so far. There is a
character of mugwump-moralist, who, himself of flac
cid muscle and a hare's heart, is found to set physical
courage, with physical strength, low in the list of
virtues. These poodle-folk — lapdogs of Money they
frequently are, or vassal-nurses of such lap-furniture —
these poodle-folk, I say, railing at mastiff-folk, are
wrong. They make the error common of our vain hu
manity, . and believe that everything to differ from

24 RICHARD CROKER.
themselves is worse than themselves. Physical stamina
and courage, and of that sandstone sort that will, when
needs crowd, stay the brunt of actual, physical conflict,
is the first requisite of your best man; and he may no
more be constructed wanting these, than might a house
wanting foundations and footing stones. There is,
to misplace a word, a phrenology of muscle which has
precedence over other phrenologies, and a good heart is
oftener child of a good stomach than of a good head.
To the ear of our mugwump-moralist this will trench
on savagery. Yet that is no harm. We cheat our
selves with an appearance, and call it civilization.
And while we do, there's much of argument to leave it
far from sure that the perfect savage is not the perfect
man. Your philosopher, aware of his limitations,
might admit the possibility of a civilization which
would be superior to savagery. Also your philosopher,
alive to a gravitation in manners and in morals as much
as to a gravitation in matter, might well doubt if there
was ever one so good. There be those on the ramparts
of an isolated, high indifference who, viewing the sub
ject, have in it no interest other than the interest of
discussion. Such at the worst are unbiased. To these
your civilization is the putridity of that meat which as
savagery was sound and hale. They would name you
a flock of evUs owned of civilization which are stran
gers to the savage, before you might credit one virtue
to civilization which savagery lacks. Conceit may
clamor and self-love take the floor; the fact lives that
man is physical before he's either moral or mental,
and that the stomach sways the soul.
True! there is a school of high-thinking adherents of
the over-soul to be shocked by this. With talents for

THE OVER-SOULERS. 25
melody rather than deep thought, these are to be con
vinced by word-jingling. Mistaking sensation for
sense, they discover the reasonable by discovering the
rhythmic. These will defy the above. Such melo
dious intelligences, with whom tempo, not substance,
controls, may be marched or waltzed or polkaed to a
conclusion without understanding a premise or realiz
ing the route which disputation takes.
Once, to illustrate, a congregation of these folk, gifted
with music-boxes instead of minds, was gathered unto
itself to read and consider, sentence by sentence, an
ambling output of that Emerson who is Mahomet of
their creed.
"Education is the tar-pot of civilization," rgad the
loud elocutionist intrusted with the book; that was the
first sentence.
Discussion, not to say elucidation, was now a happy
order. What did Emerson mean? For a moment the
congregation was silent; only for a moment. Then it
broke forth. The Concord disquisitor was easily
understandable. There were a dozen ready to expound
him. The sentence was of those rugged figures
for which Emerson had fame. It was rude, but none
the less lucent and beautiful. It was the rough
nugget where others, of a vainer and more artificial
merit, would have given one the conventional beaten
gold. That was it. " Education is the tar-pot of
civilization! " Why, surely! it was as plain as the nose
on one's face!
It chanced that the reader took another look at the
book. Horrors! there had been a misdeal. It wasn't
" tar-pot." It read: " Education is the tap-root of
civilization." All this explanation and appreciation

26 RICHARD CROKER.
had gone adrift. That metaphor of the "tar-pot,"
clear a moment before, closed like a clam and became
at once inscrutable. The congregation adjourned,
leaving its that day's worship of the phrase-saint
hanging by the gambrels.
Those who, while enthroning the mental and the
sentimental, would make plebeian the physical, should
be brought to this reflection. There is no wife to love
her husband so dearly, should a toothache be made the
penalty of her love, curable only by divorce, but would
file her petition by the week's close. This is offered
not for any lightness of a wife's love; rather for that
it is the strongest sentiment of which humanity is en
dowed. No, forsooth! the physical is in the saddle;
savagery sits on a hill!
This sketch, to say least, is becoming highly excur
sive. There will be those of its readers, doubtless, to
marvel at its long legs and erratic wanderings. I may
as well vouchsafe a syllable of explanation. When I
began, after some thought on that point of discursive
ness, I took the bridle off and turned my pencil out to
pasture. It will graze where God pleases, and where
the grass of that moment grows best to its taste. Like
Sterne's " Tristram Shandy," and Southey's " Doctor,"
this book is like to touch a multitude of matter other
than its subject. But to recur:
It has ever been, to me at least, a matter of wonder
that civilization was so denunciatory of savagery; so
imperiously certain of its own superiority thereunto.
You who read this, and whose warm, brave wisdom is
capable of initiatory decision without waiting for some
other to speak first, tell yourself, or, if you will, the
world, wherein civilization, as we find and define the

Richard Croker as a Youth.

By Courtesy of McCho-e's Magazine.
Copyright, J9o/, The i>. y. MfL'lure Company.

CIVILIZA TION-SA VAGERT. 2 T
term, offers such successful best methods of this paltry
existence of ours? You know New York, its people
fretting like maggots, as many as four thousand in one
block; you know the good and evil ground at these
mills. Say, then, wherein are the folk present of this
island fortressed of a surer comfort than those red-
savage folk who abode here three centuries ago? Is
liberty your lodestar? Is it that to guide you? Why,
then, who had liberty in such perfection as the savage?
He had, too, his laws, and respected them; he had his
tribe, and was a patriot fit to talk with William Tell.
He fought his foe like a Richard of England, and loved
his friend like a Jonathan. As for his religion — why,
man, the test of religion is death. And your savage
met, and still meets, death with a fortitude — and what
is fortitude, but faith? — ^which few Christians are
found to mate. And there were none without whom
he feared; no one within to molest him and make him
afraid. He paid neither homage to power nor taxes
to men; and yet his privileges were as wide as the
world's rim. His franchises of fagot, vert, and venison
had never a limit. He might eat a deer a day, and
burn a cord of wood to its cookery. It may be said,
again, that he lived a better life, with more victory of
liberty, comfort, and content, than ninety-five per
cent, of New York folk to-day. He had more of free
dom, and was more his own man, than any you are to
meet on Broadway.
Civilization is an artifice, and there be those so
trapped thereby that they conceive of no triumph of
the natural. They are " cultured," evince it by coats
from Bell and gowns by Felix, and find thought-models
in Chesterfield's " Letters " to his son. They will

28 RICHARD CROKER.
compliment a sunset by saying that it looks like a scene
in opera.
As I write this, I look up to one of these climaxes of
an enlightened age; I ask him what name he regards
as a first expositor of civilization. He promptly gives
the palm to Chesterfield.
" Yes, indeed! " says he; " I hold that civilization in
its best expression means gentility; and Chesterfield
taught the best gentility in the world. Horace Wal-
pole was next."
As side-light on these highest types, not to say
teachers, of our civilization, it might be added that
Walpole, who chattered scandal and cheap tittle-tattle
throughout nine volumes without one word of any
virtue that dwelt above the pocket, found his own
paternity at bay in a fog-bank of doubt. Chesterfield,
on his part, wedded the illegitimate daughter of the
First George and the courtesan Duchess of Kendal;
was called " a dirty little tea-table scoundrel who talks
scandal and makes trouble in families," by his unac-
knowledging brother-in-law, George the Second; and
wrote the very letters which are such " lessons of gen
tility " to a son of the left hand who wore the bar sinis
ter with the Chesterfield arms. Of the letters them
selves. Dr. Johnson said to Boswell, that " they taught
the morals of a harlot with the manners of a dancing
master." Excellent exemplars these, of a vaunting civilization!
I hold the red savage to be a better man than either.
No, I do not seek, nor even care, to set the brakes on
any onward, and mayhap downward, rush of what is
named " civilization." And if I could do so, lodged in
an indifference to any racial end, I would not turn

CIVILIZATION— ALCOHOL. 29
hand nor head to start or steer or stop the age. I am
alone eager over two points. Being civilized myself,
dwelling in the midst of its results and as much its
bondslave as any other, I would still testify to an
intelligence equal to the discovery of the swindle of
it, added to an honesty sufficient for that discovery's
setting-forth. Civilization! it is like an appetite for
alcohol. The evidence which protects the one will
save the other.

III.
SCHOOL DATS  A TRADE.
Jaq. Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel.
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. — As You Like II.
There was in the fifties a grammar school in East
Twenty-seventh Street which had certain renown in its
day for birch and thoroughness. It was ruled over
by one Lafayette Olney, who was learned, stern, and
grim. Moreover, he was a man of conscience; which,
for the students, made matters worse. In that day all
pedagogues were derived from Massachusetts; and it
may have been, albeit gossip is tongueless as to the fact,
that our Olney, the Dr. Birch adverted to of fifty years
ago, was of a clan with that later one — half ice, half
iron — who took place as Attorney General in a day of
Grover Cleveland. There was a chill brittleness of
temper owned of both which might go some space to
prove this.
Exhausting the supply at Twenty-sixth Street and
Madison Avenue, young Richard Croker, at the age of
twelve, reported for a further and higher enlighten
ment to the Olney Grammar School. There he toiled
four years, and then went forth with the mark of a fair
scholarship in such branches, and to such limits, as
made up the programme of learning with that place.
That was the last of young Richard's book-studies.
30

CROKER'S EDUCATION. 31
There has been much said of invidious, sneering sort
touching the book-attainments of Eichard Croker.
Those folk of falsity and venom who at one time put
fictional millions in his pocket for the sake of asking
on a next mud-flinging occasion, " Where did you
get it?" — spur themselves at another in efforts to
clothe him with the book-ignorance of a Hottentot.
This last is warp and woof of the same bolt of cloth
with kindred untruths to curl the tongue of daily en
mity of Croker. His book-acquirements compare
evenly with theirs who, graduating at our common pub
lic schools, stand on the threshold of a preparation for
our universities. At that point where others go to
college, young Richard Croker halted in his book-
searchings to learn a trade. And many of the greatest
names of history did the like, and met no injury
thereby. Your college is graceful; and yet it by no means
must be in this world of ours. It is ornamental; but
like the brass-work and dead-wood about a ship that
make no mighty contribution whether to the safety or
the speed of the vessel. There's too much granted in
favor of a course at college. And results do not sus
tain the concession.
It was a handful of years astern when a gentleman —
a writer he was — visited one of these, our high semi
naries; one not breathlessly distant from Boston.
The magazine article he was commissioned to write
would be excellent advertisement of the school.
Therefore the invader was chaperoned in his lockings
about, and replied to in his question-putting by one of
the college heads. It would be impolite to name him;
it is enough to say that he was one commissioned of

32 RICHARD CROKER.
highest authority, so far as the college was concerned.
He might take the institution and put " her full steam
ahead," or " set her back on both wheels," as river folk
might say, just as he should decide. I wax thus nau
tical, perhaps, because in their pretense our colleges
occur in a character of ferryboat, bearing the traveler
in search of learning from his natural shore of dark
illiteracy to that other blinding of book-light.
Our college chief and the emissary of ink fell into
joint debate. It was provoked by the visitor, who was
thereunto incited by an irritation which had been
gnawing about the roots of his temper for two
New England days. He had come from the West. To
questions, he confessed this ignobility of emanation;
also, that specifically he was not born in New England,
didn't live in New England, never, in purblind and
degrading truth, had seen New England until this
visiting occasion. These facts known, our wayfarer
was at once entreated with a tolerant commiseration
— a pitying disdain — by those whom he encountered,
and whose brighter fortunes made them born children
to the soil. In brief, the natives patronized him with
au air which was two parts charity and one contempt,
for that regional misfortune of his Western birth.
Thus was our writer roiled and made subject to hot re
sentments. Thus, perhaps, was he become willing to dis
turb with interrogations, such as a Goth might put to
a Roman, the lofty complacency of that great educator
who, from a two-ply motive composed of willingness to
answer queries and anxiety to make safe whatever of
personal property, both loose and little, might be lying
about, was guide to his tour. It was that old question
which Cicero stole from Lucius Cassius: Cui iono?

THE COLLEGE GOOD. 33
" What good is your college? " asked the writer-
barbarian of the educator; " I've been, as it were, all
through your institution with a lantern. I've gazed at
your libraries, I've glanced at your dining-halls. I've
experienced your recitation rooms, and borne testimony
to your gymnasiums, where students ambitious of
fractures or dislocations may find every last appliance
to aid them on their way. But at the finish I'm moved
to ask: What good is it — what does the student get? "
" I don't understand," retorted the educator.
" This is the idea," explained the barbarous one.
" The value of anything depends on comparison of
what one gives with what one gets. No one will part
with dollars to gain dimes. Everything in its attain
ment must cost less than it comes to, or the investment
is a failure. You have told me that you can take a
youth of fifteen of certain book acquirements and give
him one year of preparation. Then with four years at
your college he is graduated; in all five years. At fif
teen it is a popular theory that one has fifty-five years
to live; a theory, be it told, against which insurance
tabulations militate. Taking the common view of it,
however, you demand of the student — ^besides the fees
— one-eleventh of his life. Therefore I ask: What do
you promise the student in return? What unusual
ammunition do you furnish him withal, which is to ren
der him more than usually effective on the firing
line of life? Your bed and board don't count; for they
would doubtless find their equals in those feasts and
feather beds which he left behind at home. Your
athletics don't count; for every health result would
have as prompt a coming if the student involved himself
with a plow, or a pile of cordwood, for spaces similar to

34 tttCHARD CROKER.
those expended in the gym. The benefit must there
fore lurk in the curriculum. And so, I ask again: In
exchange for that one-eleventh of his whole remaining
capital of years, what does the student take?"
" You will not deny," observed the pedagogue, with
a cold acrimony, " that the student gets a finished
education? "
" It might be complained," replied the barbarian,
" that you too much limit the definition of the term
' education.' A man might know about a coal mine;
how to discover, and open, and work, and market his
igneous, jet vein of wealth. If that were all, you'd call
him ignorant. Lacking this knowledge, however, and
with an ability to read Greek, he might lay claim to
' education.' One might be wise enough, and of such
deft, ingenious hand as to build and sail a ship around
the globe. If that were to be the measure of his ac
quirement you'd write him ignorant. Wanting these
abilities, still were he capable of some utter jugglery
of sky-high mathematics; or to translate Caesar, Sal-
lust, and Virgil as he ran, you might permit him coin
age, and circulation as an educated man. I trust that
I neither ruffle nor weary you; but speaking of the
usual and so-called classical courses of j^our school, and
of the good to be child thereof, I'll say that I myself
have studied both Latin and Greek until I was ex
hausted, if the languages were not, and I'll take two
bits for all the good that's flowed from it. And to put
it bluntly: Of what use is the employ of Latin and
Greek to him who on the lines of law, or medicine, or
commerce, or literature, to say nothing of trades and
callings which grapple more with the physical, must
win his daily bread? "

GREEK AND LATIN. 36
" Greek and Latin! " exclaimed the educator, and
his tones had that horror which a priest of turbaned
Ind might feel at insult done his idol. "Of what
use is it to teach Greek and Latin? "
" Not teach; study," interrupted the barbarian. " I
can discern a profit in teaching them; but speaking
from the student's end of the alley, I ask, why should
one study them? "
" Why? Even in your own business of writing,"
cried the educator, with an anti-iconoclastic snort, " it
is worth one's while. It is of immense importance.
The study of Latin and Greek would teach you the
derivation of words — of the very words you use."
"And why is that important?" pursued the bar
barian. " As a matter of fact, you're wrong twice.
The languages you urge are but halfway houses on the
trail of tongues. One might learn that this word, or
that, had come blundering down the lanes of time from
the Greeks or Latins. But where they got the word,
as a query, would be left in the dark. Permitting that
thought to drift, however, and speaking as one who
lives by them, I must still point out that the deriva
tion of a word is of no more mark to one who writes
or talks than is the derivation of a potato or a
biscuit to one who eats. Why should the banqueter
burn with mad concern as to whether Russia or Dakota
was mother of the wheat, or Bermuda or Colorado gave
the potato birth? The culmination with our supposi
titious LucuUus is biscuit in one instance, potato in the
other, and the advance guard of his interest pushes no
further afield. And so of words. Their ancestry is
only of imaginary moment. Surely, its discovery isn't
worth one-eleventh of one's life. The exploration of

36 RICHARD CROKER.
one's own ancestry, and to know one's own personal
derivation, would not — unless the estate were a
bouncer — be worth the loss of one year of life. And
is one to give five years to locate the profitless head
waters of a word? "
Young Richard was now sixteen and must push his
worldly way. He resolved to acquire the craft of a
locomotive machinist, and with such plan in his mind
found enlistment as apprentice in the Harlem shops.
And in those days that was a brave beginning.
In 1859 New York City was a fairer field of effort,
whether one followed a profession or a trade, than it is
to-day. Millionaires were not so rife; there was none
so rich, none so deadly poor as now, and fortune had
more even distribution. The artisan was of respect
and decent weight. He was not taught at every angle
of the day his infinitesimal quantity, personal and
political, in the equation of general life. And he
came to more. The town was smaller by nine-tenths.
One is of ten times the remark in a community of three
hundred and fifty thousand folk that one is in one of
three million and five hundred thousand. And men's
view of wealth was smaller. Then he was rich who
had twenty thousand dollars; to-day he is poor with a
half million.
This last is to hatch woe like a serpent; it does now.
The present sows the wind of discontents not to be
satisfied; the future, gusty with revolution, is to reap
the whirlwind. The common imagination has been
debauched. Until one has at least five hundred thou
sand dollars one is of no New York notice, even by
one's self. Without it there are folk one cannot know,
places one cannot go, things one cannot have, and

THE WALL STREET WAY. 3 7
others one cannot do. And he who starts with no
capital save healthy head and hands has no more of
present chance of gaining five hundred thousand dol
lars, by methods which Heaven will call honest, than he
has — if such should be his thought — of haltering the
Hudson. There's but one way, the Wall Street way —
the way of the gambler. This truth, which many souls
of commingled mendacity and ignorance will deny, has
such broad concession that every man, not rich by
inheritance, and who reaches for something better than
a destiny of hand-to-mouth, is in the ring of the stock
market or training for the conflict.
More than one half the present money made in New
York is not the reward of toil in any honest sense; it
is won at stock-hazard. And that, frequently, by
methods of lie and cheat and swindle which would de
stroy with the disgrace of them the commonest faro-
den. Were it not for the laws, and an innate thinness
of profit to dwell therein, one might better in many
cases turn from stocks to be of the craft of a pick-
purse; for with morals of a par, the padder at least
escapes the Wall Street vice of an inevitable treachery
to one's friends.
Long ago the homestead of Captain Kidd, the pirate,
occupied the site of the present Stock Exchange. I
mentioned the fact on chance occasion to a speculator
whose breadth of operation dealt in nothing less than
millions. A gleam shone in his gray, bold-searching eye.
'•' Captain Kidd, eh! " he chuckled. " Well, if he'll
return, he'll find his former residence in possession of
people who could teach him his trade. There are
those about there now who would, by comparison, make
Captain Kidd appear like a canal deck-hand."

38 RICHARD CROKER.
That deep courtier of the tape, in his scorn of Kidd
and the latter's childish, black-flag commerce, was just.
The modern pirate lives ashore; he has stock com
panies, not ships; his batteries are dollars and he trains
his guns with the eye of fraud; he plunders a whole
public at once, and not the trivial cargo of one cheap,
starved keel. Aye! by the standards of this day. Cap
tain Kidd would have been laughed to death for his
simplicity, not hanged for his crimes.
In instance: There was a recent college-taught youth
— and the stream of his family found its head among
the wooden shoes and spinning wheels of the ancient
Knickerbockers — whose debt-budget as he graduated
was large enough to give his parent a pang.
" How came you to owe so much? " asked the parent,
with that earnest severity which springs from a
wounded bank-balance; " I can't understand how you
got so deeply in debt."
" It was for money borrowed to pay my losses at
poker," returned the son.
"What!" cried the parent; "have you been gam
bling? "
" Certainly I have," retorted the son; " you surely
should understand, father, that we gentlemen must
gamble." " Then we gentlemen must win," replied the father.
This rebuke of the old gentleman is valuable, be
cause iti is in everything the text from which the daily
sermon of New York City life is preached. There is
no longer a moral side to "business." Get money!
methods are of no moment; get money! Without it
you are nothing; with it, everything. Money calls for
no apology, poverty cannot be explained — in New

THE HARLEM SHOPS. 39
York. Possess yourself of money, enough money, and
none will arise to discuss the strategy, however black,
by which you managed its capture. The New York
City decalogue lies buried in that objurgation of the
father: " We gentlemen must win."
Young Richard Croker worked in the Harlem shops
until far into his twenties. And he learned his trade
and was a master machinist at the end. In a day when
the hand wrought most and its task gained small aid
of machinery, young Richard built a locomotive engine
complete, from the tire on its driver to the bonnet on
its stack; fired it up, and ran it out of the shops on its
initial trial.
At this time Richard Croker was as silently modest
as he is to-day. It is remembered among those who
were then his companions, that he had a predeliction
for dress. When the " whistle blew " it was his first
concern to get home; his next to bathe, and to don his
finest raiment. When he sat down to supper — they ate
dinner at noon in that crude hour — he was as well ap
pareled as his wardrobe would permit.
This soap-and-water tendency, and as well that weak
ness of the spick-and-span, won young Richard the
unsafe repute of dandyism. I say " unsafe," because
his fellows of the shop, who wore in the evening the
dress they had worn at their work, felt somewhat criti
cised by this white-shirt splendor and hailed it as of a
spirit which felt above its caste. Their objections
might have taken unpleasant physical form, for they
were of a lusty brood, and hard knocks were going, had
it not been that young Richard owned other virtues of
a stout-heart kind which counterbalanced his insult
ing cleanliness and compelled them to a truce.

40 RICHARD CROKER.
Young Richard was a profound and untiring athlete.
His natural physical powers, as noted, were tre
mendous. These he was scrupulous to multiply by every
form of physical exercise. He walked, he ran, he
wrestled, he boxed, he swam. It is told of his strength,
by a former Harlem shopmate, that more than once he
beheld young Richard, while a helper turned the iron
on the anvil, beat out the metal with a forty-five pound
hammer in each hand. Nor was it done in any idle
ness of pride; the lad was working. Young Richard's
prodigious strength was ever a cause of wonderment
among his companions. Remembering the tale of
Samson and the hirsute base of his supplies, they were
inclined to attribute it to a thick fell of black hair
which covered his back and shoulders to an extent com
parable only with the coat of a Newfoundland dog.
Young Richard was at home in the water. Among
those who have known him from his childhood, memory
runneth not to a day when he wasn't an exhaustless
swimmer. Off Long Branch on one occasion young
Richard swam ten miles for his pleasure merely, and
by way of holiday.
Richard Croker, too, is one entirelj' convinced of
the harmless quality of sharks.
" We were at Palm Beach," said a friend in the
course of a shark talk. " Croker, a general of the
army, and myself were fishing for sharks at a retired
part of the beach. We had no luck. It was a bit
rough, and we couldn't throw our hooks and bait out
beyond the rollers, where the sharks were waiting — a
whole mass-meeting of them — apparently as zealous as
ourselves for the success of that fishing. Following
twenty nunutes of futile effort to reach the sharks with

SHARKS! SHARKS! 41
our bait, Croker gave over the enterprise. Perhaps it
was ten minutes later, I was still engaged, and had
forgotten Croker, when to my terror and amazement I
beheld him swimming about among the sharks, not a
few of which were eight and ten feet long. Nor was
the scare local with myself; the general was as white
and sick as I. We both expected nothing less than
that our friend was to become shark-meat with each
moment. But nothing happened. The sharks, be
yond getting out of his way when he came too near,
took no interest in him. They were as hungry as a
band of politicians at that."
Croker listened to this recital with a worried look.
It irks him to find himself the star of any story. I
asked concerning his strange confidence in the inno
cence of sharks.
" It's entirely the truth," he replied; " a shark won't
bite anybody. Of course, if one were to remain per
fectly quiet and passive in the water, some shark might
try it. Or a shark might snap at your hand trailed
over the side of a small boat. But of folk swimming
or moving about they are afraid. They never were
known to attack anyone, man or boy, under such con
ditions. On. the other hand, they scurry out of the
way. No one need fear the biggest shark that ever
flaunted a fluke; one will be in no danger of attack from
him."

IV,

ATHLETICS — SELF-DEFENSE.
But when the bully with assuming pace,
Cooks his broad hat, edged round with tarnished lace,
Yield not the way — defy his strutting pride
And thrust him to the muddy kennel's side. —Qay.
"What of the town in the fifties?" said John
Scannell, thoughtfully repeating the question. " From
the middle fifties, for full a decade and a half. New
York City lived what one might term a ' strenuous
life ' — that is, the people did. The old volunteer fire
companies, who fought one another as often as they
fought fires, had their effect. Boxing was at a
premium. To be a man of peace and sobriety was no
protection. Thugs and roughs abounded, and they
were the more ready to assail one whose look of re
spectability and quiet inclined them to a thought that
he was 'easy.' A well-dressed stranger couldn't walk
in certain regions along either river without being
made to fight for his life.
" Election day was the busy day of the ruffian.
Then no Australian ballot law protected the poll. The
quiet citizen was hustled, and bullied, and brow-beaten
as to his vote. If he pleased the toughs with his
ticket, well and good. He could vote; the thugs would
protect him through the ordeal. If he held contrary
views to theirs, frequently to save his bones he didn't

Tammany Hall.

THE RUFFIAN'S BUSY DAY. 43
vote at all. Election day was a day of riot; folk not
capable of self-protection were safer within doors.
" But a change came, following the war. A counter-
irritant developed; and the Bill Pooles, the Yankee
Sullivans, and the Owney Geoghegans were sensibly di
minished. As one result of the Civil War, and during
it, a great many pistols were made. They were of
every size and sort, from the eight-inch navy which
swung from a belt to the twenty-two caliber vest-pocket
gun that didn't weigh two ounces. And a long-roll
of thugs suffered pistol elimination. Everybody was
carrying a weapon. The rough was no longer sure
of his victim. He might select some harmless-looking
consumptive as the object of assault. And the con
sumptive might develop into a masked battery. He
might bring a pistol to bear on his enemy; and many a
tough funeral was founded that way. It was impos
sible for the ruffian to make a safe match.
" Self-preservation is as much a law of nature among
plug-uglies as among purer, better folk; and there
fore it was that in the face of pistol-perils which
he couldn't foresee, and against which his quality as a
rough-and-tumble bruiser gave him no security, the
plug-ugly was modffied, and brawl and disturbance be
came exceptional where before they were the order of
the day.
" In this hour, which is the quietest and of the least
disorder of any that New York has known during the
half century of which I have personal memories, the
' dress-suit ' has captured the town. That sounds odd,
but it's true. The ' dress-suit,' or evening garb, is no
longer the privilege of the rich alone. It has become
the property of all. Every tug-man, and truck-driver.

44 RICHARD CROKER
and everyone else, are proprietors of ' dress-suits.'
Your tug-man lays aside his overalls at the close of the
day, and if ' hop ' or ' function ' be the evening's pro
gramme of his 'set,' you'll find him present thereat,
arrayed to the nines. Full evening dress! white kids,
cloak overcoat, and crush hat, he sports the full regalia.
" And it follows, as the day the night, that our tug-
man must live up to his costume. He must be polite,
courteous, a gentleman of dignity. And he must not
fight. I am not one of those who believe that the
clothes make the man; but I incline to a theory that
they have a deal to do with making a man behave.
There is a morality of the ' dress-suit.' I regard even
ing dress as a great preserver of the public peace;
more so, by far, than the police. That's the now con
dition of affairs: the 'dress-suit' has conquered the
town; safety, courtesy, and peace are the profits of it."
Richard Croker, who saw his young manhood during
that period spoken of by Scannell as being an era
wherein the town witnessed its greatest fistic activities,
became perfect as a boxer. There was no youth more
moral in the city. He drank no liquors, he visited no
saloons, he did not set foot in a brothel, and his lan
guage was without taint of profanity or violence.
These were characteristics of his young manhood;
they have found emphasis with every day he has lived.
Richard Croker has been, and is, in the matter of per
sonal morals, a lesson.
For these reasons of his moralities, in a day when a
man's hand must keep his head or his rights suffer in
vasion and defiance, young Richard took up boxing as
a purpose serious and worth while. At this game he
had towering natural advantages. To a giant's strength

THE BOXING SCHOOL. 45
and an iron courage he added the activity of a goat.
Nor was it long when his supremacy at the gymnasium
was admitted. There was none of his fellows who
might contend with him.
It was while perfecting himself in sparring and kin
dred exercises that something chanced which made
boxing circles vocal with the name of Richard Croker.
The instructor in the gymnasium affected by young
Richard was one Otengen. This latter was of huge
physical powers, famed for the force and fury of
his blows, and, saving the names of a few professional
fighting men of the Yankee Sullivan order, conceded
to be unclassed among the gladiators of the town.
Young Richard was among his pupils; and under his
tutelage sparred himself into the notice of those who
were workers or visitors at that gym. It befell one day
when an unusual audience was present that our in
structor notified young Richard that he was to box with
him; that he must do his best.
" This is to be earnest, Richard," observed Otengen
as he tied the gloves on his follower's hands; "I hear
great stories about you from the others, and I'm going
to try you out. I won't spare you, so do all you know."
Young Richard said nothing. He accepted the ad
vice of the instructor, however, and determined to " do
his best." It was supposed by some who witnessed the
bout that Otengen, irritated a bit by the growing re
pute of his disciple, deemed it wise to lower the latter's
vanity. It was Otengen's duty as well as joy to do this.
Joy, because your true boxing master, working hour
after hour with a bevy of feather-blown folk, every one
of whom he is afraid to hurt, feels as does he who wears
bonds. Therefore comes it that his heart leaps lamb-

46 RICHARD CROKER.
like in his bosom when, getting someone before him for
whose bones he has no concern, he may cast repression
to the winds and give to the slaughter instinct within
him freest head. Otengen arranged to reduce young
Richard's opinion of himself with sentiments of satis
faction. He was to have much happiness. He would
cut the comb of this cockerel in a friendly, almost
fatherly, way. It would tend to subdue the cockerel's
conceit, and make for his modesty and regeneration.
Surely, with forty-five pounds the better of the weights,
it would be imbecile to suppose that he, Otengen, was
to run a risk!
No story by rounds exists of this battle. If that
long-ago gymnasium had been the lists of Ashby, and I
were Sir Walter Scott; or if the combat whose story
pends had been that mailed and mighty set-to between
Sir John Holland and Sir Reginald de Roye, and I were
a Froissart, there might be managed a history of ex
cessive brightness at this point. But alas! for myself,
I limp from a dullness of imagination, am lame with a
poverty of detail, and may only record this glove-tilt
as the tale is given me.
Thus trots narrative: The parties most in violent
interest faced each other; their guards were up on
principles invented by the venerated Cribb. Otengen,
four inches the taller, stood over young Richard like
a tower. The two moved about each other like cats;
their hands went in and out, "fiddling" for an open
ing. Then Otengen leaped in to his labors. It was all
hurly-burly. There was jab! and hook! and jolt! and
counter! and cross-counter! biff! bang! smash! For
a finish, young Richard's head and shoulders struck the
mat, and the round — London rules — was at an end.

LEADS AND COUNTERS. 47
Our knights went each to his corner; those students
of fisticuffs who had been detailed as seconds worked
towel and sponge. At the end of a half minute — a
cruel short time, as he who boxes finds — that visitor
who prevailed as referee called:
"Time!"
And again the combatants stood forth.
There was a mouse-hued lump over young Richard's
temple where he stopped the Otengen blow when he
went down. There were no wagers on the battle be
tween master and follower; and if there had been, what
with Otengen's size and hardy reputation, it would
have been, in the language of sport, " apples to ashes
on the big one."
It should be noted, however, that young Richard in
no wise indorsed these odds in his heart. There is an
optimism of the thoroughbred, whether man or horse
or dog, — an inborn confidence in a good time coming
when the cup of victory will be full, — that hedges the
soul against any touch of failure. 'Such folk may be
slain; they cannot be defeated. And young Richard
was thoroughbred.
This second round was much the fashion of war-
party with the first. Its close found young Richard
again on his back; a trifle ensanguined of a flush hit on
the nose, otherwise hearty and hopeful. The third
round was twin of the second; and its last chapter the
old story of, " Knock-down for Otengen."
It was the fourth round which beheld the end, and
with it the laurels lost of Otengen. The latter, full of
a ruinous gayety, was doing the leading; his future held
no clouds of doubt. Young Eichard on his part was in
no whit dismayed; those three times when he had found

48 RICHARD CROKER.
the floor served no purpose save the quick arousal of
his every energy. Young Eichard was improved by
them; his sparring was cleaner and his blows were
swifter, harder than at first. The smashing attack of
Otengen had fired him; his steam was up. This fourth
round was of that warm and vivid nature so com
mendable in the others. It was lead! and stop! and
counter! and no one running away.
Abruptly came the close, with the bang and sudden
vim of some wind-slammed door. Otengen was trying
for a blow which should put the roof on that round.
He sprang forward and shot his left at the mouse-hued
lump which nestled above young Eichard's eyebrow.
But the latter wasn't there. Hand and foot and eye
kept time like a chorus. Young Eichard stepped to
the right; the Otengen glove whistled like a bird in
harmless passage by his left ear. Coincident therewith,
young Richard's left struck Otengen where the short
ribs end, while his right whipped over the big boxer's
shoulder and reached the jaw with a crash. This last
blow was like unto the kick of a pony. Otengen said
later that it was as though he'd struck against the pole
of a dray. The muscles of foot and leg and back and
shoulder and arm were drawn on for fullest contribu
tion. Young Richard piled the whole weight and
power of his trained one-hundred-and-forty-pound
body into the swing. And it did the work.
Otengen went down, and as it were a pole-axed ox.
His adherents bore him to his corner; swamped him
with sponges, and whipped him dry with towels. It
was of no avail. Otengen slept the sleep of no dreams
for full ten minutes; and when he opened his eyes his
glories had faded and departed away. The master had

THE RUFFIAN'S FEAR. 49
been mastered; the pupil was graduated and had taken
his degree.
This battle made a flutter; none the less for that
Otengen had been smote senseless at the end. In that
day boxers knew of the " knock-out," but avoided it.
They feared that death might follow. The sleep of
Otengen, therefore, was a feature all but unique, and
gave a wing to gossip. The encounter was the nine-
day talk of the town; young Richard was hailed a
prodigy of boxing skill and strength. He was but
twenty years of age at the time, and there's scant
doubt that in those rough days which followed, when
in politics he fought Tweed and O'Brien, protecting
the ballot box from bludgeon-wielding thugs and driv
ing repeaters from the polls, he enjoyed a safety
which was direct increase of his triumph over Otengen.
Many have been the roughs and under-roughs —
with orders which went even to the pitch of murder
— who, knowing of his bout with Otengen, have
looked into the even eyes of Richard Croker, and
then, with hearts turned to water and courage gone,
skulked away without spoken word or upraised hand.
There was something about him, whether of person
ality or dread reput«, and probably of both, which
cowed the hardiest ruffians. They seemed to smell a
limitless trouble off him as one smells hidden fire in a
house; and with a sense of peril on them, none the less
profound for that it was vague and not defined, they
parted before him like water, or drew away like sheep.
Richard Croker surely owed much in security in
after years to his youthful victory over Otengen.
It is no had thing to have thus a strain of the old
Cromwell Ironsides in one's veins. It gives to one a

50 ' RICHARD CROKER.
conquering talent that is of enduring value in this life
of ours, where it is in everyday evidence that might
makes right, and none is allowed to win, nor even to
keep his own, without a struggle. Whatever your
white philosopher of peace may show as to what it
might have been, existence is, in truth practical, but a
wolf-war, — teeth without conscience, hunger without
bounds, — and those are to come best off who, with
even luck, are stanchest of arm and heart and brain.
There have been, and doubtless there will be, those to
straggle through the future as through the past in a
ragged, false Indian-file of misstatement, one walk
ing in the footprints of another just ahead, to tell
with other fictions that Richard Croker fought prize
fights; that he was a fist champion of the ring. There
is in such relations no thought of truth. Such
slander has naught to stand on save the gymnasium
combat with Otengen, and one further incident, the
story whereof may as well be set forth here.
It was just after the affair of Otengen. The work
men of the shops where young Richard toiled, together
with their families, resolved on a holiday. They would
hold a " picnic ' in Jones' Wood. This latter, being a
grovy, tree-sown spot, charming with tall woods and
cool, thick grass beneath, and, moreover, free of money-
charge, was popular among poor folk who, with a mind
to be occasionally sylvan, could not pay much for the
privilege. Three or four hundred, men and women,
boys and girls, gathered in Jones' Wood on the men
tioned picnic occasion. Young Richard, already a
front figure among those of his age, rejoiced as a di
rector of the day. There was a deal of harmless glee;
good feeling rose to highest mark.

THE BULLNECK STRANGER. 51
Suddenly, near a booth where tables were being laid
in behalf of the hungry, screams and much of fluttering
agitation ensued. Young Richard was in mid-tree,
fastening the ropes of a swing. He glanced down at
the tumult. His eye fell on a burly and unpleasant
stranger, remarkable for broad shoulders and a bull-
neck. The stranger had just enough of war-water to
make him careless; and, with as much indifference to
the proprieties as to property rights, was assailing the
regale. This it was which brewed the disorder. The
ladies made shrill and scolding protest. Small marvel!
There's no woman who will burn and bend over pies
and cakes, and then look with patience on their un
licensed bolting by the first hungry vandal who may
stroll that way.
Young Richard came down the swing-rope, hand over
hand and lightly as a cat. The caitiff out-lier at his un
bidden feast was not there by any right. He was not
of that picnic party, and entitled neither to art nor
part nor lot in the banqueting revels of that day.
Moreover, he was insulting and coarsely abusive. But
fell retribution was abroad. Young Eichard de
scended upon him like a landslide. In the words of
one who beheld the whirl of events, the invading rough
"didn't last as long as a drink of whisky." Bruised
and bleeding, he was cast, as it were, into outer dark
ness — flung over the fence. He wended, the most
thoroughly trounced loafer who saw the light that
day. This casting forth of the pie-Goth had its sequel.
The latter was a dim figure of prize fighter, and felt
much subsequent chagrin at the disaster which over
took him in Jones' Wood that picnic day. He mourned

62 RICHARD CROKER.
for that it hurt his fistic standing. His friends waited
upon young Eichard.
" He was drunk when you did him," they said. " If
he'd been sober you would have been beaten to rags.
As it is, you've injured his reputation. If you're a fair
man you'll meet him and give him a chance to recover
his position, which was high and proud among fighting
men until his drunkenness and desire for pies floor-
managed his overthrow at your hands."
This casuistry was received sourly enough by young
Eichard. He saw no justice in being crowded to battle
with the prize fighter by virtue of what had transpired.
He hadn't made the latter drunk; he hadn't trolled him
into that pie-vandalage which was the immediate cause
of his troubles. The drunken fighter may have lost
place in those social circles which he honored, but the
story gave no reason why young Eichard should favor
him with a meeting.
Debate became trenchant. The committee of the
injured warrior's friends made slurring intimation that
the bug under the chip of young Eichard's hesitation
was fear. This proved too much. Twenty is not the
year of coolness; no youth of that age may with resig
nation find his courage impugned. Young Eichard
granted the commission's claim. The wronged fighter,
with every aid that sobriety might bring him, should
have an opportunity to restore his torn and damaged
honors. The hour and the day found names, and
Jones' Wood — the theater of his ill-luck — was pitched
on as a place where the complaining pugilist should be
met and righted.
Young Eichard kept to the arrangement. On the
prick of hour set he was at Jones' Wood, awaiting what

THE CLOSED INCIDENT. S3
fate his adversary might construct for him. But the
other remained away. Whether he was ill, or seized
of a fear, or held young Eichard as too small a business,
was neither discussed nor determined. It was enough
that he didn't come; and, as saith diplomacy, " it is
thus that the incident was closed."

V.

THE PRIZE FIGHTER.
Why, then, we will have bellowing of beeves ;
Broaching of bai-rels, brandishing of spigots. —Old Play.
Our last chapter was out of breath with violence, and
I am glad it's done. Not because I oppose events of
sport; I but weary of their recital. However, as a
philosopher who laughs, and who was bom to a scorn
of hypocrisy, whether it wear surplice or come with
meaner claim, I have been made often to smile at that
snobbery which evinces itself by those varying fashions
in which fist-sins, now and then visited by one gentle
man against another, are decided upon. There is
no complexity in which the question, " Whose ox
is gored?" or rather, "Whose ox does the goring?"
is of such moment as in this matter of a fracas. The
after-status of the rioter will ever depend, not on what
he does, but on where he lives, and what rung of the
ladder of life, socially and financially, — the terms are
each the other's shadow, — he rests his foot.
Our scene is a restaurant; one of those brilliant
rooms, all blare of orchestra and glare of lights, where
the half-world finds grounds of parade. Some male at
tacks another; tables crash, women scream, waiters
scurry in the cause of peace. What is the decision?
If the male disguised in liquor who has half murdered
his fellow male, similarly en masque, be of our " aris
tocracy," and with a Fifth Avenue habitat, he is a " lad
51

THE BOXING-GOOD. 65
of spirit "; what we have witnessed is that exuberance
common of his years. If on the other and seamy hand
our warrior should be one to earn a livelihood by day's
labor of his hands, and whose address is Avenue A, he
is a "ruffian" whose brawling is the bud of that
native degeneracy and crime-instinct which is at last to
grant him Sing Sing, and the " Chair." Still, let it go;
such debate has nothing of deep-sea consequence, and
is curious, only, as offering some hint of that ex
cellent justice of classifications wherewith we transact
life. As stated above, I rejoice that we be through with
those melees wherewith the last chapter is so deeply
fraught. And at that I would not be understood as
one who gives his voice against the prize fighter. We
want a gladiatorial class. It reflects itself in the swell
ing physical stamina and courage of a people. Prize
fighters per se are of a doubtful use; but in the
second remove they work steadily for good. The gen
eral youth of the land enfringe those ropes wherein our
prize fighter toilf ully pounds his adversary, who as toil-
fully responds. The general youth become thrilled
thereby, and emulous. This serves to make popular
the art of boxing, and every boy would shine thereat.
And, as preliminary, he will seek for a clean health and
that muscle-strength without which comes no fist
success. In these directions and on such terms your prize
fighter is a boon. He affects a race and folk are made
better by him just as every horse has had improvement,
the result of a century of breeding thoroughbreds for
racing. Behold the locomotive engine in the day of its
strength. The fire-box is its stomach, the boiler is its

56 RICHARD CROKER.
lungs. Its brains are that throttle-gripping engine-
driver one notes peering from the cab. Wanting that
stomach of furnace, and those steam-chest lungs, how
ever, your simple engineer, throttle he never so wisely,
would not go far to perform those winged miracles of
transportation to make up the daily time-card of com
merce. And thus it is with man. Therefore give to
the poor gladiator place in your patience — ^give him the
kind countenance of your good opinion.
It is not well to change one's public into sheep.
With wars in every region, the lesson is indelible that
force — physical force — is still the last grand invoca
tion which summons Truth and Eight. While this
confronts one, condemn not these fist-philosophers who
do most of their small thinking with the brain which
lies back of the ears. The race should have these
promontories of the physical to hold a course by just
as it should those other headlands of a best morality
and a highest thought of which we sing so much in
praise. It was long ago determined to make of this volume
an unchecked thought-ramble into any worth-while
field. On this subject of the prize fighter, and to the
end that one gain a best understanding of these gentry
of the ring, it would be good to converse with that once
glove-master, John Lawrence Sullivan. Or it may do
as well, perchance, and serve besides to keep those more
timid aloof from rugged company, if I repeat a
colloquy which fell out between this ring fighter and
myself about a duo of years ago. I will put down
all he said, for while but a part is in defense of the
fighting clan, the relation of the rest may serve to dis
close some personal virtues of heart and head, justice

DRINK AND GENIUS. 51
and a spirit of intelligence; and so teach ones ignorant
on the point that even the despised fighting man may
be capable of a right feeling and a right thinking which
would not stain the vestments of a bishop.
It was in the " Inferno," a drinking place, where I
found our Sullivan. He was agreeably at a table with
a cup of strong waters; taking, indeed, " his ease in his
inn," as the big-girdled knight would say.
It should not discourage the reader, however
bleached to rarity his taste may be, to learn of Sulli
van's discovery in a taproom. The mighty seem never
far from drink, and our ring monarch had glittering
precedent for his surroundings. Had one sought
Chaucer in his day, doubtless one would have found
him at the " Tabard," marshaling his pilgrims for
Canterbury. Or coming down the years, was there a
word to say to that Will of Stratford, who is known of
this day by his surname of Shakspere, where should the
sagacious have searched? Why, forsooth! at the
" Mermaid." There with pipe and bowl he would have
been had in talk with Walter Ealeigh; or belike with
Fletcher and Wotten and Donne and those others who,
with himself, were founders of that first literary club
of England whereof Ealeigh himself was the comer
stone; and which was two centuries after to become
the model of that Gerrard Street coterie with Johnson
as its hub, and about whom, like radiating spokes, were
Reynolds, Langton, Burke, Goldsmith, and Topham
Beauclerc. If one were seeking Ben Jonson, that
dramatist and duelist would have been come upon soak
ing himself with sack at the " Devil," with Inigo Jones,
his workmate of the masques and royal revels, the com
panion of his glass. Or was it on gossip Pepys one

58 RICHARD CROKER.
would call? And if he were not busy falsifying his ac
counts at the Admiralty, it is a shrewd chance one
would meet with him at the " Cock "; or if not there,
then stealing a suspicious visit with Mistress Knepp of
the theater to the " Dog and Duck " at Finsbury. In a
later year he who sought Defoe would have encountered
him at " Garroway's "; while Dryden, if one would
have had speech of him, one might have — as did
Pope on that boyish occasion when he was first
to meet that genius whom he afterwards was to
imitate--" earthed " at "Will's." It was there
the poet would be met withal, in that identical room
of " Will's " from which Steele was soon to date his
" Tatlers " and " Spectators "; and where, of Steele's
fecund fancy, on the 2d of March, 1711, good Sir Eoger
De Coverley was to have birth — that quaint, benevolent
old knight of Worcestershire, whom Addison was to
adopt from Steele and love for his own. Pope in his
day, with the unstability common of the born cripple,
was in a dozen inn parlors during the course of the sun;
one moment at " Button's " with Addison, the next at
" White's " with Gay. Or one might hear of Pope at
the " Cocoa Tree," where he'd gone whispering the
Tories drinking, what was current as gossip among
Buckhurst and Arbuthnot and Montagu and Garth
and Swift and their stout fellow-Whigs who found
drink and discussion at the " Kit Kat." It was at the
" Turk's Head " where Johnson mixed punch for Gold
smith; where he bullied Garrick; and where he toadied
to Topham Beauclerc because of the latter's great
grandsire Charles the Second, who, conjointly with Nell
Gwynne, had furnished his brief ancestry its start. It
was twenty-five years nearer us when one might have

THE FIGHTER'S WISDOM. 59
glimpsed the coarse, meaty features of Brummell as the
beau gazed from the windows of " Brooks'," or found
Fox losing thousands at "Watier's." In that hour,
too, one would have met Nelson at " Fladong's " — if
Lady Hamilton had not detained him; Wellington at
" Slaughter's "; while Coleridge, before those kindred
vices of opium and Unitarianism had shaken him, was
drjnking thinly with Lamb at the " Salutation and
Cat." Even the Cloth had its tap; and it was at "Ib-
betson's " that our worthy archbishop, with a glass of
Hollands before him, refused to sign a parliament peti
tion asking laws meant to muzzle the Briton in his gin-
bibbing, and turned it aside with the epigram, " I'd
sooner see Englishmen free than sober." Sullivan
drinking in the " Inferno " had every celebrity of past
time as his indorser.
But to our conversation: Sullivan will from time to
time repeat the questions offered; wherefore there's no
call to interfere with aught of formal inquisitiveness.
Also we'll let Sullivan talk in his dialect of Cherry
Hill. To re-phrase him into English would be corrup
tion and a wrong.
" What's the matter with the dramy? " repeated Sul
livan, in a voice foggy with the much steam of sultry
old encounters; "well, I'll put you onto what's the mat
ter with the theaters. They need about two-foot of
snow, see! Then these mugs couldn't go bicycling with
their sweethearts, an' they'd turn into the show in
stead. Is the pop'lar taste in theatricals changin'?
String all the stuff you like on it that it's changin'.
Shakspere right now aint a deuce in a bum deck. He
was all right in his time, Shakspere was; but he's a has-
been. A mug don't go to a theater any more to learn

60 RICHARD CROKER.
things; he goes to be entertained. That's where Shak
spere gets the gate, see!
" What do I think of the Spanish War? Say! our
victory at Santiago don't throw no wonder into me.
Those Dagoes weren't in it with us. I don't count
guns an' battleships; at any rate they aint the whole
box of tricks. It's the guy behind the gun that does
it; an' that's where we can put out the best nation on
the list. America's not only got the ships, she's got
the men; we've got the sand and we've got the
punch. They can't beat us; never in a thousand
years. " What do I think of the English? Not to give you
a short answer, I aint got no use for an Englishman.
They make me tired, the English do, with the lugs they
put on. I know 'em all right, all right; I've been over
there, an' know 'em like a card-sharp does an ace.
They're too chesty, see! too much stuck on themselves.
Buy the English at their figure, an' they'd break you.
But they don't make good. Sure! they treated me
0. K., at that.
" Do I meet the Prince [he's been elevated to a Kingr
ship since] when I'm in England? Dozens of times.
I'd been over there a couple of months doin' my stunts
at the theater, when one of his ' Royal Highness's'
chasers comes sprintin' up to me, an' he says, ' John,
the Prince wants to see you spar.' I looks at this guy
a minute, an' says, ' Well, tell the sucker to pay his
dough at the door an' look on. There's no strings on
him; an' I aint sparrin' in secret. Any mug, if he's a
prince or a costermonger, can see me box if he's got the
price.' But later, the manager gives me the hunch it's
a dead good scheme to go an' put up my hands for his

THE PRINCE WAS ALL RIGHT. 61
' Royal Highness ' in private. I'm a little sore about
it, for I don't see where a prince comes in any more
than any other duck; but I don't make much of a kick,
an' tells them to lay out their game, an I'll be there
with my sparring partner to do the rest. An' of course
we pull oft' the e-vent.
" What sort of a man is the Prince? Well, I'll tell
you." At this point Sullivan was overswept with an air
of deprecation, and spake as one who apologizes for
confessed and obvious weakness. " I'll tell you about
the Prince. Of course he's an Englishman, an' a
prince at that; but between you an' me, he's a pretty
decent kind of a dub. And if he lives, he'll be a
hot monarch. After I'd soaked Lannon for eight
rounds, an' was pulling' off my gloves,— reg'lar pillows
they were, — the Prince comes over an' shakes me by the
mit, see! An' he does it like a square man. It caught
me all right; a square man goes as far as he likes with
me, every time.
" How do I get sore on Mayor Quincy of Boston a
year ago, when they talks of me jumpin' out for Mayor?
Well, there's a blow-out in Fanyul Hall on account of
this young fellow Ten Eyck, the oarsman, who's just
come back from doin' up the English, see! Well, I'm
there on the stage with the rest of the push, an' Quincy
is presidin'. Every guy goes up an' shakes Quincy's
mit, an' I'm farmer enough to get in. I go ag'inst
Quincy an' extends me duke. He sees an openin' to
make a little reputation off me, an' gives me the cold
turn-down. Refuses to shake hands with me; me bein'
a prize fighter. It don't worry me none. I can re
member a time when a Mayor of Boston — an' a better
man than any Quincy that ever beozed ice water —

62 RICHARD CROKER.
stands on that very stage an' presents me a champion's
belt, while the gang howls. Quincy's bluff don't bother
me a bit. I sits there an' hears the geezer make a
speech a bit later; an' on the level! I'm sorry for the
sucker. I'm sorry for Boston bavin' such a dead one
for its mayor. As I listens to the duck, I couldn't help
thinkin', ' Well, if I was as big a duffer with my hands
as you are with your head, you'd never turn me down
for bein' a prize fighter.'
" Am I a Democrat? Nit, I aint nothin'; I vote for
the man, see! If he's a good man, he goes with me.
I was stuck on that young fellow Bryan, though; he
made a dead game battle. I think if he'd side-stepped
Silver an' gone in an' soaked it to the Trusts, he'd have
landed the trick at that.
" But I'll tell you one thing about politics. Folks
better take a tumble to their game, or they'll get it
where the baby wore the beads. Did you see a while
back about the deputy sheriffs in the Pennsylvania
coal mines, croakin' those strikin' miners who was
marchin along the road? Did you catch onto where
the judge lets the killers go with six thousand dollar
bonds? Say! that won't do. If it had been the miners
croakin' the mine-owners, would the judge have took
bail? Not on your life! The poor suckers would have
swung for it. That's the sort of racket that's goin' to
send things keel-up in this country some day. You
won't see it, an' I won't see it; but the time '11 come
when it '11 be a dead case of ' Katie, bar the door,' an'
there'll be somethin' doin' that '11 scare the hair off the
top of the head of every lobster that's got a million
dollars. " Prize fightin'? If it's pulled off on the square it's

SULLIVAN'S GOOD EXAMPLE. 63
a good thing. But there's a bunch of crooks and
double-crossers who've got hold of the game an' queered
it. No, I think a prize fighter aint so bad. It takes
all sorts to make a world. We can't all be priests an'
preachers an' make a livin' scoldin' the devil. Priests
an' preachers are all right, an' I would be the first to
call down a duck who made a crack the other way.
But say! they aint got all the good to themselves. I've
cut up rough at times, an' done a lot of things I wish
I'd missed; but I've done plenty of good. I'll bet my
life there's thousands of strong, husky young fellows
who by seein' me fight got stuck on boxing; an' they
quit bottles an' all-night sprees an' the rest of the
funny business so tliey could hold up their hands like
winners. If it hadn't been for seein' me, they wouldn't
have half the health they've got. There would have
been a bunch of them in Greenwood or Bloomingdale,
too. No, I aint tryin' to cop a sneak on any particular
credit for this; I simply say that there's a kind of good
example that prize fighters set that a preacher or a mer
chant or a lawyer or a banker aint framed up to offer,
see! "
At this juncture a forlorn-appearing mortal, timidly
obsequious, sidled up.
" How do you do, Mr. Sullivan! " said the abject
one in tones of flattery.
" G'wan! " commanded Sullivan, harsh with sus
picion. "You don't know me. You're stallin' for a
drink." "You would remember me," said the other with a
cringe, " only you've forgot. I was standin' right be
the ropes when you bested Paddy Ryan."
" Poor Paddy! " observed Sullivan, with hoarse sym-

64 RICHARD CROKER.
pathy; "he was a good-hearted fellow, Paddy was; as
good as ever was made. But he got the wrong steer
when he come into the prize ring. He was no more a
prize fighter than I am a milliner. I punched him out
in the ninth. Here, bar-boy, give this gazabo," mean
ing the abject one, " a big drink an' a good cigar.
There," Sullivan continued to the beneficiary, follow
ing the refreshment, "now don't give me any more
guff. You've got a drink an' a smoke; that's what you
wanted. So screw out now an' give me a rest.
" It's a dead wonder," observed the huge ex-
champion, as the abject one withdrew, visibly bright
ened by the drink; " it's a wonder he didn't strike me
for ' twenty ' to help put a tombstone over Jack Demp-
sey. I'll gamble that I've coughed up five thousand
dollars in all — of course I'm lushin' at the time — to a
lot of bunks who gives me a song an' dance about a
tombstone for Dempsey. I'd dig for a ' twenty ' pr a
' fifty ' every time one of those Hungry Joes comes near
me. Take me when I'm tankin' up, an' I'm that easy
a baby could sell me a gold brick."
It was now that the sporting writer of a local
paper appeared. He asked Sullivan's opinion as to the
probable winner of a combat between two welter
weights who were to battle the next night.
" You want to know who I pick to win, eh ? " growled
Sullivan; " well, I don't pick, see! If there's one thing
that makes a game young fellow who's matched to fight,
an' is out to put up the scrap of his life, dead sore, it's
to have a lot of wise mugs settin' round ' prophesyin' '
that he's goin' to lose, an' is up ag'inst it. I aint in
that business. All I've got to say to these young men
is to go in an' do their best. They should remember

THE NORSE RACE. 65
that, while pain soon passes away, defeat never does;
an' fight as long as they can see or stand.
" You're goin', are you? " concluded Sullivan, turn
ing to me. " Come 'round an' let me get my lamps on
you often. If you're goin' to print what I've said, you
can put it in with my compliments that I think an
honest prize fighter is a better man than a dishonest
banker. It's not a guy's trade, but what he is, that
makes him a good or a bad proposition."
There you have been face to face with the fighting
man. Doffing prejudice, it will not tax a discernment
which I know to be yours, to discover in his slang-
garnished utterances a list of virtues which the world is
taught to applaud. Look closely; one will find therein
expressed a courage, a patriotism, a vanity of country,
a charity, a loyalty to friends, an admiration for a foe,
a memory of the dead, a care for another's sensibilities,
some shreds of a fair philosophy, dramatic and other
wise; and lastly, that stubborn personal independence
not to be impressed by a prince born in the purple,
which many an American with more pretense of re
spectability than ever a poor prize fighter might make,
would save his self-respect if, during the progress of
some London invasion, he were to emulate and adopt.
To you who, reading this, are ruffled of a spirit to be
put thus talk to talk with a drinking gladiator, I pro
fess an exhortation to remember that race from which
you come, and be appeased. Back-track your people
to the spring-head of their emanation. They are to be
known through every whirl of history by their blue-
gray eyes and tawny hair. It is the robber race; the
wolf race. It drifts westward on its lines of latitude;
drifts ever westward, as if the world in its rolling to

66 RICHARD CROKER.
the east offers that impulse which gives it motion and
direction. It is the race of pillage; the race which
shoved ocean-ward in its long sea-serpents on viking
cruise, and whose axes in the name of loot have bat
tered even at the gates of Paris long ago. Its cry of
war, hoarse with courage, the loud Ahoy! now dwindled
to be the hailing cry of sailor-folk, was through cen
turies the courier of conquest. It is the race of liberty;
and from it we take our elections and our legislatures,
which find their gagless patterns in the Things and
Witenagemotes of Norway. It is the race of justice;
and had its system of jury, and trial by a man's own
peers, a thousand years e'er Runnymede was heard of
and Magna Charta gave those safeguards guarantee.
It is the brave and quenchless race; the race of that
chief who said: "If I'm opposed by Odin, I will strive
with Odin; if Thor confronts me, I will fight with Thor.
I have no fear save the fear of the cow's death — the
bed-death — the death in peace and straw. I've no hope
but to die the man's death, girt with the joys of battle;
and where shields are breaking, and axes are crashing,
and swords are smiting in the blessed front of war.
Thus shall my spirit win Valhalla, and feast at the
board and drink of the cup of those heroes who have
gone before."
Skalds were its singers, and its sagas told the
glory of this race. It is a stern race, and in its wars
staked blood and life against those riches of its adversa
ries for which it fought. It could conquer or it could
die, and the iron ethics of its war-game taught that
losers lose all. Had this race been with Brennus when
the Romans complained of his overheavy weights while
telling down their yellow ransom; had it borne witness

THE REARWARD LOOK. 67
as the conqueror in hard retort, unbuckling his belt,
cast sword and all upon the scales in cruel addition to
the price already made, crying, " Woe to the van
quished! " it would have approved that relentless
proverb, and indorsed this jurisprudence of the strong
hand, with a happy clangor of its shields.
That, reader, is your race as it stands in the twilights
of furthest history; that is your race to-day. So shall
one learn who digs beneath the vain veneer which over
spreads us of conventionality and civilization. Is it
then strange, and a criminal thing, that some blossom
of this race of violence should be the modern boxer?
But one frets too much and with too little reiison.
Belie ourselves as we will, still are we saved by that
latent savagery which dwells stiffly within our breasts,
defending and keeping its own. And still do we find
fame for our fist heroes. What are the names of a
century, or two centuries ago, to live on the lips of the
present? With the Bettertons, the Booths, the Mack-
lins, the Garricks, and the Spranger Barrys of the
theaters; with the Buckinghams, the Rochesters, the
De Grammonts, the Herveys, and the Bubb Doding-
tons of the courts; with the Clarendons, the Robert
Walpoles, the Butes, and the Peels of statescraft; with
the Pitts, the Burkes, the Foxes, and the Townsends of
legislation; with the Fords, the Wycherleys, the Van-
brughs, the Farquhars, the Gibbers, and the Sheri-
dans of the drama; with the Fieldings, the Smolletts,
the Richardsons, the Burneys, and the Peacocks of
literature; with the Youngs, the Shenstones, the Chat-
tertons, the Grays, and the Cowpers of the poets; with
the Georges who were kings; with the Eugenes and the
Marlboroughs who were soldiers; with the Blakes and

68 RICHARD CROKER.
the Rodneys who were sailors; with the Nashes, the
Davies, the Alvanleys, and the Brummells who were
beaux, and therefore nothings; with all these, plucked
as they are from every garden of celebration, will go the
names of the Figgs, the Broughtons, the Jacksons, the
Belchers, the Humphries, and the Mendozas of the
boxers. Despise them if you will; the last will live
while the others live, and those exhaustless lamps of
immortality will burn with equal oil for all.

VI.

SOME SMALL CHANGE.
Some time a good fellow thou hast been
And sparedst not thy gold and fee ;
Therefore He lend the forty pence,
And other forty if need bee. — The Heir of Linne.
It has long been a thought in my mind, and one
nourished by what I have read, that the best sketch of
a life would ever be Boswellian. The author may tell
more of his man in one small characteristic anecdote,
not to hold two hundred words, than would be possible
by any direct assertion of attribute, though he extended
it to be two thousand.
It is a world's humor to laugh at poor Boswell.
The latter failed of that respect, which might else have
been his defense, because he showed himself so plainly
spoil and quarry to an abject hero-worship of his gruff
and bullying favorite. Yet to-day the oracular John
son is almost wholly known by Boswell's story of his
life. One thousand folk read the little Scotchman's
six-volume tale of Johnson, before one is found to turn
the pages of the " Eambler," or the " Lives of the
Poet^' or whatever else was the pen-output of our un
kempt King-worshiping, American-hating, Thrale-
sponging, toad-devouring, boot-licking, tuft-hunting,
nobUity-stricken lackey of a lexicographer. How
thoroughly do we infer the sickening snobbery of John
son when Boswell tells us of an hour — three o'clock of

^0 RICHARD CROKER.
the morning — when Beauclerc and Bennet Langton,
both of the aristocracy, and the first of the purple
blood of Charles the Second, and who was subsequently
to prove his descent from that merry monarch by the
seduction of Bolingbroke's wife, arouse the philosopher
by a merciless banging on his door; and how the
irate Johnson, cured to all smiles the moment he dis
cerns the bon-ton character of the disturbers, gleefully
huddles on his snuffy old clothes, and joins the two in
their drinking spree. They— the three — have a hilari
ous time among the hucksters of Covent Garden
Market, and Beauclerc and Johnson continue to be
deeply drunk throughout the next two days.
Garrick, when he heard of it, shook his head with a
pretended affectionate alarm, and, remarking on the
steep suddenness of Johnson's appearance in his new
role of a roystering, watch-beating buUyboy, said: "I
see how it will be. I shall yet have to bail my old
friend out of the Eound House."
Truly, the Boswell style, albeit not at all times
and in every case a possibility, is, whenever it may
be resorted to, the best stj'le. And because it be
so, it is in my thoughts, now that we have Richard
Croker at the age of twenty, and full-standing on the
confines of that region of politics wherein he has so
wrought and waxed and grown distinguished, to lapse
into a list of small tales which are to concern him, and
in the relation whereof he is to more or less move about
and expose to the reader such glimpses of his nature
as may serve the half-fair mind to some correct picture
of the man himself. The above will afford explana
tion of what, for a chapter or two, is to be a direct de
parture from plans pursued so far. Therefore, with no

BOSWELLIAN STUDIES. 11
more of prelude, let us tune ourselves to a Boswellian
strain. When one is brought to sketch him who, like Richard
Croker, lives in a midwhirl of every activity of poli
tics, and put in type his attributes and characteristics,
whether inherent or acquired, one should call to one's
side some spirit of conservatism. For if one be of
that man's party, and, as it may be, more or less his
friend, one is prone to overrun the hunt — overstate
those matters which go to the subject's grace; equally,
on the other hand, if one be of an opposition, and per
chance adds to a difference of politics some feud, per
sonal or otherwise, one would have natural, and it
might be unconscious, inducements to note only the
wrong side — remember naught save those imperfec
tions to which everyone is heir. Also, what is above
stated of him who writes might with equal cogency be
said of him who reads.
Richard Croker is broad and thick and strong in per
son; short and dark as a December day. He is fortu
nate in an abundance of brains, as his seven and three-
eighths hat might testify. His hair has been brave; it is
all at its post, guarding against baldness. Gray, almost
to whiteness, it tells plainly of those fifty-eight years
he has witnessed. There is naught of ferocity nor
grimness to Croker. His gray eyes are kindly and sym
pathetic, while the lower face is framed and softened
by a full beard and mustache, clipped like a garden
hedge, and which, once dark, wears like his hair the
frosts of time and care. Croker dresses himself well,
and in the mode; he is as apt to lapse into evening
dress with the disappearance of the sun as any
exquisite. All in all, be it day or evening, he presents

'72 RICHARD CROKER.
a pleasant, handsome figure, and one marked as distin
guished even to the stranger eye. His imposing virtue
is courage. His lower jaw, broad, firm, strong as a
bear-trap, bears plain, true testimony of this to the
face reader.
Proceeding in a fashion at once heedless and un-
sequent, this story concerning Richard Croker might
be told. His attention was called to the large number
of men, once strong in Democratic politics, who had
been cast over, and were outside the party breastworks.
" They may combine, and make you trouble," said the
gentleman who was discussing the matter with Croker.
The latter shook his head in confident negative.
" They can't combine," he replied; " they're dis
honest, and they can't combine. No combination can
be made where all are dishonest and each one knows
it. The first element of leadership," he continued, " is
honesty — perfect honesty. The honest man will pre
vail. Because other men can trust him. A rascal
can trust an honest man; and a rascal can't trust
a rascal. You might take one hundred men, ten of
them honest and ninety of them false, and put them
away on an island. Come back in two months, and,
for the reasons I've given you, you'll find the ten
honest men dominating the rest."
One may derive' the fact of a man's power and per
sonal force, just as the astronomers discovered the ex
istence of Neptune and Uranus before a telescope had
been developed by which these planets were brought
within the radius of observations. The cunning
astronomer knew of the existence, and as well the size,
of these by the way their comrade planets acted.
Croker's strength might be come to in the same way.

THE "MACHINE'S" DEFENSE. 13
His mild manner, his soft voice, the quiet atmosphere,
might breed a doubt were it not for the attitude of
the thirty-five Tammany "leaders" who belt him
about. There are ninety thousand folk on the roster of
Tammany Hall, each with a vote, and each with a
thirst for place. From these ninety thousand come
the " leaders "; not so much by consent, as by con
quest of the suffrages expressed at primaries of the
said ninety thousand. These " leaders," chiefs of their
clans, brave, quick of thought, decisive as a guillotine,
are the very heart of force. And yet these " leaders,"
bowing to none besides, yield to Croker as willows to
the wind. From their movements, one might know of
the magnitude of Croker, even it were not discernible
of the man himself.
Croker is the chief of the chiefs. This eminence
has come to him not by gift, but as prize to powers
native of himself. It is his because of a first courage
and valor and skill on the battlefields of politics.
In those old Norse days it was no fullness of riches nor
of family which chose a leader; it was deeds. And
when the rough sea-soldiery of Norway found one who
rose loftier than the others by dint of strength in war,
they made a platform of their locked shields, and lift
ing him high above their heads proclaimed him
" chief." In similar fashion did Croker attain his
leadership. Richard Croker is a firm apostle of organized politics.
He believes in the "machine," and was reared at the
knee of that theory. One day he spoke to me on this
point. " Every successful enterprise," he said, " must
have organization and a head, Everything which sue-

14: RICHARD CROKER.
ceeds must and does have organization; without it all
things fall to pieces. Be it a store, or an army, or a
church, or a party in politics, it must have organiza
tion and a head. If I'm a ' boss,' then a merchant, a
bishop, or a general is a ' boss '; and a president is the
big ' boss ' of all."
Perhaps the first impression one gets of Eichard
Croker is that of guilelessness. He looks as though
one might with ordinary effort deceive and destroy
him. This notion is error, grievous and complete; he
is very wise; and a fox is as a fool to him. Still his
plan primarily is to trust every man. He explains it in
this way.
" I make it a point to trust all men once — trust them
with my eyes shut. And the scheme has its success.
Nine men of ten are honest, and will loyally respond to
their obligations. The tenth may be false and cheat.
But at that, I am right nine times to be in error once.
If a man prove false, I never trust him again."
Children and animals are folk of an affectionate,
warm interest to Richard Croker. One may be walk
ing and talking on some subject of interest with him.
Should the two meet some nursling of three or four
years' standing, Croker loses sight for the time
of the topic under discussion. He neither hears nor
cares. His whole thought is on the child. He will
stoop down until his face is on a level with the little
face that has stopped him. He and the infant will beam
on each other for the space, perhaps, of three minutes.
The converse is wordless, and of the eyes. However,
they must say much that is loving and pleasant to one
another, for each breaks off the interview and goes his
several way with the best of thoughts touching his new

Eichard Croker's Office at Tammany Hall.

WHAT IS A GREAT MANT 75
acquaintance. " That's a good baby," Croker will say
thoughtfully, as he resumes his walk, and as if he con
versed with himself; " that's a good baby." Then, with
a half laugh, as one who comes back from the beau
tiful to the harder, sterner claims of life, he will re
sume the broken conversation.
It was said above that Richard Croker loved ani
mals. His delight in a horse is without a boundary.
It is probable, however, that his best affections are
given to the bulldog. Croker was in hap-hazard con
versation moved to an expression of the high esteem in
which he holds that kindly, yet resolute, animal. The
talk ran thus:
" What do you call a great man? " asked Croker of
his friend.
" It's difficult to define a great man," replied the
other, "but I might give you an example. For in
stance, while I've no great love for him, there are those
who say that McKinley is a great man."
" I don't think so," retorted Croker. " I'm told he'll
desert his principles and his friends."
" That's scarcely an argument against greatness,
however," replied the other. "An evasion of prin
ciple, and a desertion of friends, are frequent earmarks
of greatness. There are many who must do both to
become great."
" It's not my idea of greatness," said Croker. " The
man I call great is the man who, win or lose, fights and
falls by his standard — who never gives up his cause nor
his friend. The great man is he who never falters nor
flies — never lets go."
" By that argument, you might call a bulldog a great

76 RICHARD CROKER.
" Let me tell you one thing," retorted Croker, with
an unusual flash; " if a bulldog were a man he'd be a
great man. He's kindly, loyal, brave; and when he
fights, as all on earth, man or dog, or what you will,
must fight, he fights to win or die. He will come off
victor, or he will die where he stands. Yes, indeed; if
a bulldog were a man, he'd be a great man."
This was at dinner. Fish appeared and Croker
turned thoughtfully to its dispatch, his face disclosing
plainly that the man and the bulldog were still gaining
comparison in his mind, measurably to the disadvan
tage of the man.
There is a deep strain of religion in Eichard Croker,
and while he might miss a political convention, he will
not miss the Sunday service of his church. The sales
man of a bookseller once said with an air of half
astonishment, " Croker came in to-day and bought a
large consignment of books. What do you think they
were?" " Couldn't say," replied the listener; " horse books,
perhaps, or books on dogs or field sports."
" No," responded the literature salesman, " every
one of them was a religious book."
If some master of politics and men were to glance
along New York, he would in the last conclusion de
cide that Eichard Croker was civilly the best restrain
ing influence. Among those about him, as well as
among those about the chiefs of the opposition, a sharp
search would find ones who, with the least of opening
or opportunity, would plunder the public of its every
dollar. It arises chiefly from the fact that our " best
citizens " do nothing to assert themselves in prac
tical politics, save growl as they cast their ballots

TAMMANY TEMPERANCE. 11
and grumble as they pay their taxes. The desperado
of politics acts otherwise; he joins some party; he
crowds to the front; he shouts; he seeks office; he grabs
what he may, and never permits a question of public
morality to get between the legs of his desires and trip
them up. There are blacklegs in politics, as, for that
matter, there are blacklegs in banks. There is this,
however, to be said of the Tammany blackleg; the man
he most fears, and the last to whom he is willing to
discover his villainies, is Eichard Croker.
Said a gentleman, commenting on this: "If I were
business manager of the city of New York, my first and
anxious care would be to appoint a commission of
doctors to look after Croker's health. Were he to die,
I verily believe the politicians — Democratic, Eepubli-
can, and Mugwump — would steal everything but the
hack fence."
There is much of native purity in the make-up of
Eichard Croker. Naturally he is fine and overstrung.
Men drunken, loud profanity, obstreperous boasting, or
a vulgar story, or one with a Eabelaisian finish, evokes
his disgust on the instant. Nervous as a running
horse, such things are to him a discord of morals — as
if one struck a harp with a hammer.
Croker never drinks strong waters and has a dread
of drunken men. This fact has led to curious, not to
say sober, results. The men of Tammany not alone
obey, they imitate their great war chief. And thus it
falls that there is scant drinking among the whelps of
the Tiger. The club, to which Croker is as the soul,
with a membership of thirty-five hundred, doesn't, man
for man, consume one-tenth as much strong drink as
does any of the four large social clubs of the town.

78 RICHARD CROKER.
Drinking is decidedly without vogue in Tammany
upper circles, and all through the sober example of
Eichard Croker.
There is an anecdote apropos of Croker's feeling on
this point of drink. A wine merchant, distinguished
for an eagerness to do business, approached Croker.
There was a gentleman in converse with the latter at
the time.
" It's a mere matter of business," quoth the earnest
man of wines, " and, as it's no secret, I had as soon state
it before our friend here as- not. This is the proposi
tion: No one wants you to actively engage yourself in
the trade; but if you'll give me permission to use your
name as an agent for our wines, we'll pay you thirty-
five thousand dollars a year."
" I couldn't do that," replied Croker, while his brow
clouded. " I don't drink myself, and wouldn't for
what money you could name be the cause of leading
other men to drink — certainly not young men. I want
to see men free to do as they please; about drink as well
as every proper thing. But I couldn't lend my name
to what you ask."
This was said in that quiet tone characteristic of
Croker, and which makes one feel its unchangeability
as if one were dealing with the eternal rock. The mo
ment, however, that Croker had disposed of the pro
posal in so far as it pressed upon himself, the instinct
of suggestion arose.
"Why don't you get 'Smiling' John Kelly?" said
Croker. " He's always going about among folk.
Everybody likes him; he drinks wine, and would be the
best man you could get."
" I'd take him in a moment," said the wine merchant.

¦• SMILING " JOHN KELLY. 70
" Suppose you speak to him about it. I'll give him
fifteen thousand a year."
It was about ten o'clock that night when " Smiling
John " entered the club like a left-over ray of sunshine.
" John," said Croker with a smile, for he felt the
humor of it, " John, I've got a place for you."
" Have you? " said " Smiling John," with a cheerful
air — he had refused more than one of the city's highest
offices — "have you. Chief? What do I do, and what
do I get?"
" You don't do anything," replied Croker. " You
go about meeting people; you have a glass of wine and
a good word with them, just as you do now. As for
what you get, John — you get fifteen thousand dollars a
year." " You'll have to be clearer than that," replied " Smil
ing John," his countenance aglow with a usual be
nign philanthropy; " who is it that wants me? "
" It's Gentile, the wine man," replied Croker. " He
wants you to sell his wine."
" He does, does he? " said " Smiling John," in tones
of pleasant scorn; "we'll settle that easily. Tell him
I'd rather buy it."
There are two systems adopted by or native to poli
ticians which are more easily described than declared.
William Jennings Bryan, not long since running for
high office, would stand exponent of one; while Eichard
Croker is a leading expression of the other. Bryan
with offices to bestow, or favors of place to give, would
settle a long, rich list of them on those who were his
foes. Croker, going naturally to the other system,
would give all he had to friends and party followers.
The thought of each, in one of its phases, would be

80 RICHARD CROKER.
political, and born of an anxiety to draw strength to his
banner. The first would argue that his friends, reward
or no reward, would remain his friends; while with
place he might buy an enemy, and so augment his
power while depleting opposition. Croker, with less
coldness and more of the warm, red blood of gratitude,
would enrich his friends and scowl defiance at his foes.
And yet he, too, would be moved of a battle-logic to
that same thought which the other, dominated of a
peace policy, entertained. The latter, as stated, would
with office and present of place turn an enemy into a
friend, and so add to his power. Croker would give all
to his adherents, and thereby teach his enemy looking
on that it was good to be his friend, to the end
of so turning said enemy that in the next collision he
would be found beneath the Croker fiag, a paragon of
daring energy in its defense. The Croker system is
the better system; it would last centuries while the
other, more cold and more calculating, wouldn't last
years. Eichard Croker is a devout follower of the spoils
system. He believes with the dead Senator Marcy of
this State, who, in the debates during the thirties over
the confirmation of Jackson's appointment of Van
Buren to be Minister to England, said: " The Demo
crats of New York when they meet defeat expect to
step down and out. When they succeed, they look to
enjoy the fruits of their triumph. They see no harm
in the aphorism that to the victors belong the spoils of
the enemy."
However, this flowing chapter has overflowed its
banks. One story more and we will close and go to
the next. There was at dinner with Eichard Croker

ONE MUST FORGIVE. 81
one who, in cold and plotting blood, had done his best
or worst to pile a mountain of injury on the Croker
head. Later in the evening, a friend wondered sav
agely at Croker for his toleration:
" Here you are," said the friend, " in the very noon
of power. Here is he who conspired to do you the
greatest wrong one man may do another. With the
falsest of charges, at which he himself connived, he
aimed at your liberty and life. Nor was it his fault he
failed. Now that you have him in your hand to crush,
you let him go — ^you dine with him in all apparent
friendship." " What you say is true," replied Croker, with an
air whereof the major part was sorrow; " what you say
is true. But there's one thing you don't know. That
man came to me and told me he was wrong, and asked
me to forgive him. When a man does that, no matter
what he's attempted against me, I've got to forgive
him."

VII.
A CHARACTER STUDY.
The captain said as ladies writhed their neck,
To see the dying dolphin flap the deck :
" If we go down, on us these gentry sup.
We dine upon them if we haul them up ;
Wise men applaud us when we eat the eater,
As devils laugh when keen men cheat the cheater."
— The Sea Voyage.
While I am engaged with the collection on my
pencil's point of a list of anecdotes of Eichard Croker,
intending to string them on the thread of narrative as
a child strings beads, and all to show the mental make
up and as well the methods of the man, a visitor
arrives. The latter, discovering my task, offers as
query to be answered: " How does one account for
Croker's success? What would be that analysis, to lay
out each by itself those elements within him which,
combined, give him his command? "
Reply to this is no task trivial. That man who can
make a right one could go to the cradles of his day and
point out a future's champions. There is nothing so
successful as success. One sees it, appreciates it, knows
that victory exists. Yet, whether the success in hand
be the success of a man, or an idea, or an army, it is
ever difficult of display, either in its seed or source or
that argument of growth which bore it as its fruit.
Croker dominates almost four millions of folk; his
power is hard to overstate; to say it is Czar-like is to
83

THREE STRATA OF FOLK. 83
shear it of frontier and tell but a part of the story.
And he has continued himself thus in the conning
tower of control for nearly sixteen years; and that, in
the face of constant and mighty strivings, within a§
well as without, to evict him. How does he do this?
What are those inner things called attributes which
give him and protect him in this supremacy? As I've
stated, it's something more than hard, it's impossible,
to tell; and he who makes essay of the task will garner
error as rustics garner corn.
Richard Croker was, for one thing, fortunate of his
birth. He comes, as do ninety per cent, of mankind,
and may Heaven be thanked for it! from that great
safe, hale, valid middle class who must work to live,
and who construct the moral solvency of time. There
are here, as there are everywhere, three great strata
of folk. There is the upper or stratum of the aristoc
racy; the middle stratum of which I speak above; and
that stratum to blackly be the base. Of these strata
the upper is born assured behind the barriers of ac
cumulated money; the lowest comes and dwells without
the barriers of possible accumulation. The one lives
without apprehension of need; the other without ex
pectation of betterment. One, per consequence, is
without fear, and the other without hope; and both are
thereby idle, both desperate, and both vicious.
" We are born evil," says Machiavelli, " and become
good only by necessity."
This pressure — moral — counted on by the Florentine
doesn't, in the two classes under contemplation, exist;
therefore, save for what threat the law may make, — and
that is ever too slight to manage either the mental or
the moral side of men, — being born evil, they continue

84 RICHARD CROKER.
evil to the end. Some homely simile for humanity in
the mass might be found in any bubbling kettle of soup.
At the top, the froth; at the bottom, the dregs; while
that which boils between is all that is palatable, health
ful, and worth an honest spoon. It is the middle class,
the class of effort, made strong and clean by the pres
sure of a very contest to live, which has been in all
times the hope and stay of races.
Every name worth ink for its embalming comes from
the middle stratum. True! one hears of your kings
and royal princes who are declared great by history.
But were Truth to pry among the facts, how would de
cision go? Is it a Black Prince to capture a King of
France at Poitiers? You will find a Chandos ever at
his princely elbow; and who, holding him in military
leading strings from first to last, tells him when to ad
vance, and when to pause, and in all things what to do.
It is an Audley who was declared the bravest and most
valorous knight at Poitiers, and the Black Prince gave
him weighty reward for it. And yet that Audley was
so sure as to where true praise belonged, that the next
day, as he lay with his wounds, he quartered the royal
largesse among his four squires, Dutton of Dutton,
Delves of Doddington, Fowlechurst of Crew, and
Hawkestone of Wainehill, with the observe to those
whom he had called to witness the donative: " You see
here these four squires. What glory I may have gained
has been through their means, and by their valor; on
which account I give and resign to them the gifts which
my lord the Prince has been pleased to bestow on me."
It may be urged that Chandos, Audley, and the latter's
four squires were not at all of the middle class, and of
the aristocracy. That in halfway is true; but only of

THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 85
their day. Their style did not leave them without the
need of effort, and at their trade of war they were
bound to toil, or go wanting.
This story of Poitiers points sundry morals. Edward
the Black Prince is the putative hero of that battle,
without shadow of true claim for his support. Also,
he is pedestaled as the military figure of his century,
when such mere captains of banditti as Hawkwood,
Calverly, and Knolles, all Edward's soldiers at one and
another time, demonstrate themselves by their achieve
ments of rapine, which range from the Northern oceans
to the Mediterranean, and include the taking of cities,
and even the capture and ransom of a Pope, to be his
easy and complete superiors. One should not trust
history when it tells of a prince.
Or is it in a field of mental action a king is to brightly
glance? Investigation will show that he burns like
the moon by the reflected light of some sun of com
monalty. Is it some Henry who is to defy a Rome and
reorganize a church? One will ever find a Duns
Scotus, a Wickliffe, an Occam, and a Luther, to precede
him or live in his day, to plant that vine of which he has
the vintage. No; turn what page of the past one will, or
read the present as it runs before one's eyes, it will bear
note that the very uppermost and the very lowest
classes are deserts to produce nothing of moment nor
of might; and that it is the strong, deep soil of the
middle class wherefrom the oaks of tallest greatness
always spring. And, as set forth, Croker starts with
that birth-advantage of rise in the middle class.
That mere origin of middle class is not, however, to
guarantee any certainty of a topmost success. Many
thousands have owned it; and while they could boast

86 RICHARD Croker.
on their deathbeds that they had lived with respect and
paid their debts, these feats, while indubitably ones of
magnitude and heroic worth, are withal too frequent
of performance to earn a name as great, where
the soul of the latter epithet depends for its existence
on the unusual, on a poverty of occurrence. One
must go further who attempts to expound the year-in
and year-out victory of Richard Croker.
Perhaps one may come to some plainness in the busi
ness on new and other pathways of conjecture.
Machiavelli writes, " I have many times considered
with myself that the occasion of any man's good or bad
fortune consists in his correspondence and accommo
dation with his times." Our philosopher then proceeds
to disclose that in a Roman day when Hannibal was at
top bent of success, it needed caution and care and an
utmost discreet employment of every Roman power to
check the African's advance and bring him to a stand.
This slow and steady caution Fabius possessed, and its
successful use against Hannibal made Fabius the
greatest name in Eome.
But Fabius could be nothing but cautious. The re
quirements of the times took unto themselves mutation.
Hannibal, withheld from Rome, must be made to re
turn to Carthage. Scipio, who was aggressive, said:
" Invade Africa; assail Carthage." Fabius, the cau
tious, was not equal to anything other than defense.
Fabius opposed the plan of Scipio. But the popular
thought, which was with the careful Fabius when close
peril waved sword above its head, having gotten breath
and courage with the safety which Fabius had won,
turned to follow and sustain the headlong Scipio.
Fabius saw decline and Scipio rose above him, to be-

CAUTION WEDS DARING. 87
come the hero and the leader in his stead. Fabius
was fitted to his times in the first instance and had
renown; in the last, albeit he had in no whit changed,
Fabius was out of line with his day, and so lost to
Scipio, who joined the new times to a hair, the honors
he had gathered.
Richard Croker might be regarded as a composite
of both Fabius and Scipio; he weds caution to daring
in an extreme degree of each. He can dissemble like a
Talleyrand; or he can be as bluff and blunt as any Henry
the Eighth. He can follow policy and intrigue like a
Louis the Eleventh; or he can charge as recklessly as
any Bull of Burgundy — think in the saddle, and carry
decision on the point of his sword.
This thought of matching your times, expressed by
the Italian, had a partial assertion by the late Voorhees
of Indiana. He was reminded of having given, the
session before, utterance to deduction and statement
which went to the contradiction of his that day's
Senate speech.
" Yes, it is quite possible," observed Voorhees in
reply, and he had the air of one who consents to a
weary truth; " it is quite possible that I do not talk
now as I talked then. But times change and de
mands change with them. You should remember that
statesmanship is simply the science of circumstance."
What the tall orator said would have been evenly
true had he changed a word and made it: " Leadership
is the science of circumstance."
:^sop, the fabulist and slave, didn't believe with
Machiavelli, and was taught painfully his error. It
is .lEsop's excuse, perhaps, that he lived two thousand
years before the other, and thereby lost the guiding

88 RICHARD CROKER.
benefit of his precepts, ^sop was with his master on
a journey. The latter, to be in favor with his wife, —
a fate for which all good, wise husbands pray, — con
ceived for her a sweet surprise, and one which ladies
love. " Take this," quoth he, " and return to my house and
give it to the one who loves me best."
With that he put into ^sop's gnarled hands a neck
lace. The malignant little hunchback flew home,
exhibited the jewel, and repeated his master's
words. " It is for me! " said the wife, all conscious smiles,
and stretching forth an ardent hand.
" No," retorted Jilsop, " it is not for you. My mas
ter's commands design it for the one who loves him
best." With that ^sop flung the gift about the neck of a
spaniel and was subsequently well clubbed for his in
sight. '.^Esop might more wisely have minded his
times. Richard Croker would have come better off
and disregarded a fact to adhere to an intention.
That great requisite of leadership is to be sure you're
followed. Without following there is no leader. One
may be wise, and live in isolation; one may be right,
and be alone, and generally one is. But one cannot on
such terms write one's self "leader," and Richard
Croker found this knowledge in his breast at birth.
He will make no struggle against the popular will, and
guides his adherents by going with them; leads them
by walking at their head. And there has never been
commander of history — not one — who was not driven,
in his own calls and to preserve himself, to follow that
same axiom of supremacy. The First Charles de-

THAT WHITEHALL TRAGEDY. 89
clined it, and at Whitehall that winter day he lost his
head. It was probably the least head in his dominions;
but it was of moment to him. He forfeited it by fail
ure to match his times; because he would go one way
when his people would go another. Cromwell, greater
than one thousand kings in one, with more of courage
and wisdom and worth of manhood than ever put on
English crown, was fain to swerve and turn — twist like
a fox, shift color like a chameleon, to sustain himself.
Cromwell succeeded, however, for he made sure to
match his times. It is by identical tactics that Rich
ard Croker, during his sixteen years of leadership, has
buttressed against overthrow. It is thus he conserves
his interest and treasures himself.
It is an enchanting study, this study of success.
Would you have victory? Embrace your times and
make yourself their partner; clip and trim your pro
fessions with the scissors of current taste; don't stand
aloof, don't go too close; make love to your hour and
offer honest marriage. And while you say " yes " to
your age, practice the negative wherever possible with
individual man. There is a charm in "no!" and a
safety. Say it on every chance when the saying does
not exclude you from the common march. Much vir
tue in " no! " It avoids drink, it saves money, it makes
for good repute, declines disgrace, and cultivates re
spect. And it multiplies the worth of "yes!" when
you utter it.
Richard Croker will dissemble like a Greek. Yet
one should understand: He is true to his friends and to
his cause; he moves without treachery, harbors no trea
son; and his given word is gold. But he will cloak his
plan, and bury his thought, and hide his facts, even

90 RICHARD CROKER.
from his friends; and all to the end that final victory
heir no peril.
"Justice is the interest of the stronger," said
Thrasymachus; and while Socrates defeated him in the
colloquy, the apothegm of our Greek has won the
practical acceptance of mankind. " Justice is the
interest of the stronger," and mendacity is the natural
sentinel of interest. Plato would have refused this in
the day of his Academy; Sir Thomas More would have
excluded it from his Utopia. But More was no pilot,
and made but half a voyage. At first he sailed bravely,
and was enough seaman of policy to succeed Wolsey as
Chancellor. But the storms came, and his sailorship
broke down; he crashed on the reefs of the Tower, and
the ax got the head that had ceased to serve its mas
ter's turn.
And do you object to mendacity? Do you favor
civilization? You told me a few chapters to the
rear that you did, and belabored me with hard words
because I appealed against it. Do you favor civili
zation? Why, then, it is moored and held by the
lies we tell. We have scaled the bluff ages with ladders
of lies. Lies ! they have been our race's best weapon of
offense. As for defense, why, lies are our citadel! If
New York were to tell herself the truth for ten
minutes, solitude and silence and desertion would
sweep and swim the streets like a blight. And at the
crisis where his lunatic, general veracity, trod the
lips and seized the ears of folk, historians would close
their chapters. They would begin the next ominously
and with darkling caption: "The Last Days of New
York." Within limits of interest, personal to one's self, the

\ ^ I

John Kelly.

VOLTAIRE, THE EXCELLENT. 91
right to lie is perfect. "When telling a lie will be
profitable, let it be told," wrote Herodotus. There is
property in a thought, a plan, or a fact. One has no
more right to search your head than to search your
pocket. One has no more title to your knowledge
or your programme, than to your money or your
watch. You may as properly prevent his larceny of
the one as of the other. When silence is no disguise,
or spells discovery, — and query may be framed to such
a sequence, — mask your plan with mendacity, hide your
knowledge in a cloud of lies.
There was Voltaire, — I've ever admired him, — an
artist of untrath. True! Voltaire got into the Bastille;
but he got out again. Voltaire lived success. He duped
those who would have cozened and used him; he spoiled
the Egyptian, and was enriched; in a day of fetters he
was free; in an era of strictest censorship, and when a
press was bridled, he wrote and printed as he pleased;
he met his friends, he missed his enemies, and was at
ease while others sweated and wrestled; he lived with
undimmed faculty to the age of eighty-four, and died
generally honored because generally denounced. What
more of value may one find in life ? Take my rede for
it: he who may lock a door may lie; the right in the one
is the right in the other.
Croker is expert of the mask; he can feign a feel
ing or pretend a thought. And he does both when
dealing with his unfriends. He calculates coldly, and
never permits feud nor a knowledge of another's trea
son, in esse or accomplished, to prevent his use of that
man. He will plow with the heifer of his foe — aye!
with the foe himself, while the plowing plows a profit.
He will meet folk whom He knows to be false; beam on

92 RICHARD CROKER.
them with bland interest, appear to give them his con
fidence, and to rely on their loyalty as a main support;
he will assign them their tasks, and let the nose of ex
pectation sniff reward; he will turn his back on them
as one who is sure of their white truth, and walk away
the picture of unconscious openness. It seems a sinful
and a devil's deed to betray a soul so defenselessly
childlike and trusting. Be not aroused. Those false
ones have been deluded; they are in invisible irons, and
always in sight. It is as double odds they carry forth
the Croker plan; it is certain they will do no harm.
There are thousands who went forth to shear Croker,
and returned shorn.
Of the multitude to make up Tammany Hall, there
are hundreds who come within the close and per
sonal radius of Croker. And there are other hundreds,
not specifically of Tammany Hall, who, for office, or
some contract or franchise-preference of the town, are
found to join these. It is a court; and our applicants
of favor become courtiers of Croker. Eighty per
cent, of these come not for Croker, nor Tammany
Hall, nor party betterment; they come for themselves.
And they fawn and they flatter; and they fish for those
fronts of office, or contract, or franchise, which brought
them to this pool of the profitable.
And in their midst is Croker; smooth, silent, blandly
ignorant of design on the part of anyone, and as though
plot were preposterous as an idea; believing every lie,
gulping every compliment like spring- water; the most
fooled and cheated creature beneath the stars — appar
ently. But appearances waylay the fact. There isn't
one about him whose measure for better or worse is not
within the archives of his thought; no one he doesn't

AN ADEPT OF CHICANE. 93
apprehend in his last true detail. Not a word does one
utter that isn't instantly tried by the acid of what he
knows; and this last is a term to cover the marvelous.
In short it's a game — the game of politics; and
Croker defeats these folk; and turns them, and twists
them, and takes them in, and moves them about, and in
all things does with them what one, expert, might do
with children at a hand of cards. Croker knows these
folk as he knows his way to bed; he knows what is in
them as he knows the contents of his pocket; from be
ginning to end he uses them with the same cool, steady
cunning wherewith a mechanic uses tools.
At that play where man meets man, and one is to be
ridden and the other ride, Croker is the adept ineffable
and not to be expressed. He ever rides; and in his
day has cinched his saddle on all sorts, from presidents
and governors — men of nation, men of State and town
— down to that least atom of power, the man of one
vote who blackens boots or sweeps the crossing of a
street. Once, on the evening of a reception to Croker,
when hundreds thronged the Democratic Club,
among them men of money and others who had filled
the highest places of state, and all beamingly, bowingly,
scrapingly gracious to the " Chief," to a point that
might sicken self-respect, Croker said to me:
" Of course one must understand these people.
They are here for their interest, and to gain their
points. Many of them would leave the party, and
assail me, the moment it served their turns. Three of
five who are here would do both. The others you
could bank on, fair weather or foul — you could go to
war and depend on them. They have principles."

94 RICHARD CROKER.
But if Richard Croker can be suave, veil his esti
mates of folk, and deceive Deceit, he can be blunt
enough at times. It depends on the when, and the
where, and the who. Craft is with Croker artificial;
or, if it's his nature, then it's his second nature. His
first is to be frank and open and boldly obvious. There
was an editor and owner of a paper of power and daily
warrant. Also the editor was personally drunken,
treacherous, and noisily vulgar — precisely the sort to
have Croker's contempt, arouse his antipathy, rasp his
sensibility, and nurse his disgust. It was in the sharp
midst of a campaign. One would suppose it no
moment when Croker would lose a friend or make a
rebel. The editor — rather sober for him, he was — ap
proached Croker with a leer of amiability. Croker
met him with an eye of frost.
" Why is it, Mr. Croker," said the editor, in tones
husky with dead rum, but friendly, " why is it you
never gave me your confidence? "
" You would be a good man to give my confidence
to," said Croker, " if I wanted never to see it again."
Then proceeding to direct reply, he went on: "I'll tell
you why I don't give you my confidence and why I
never will; it's because you're dishonest, and can't be
trusted. Then again, you're a coward and will run
like a deer. Your word and your courage are both
bad." That editor made feeble expostulation, and couldn't
understand. Croker recounted his maldeeds of trea
son, ingratitude, and broken faith. It was a sad
record; true in every word, but unpleasant to the editor
who had thus provoked a sketch of his career.
Croker's tones had a chill in them, too, as if one were

THE CROKER CONTRADICTIONS. &5
in the near presence of an iceberg in the night. The
editor made stumbling expedition to withdraw to
balmier company.
That editor was a millionaire; and his paper was of
an import of politics with any in the town. Yet Croker
flung his aching story in his teeth, as if he'd been the
meanest emigrant last landed. And the reason? Be
cause it was true in the first place; and, in the next, its
telling could do no harm. If the effect would have been
to turn the batteries of that paper against next day's
Democracy, Croker, pro tempore, would have met our
drunken, treason-mongering vulgarian, its editor, with
a mood as sweet as May. But he knew the man. He
knew his avarice; his sodden lack of self-respect.
Aware that the paper supported Democracy, and at
tended the hunt, a mere jackal of politics, hopeful of an
offal prey, some tidbit of a putrid profit, Croker was
equally aware that no insult of truth would inflame it
into opposition. It would remain leal to its appetite
for city advertising, and therefore leal to party; in
fact, the adherence of that editor would be rather
strengthened than made less, when taught to know
that his vermin length and breadth and depth of sordid
purpose were entirely arrived at and understood.
Richard Croker knows his men, and finds and
matches his men; corresponds with his environment
and fits it to him like a coat; accommodates himself to
his times, as Machiavelli says one must; dovetails with
events as they transpire. In seeming ever frank, he
is as close-locked as the grave; apparently a reed for
graceful pliancy, he is as bendless as the oak; never
hearing, he is all ears; never seeing, he owns the eyes of
Argus; never knowing, he has the story of every man

96 RICHARD CROKER.
and fact at finger's end; innocent, he is a fox for policy;
timid, he is as formidable as a bear; slow, he is as swift
to smite as a bolt from above; hesitating, he is as
prompt as a flash-light; careless, he is as accurate as
a rapier; and of things, for things, by things political
he is never when nor where nor what one anticipates.
Also, with a genius to be military — doubtless derived
from Cromwellian fathers — no matter how a war may
roll, Croker is ever moving and pushing towards the
high ground. His secret of mastership, when one has
added the rest, would seem to lie in that thought of
Machiavelli of a profound talent of " accommodation
and correspondence with his times."

VIII.
MORE SUBSIDIARY COIN.
" O wow ! " quo' he : were I as free.
As first when I saw this conntrie,
How blythe and merrie I wad bee,
And I wad nevir think lang."
— The Oaherlunzie Man.
Our last chapter was provoked by a comer with a
question. It is to be hoped there is none other eaten
of a misfit curiosity to follow him and his inquisitive
example. Were there a procession of such, this work
might become for length another Burton's " Anatomy
of Melancholy," and dolefully laden of six hundred
thousand words. How our old Oxonian must have
moiled and wrought and burned wax! No marvel he
was glum! Surely, his weary tomes grew with the
gloom they fed on.
Richard Croker, when meeting men of .assured posi
tion, political, social, or financial, brings to his counte
nance a deal of dignity and reserve. There is courtesy;
but nothing of impulsive affability. Croker never
flatters; by the same word! a flattery of Croker is a
waste of time. That dulcet commodity has polite
reception, — if a mild silence may be thus described, —
but its sole effect is to disturb distrust.
When Croker encounters folk of prominence and
rank, whether the meeting be casual or of purpose, he
clothes himself with a cool, wholesome urbanity, which,
conceding nothing, adventures no demands. His air is
97.

98 RICHARD CROKER.
that of one who, certain of his own respect, is ready to
extend respect to you. It is to Croker's credit that the
poorest and weakest, and folk of puniest kind, political
and otherwise, may find him with a quick readiness as
encouraging as it is perfect. There are no fences nor
defenses about Croker. All who have wish or occasion
to meet him are at once received. And the weak and
the poor, and those in the fangs of some distress, have
ever the better reception. Such touch Croker nearly;
they recruit to their aid his quickest sympathy; he
brings them closer to him than any who, pompous, safe,
and self-approved, comes with hands of power and
brows of consequence.
" Yes," said Croker, on a day when his habit of open-
door to all had undergone a comment; " yes, I see every
body. And particularly I haven't the heart to turn
these poor people away. They squander my time, and
often I can do them no good. But they don't know
these things; and their small affairs are of as much
interest to them as the business of any money monarch
is to him. Were I driven to name what I regard as
most to my credit, it would be that, during the sixteen
years I've hefen at the head of Tammany Hall, every
man, rich or poor, small or great, who wanted to see
me, did see me, and was listened to. And when I could
I helped him. I wouldn't want a better epitaph."
That sympathy of Croker for the young and strug
gling is never far to call. In 1897, following Tammany
success, Croker was at Lakewood. A crowd had fol
lowed him; with others were representatives of a score
of papers. Among these was a boy of twenty; bright,
alert, indefatigable. Croker observed him. One day
the boy told Croker that his ambition was to study law.

THE LAW STUDENT. 99
" Where is your home? " asked Croker.
Our youth replied that he came from Buffalo; that
his parents were dead; and, being moneyless and with a
living to earn, he must defer his law studies until he
had hoarded enough to keep him through those three
years of law-reading which the statutes impose on the
novice. " How much does your paper pay you? " asked
Croker. " Thirty dollars a week."
Croker said no more. A few days later one of the
city's chief law officers notified the youth that he had
been named as his — the law officer's — private secretary
with a salary of twenty-two hundred dollars a year, a
four-year term, and a chance to study law.
This episode made an impression on me. Time had
carved me a cynic. I was old in politics, and full of a
callous experience as the daily critic and historian of
politicians. It was the first deed of any Christian love
liness from the hand of politics to come within my ken.
Since then I've known Croker to " throw away," as your
case-hardened party man might say, hundreds of places
for the same reason of goodness, and in the same way.
I taunted him with this soft excellence of heart; he
seemed abashed.
"That's not generosity," said Croker argumentatively;
" it's the same old story of machine politics, only it's
reversed. The rule, of course, is that a man must earn
his office before he gets it. In these cases I gave
the boys the places before they had earned them. It
makes no last party difference; they can go on and
work for the party now in return for their offices.
There you have the idea; it works no loss to the Democ-

100 RICHARD CROKER.
racy, and it's a good thing for the boys." And at that
Croker laughed with a hearty uneasiness that spoke of
bashful fear lest one might deem him generous, and of
a warm, soft sympathy, when frozen precedent would
have him hard as ice.
Croker is tolerant of the young, and will forgive
error or mistake where youth and inexperience plead in
its excuse. This tolerant tenderness doesn't extend
itself in any wrong action of an oldling. There was
an Albany crisis; the Democrats of the Legislature be
haved badly. One gray senator was peculiarly weighed
in the balance of those events, and found wanting. It
was a week later when he met Croker. The latter re
garded the derelict with a brow both untoward and
bleak. " You did nicely," observed Croker, in tones none
the less indurated for being musically low; "you did
nicely up at Albany! The Republicans made you look
like children. You would have done as Well if you'd
stayed at home."
" What could I do ? " asked the other appealingly,
spreading his hands.
" Why, nothing, of course," replied Croker. " I
didn't know that when you were sent there, but I know
it now."
It was the death sentence; both understood it. That
" statesman " did not go back. Yet such is the crush
ing force of Tammany discipline that not a thought of
rebellion, none of retort, rose in the breast of the dis
rated one. He now toils cheerfully in the party ranks,
without office, and without its hope; and he and Croker
meet with no more of difference than they felt
before.

THE FOE WITHIN. 101
This instance is a specimen brick of scores on scores
just like it. The justice of the situation is recognized
by both. Tammany Hall in its essence is pure mili
tary. When a man fails, a man forfeits; none may
keep a place who is too weak for its administration, too
unskillful for its defense. Croker removes the man,
and it occurs neither to Croker nor the one removed
that there are to be resultant heats, heart-burnings,
and mutinies. There have been now and then those to
prove exceptions to this law. One might count a dozen
such. They, as a rule, were names rich, young, and in
the van of leadership. Each deemed himself powerful
and contested with Croker his dictum of deposal. One
and all they perished; their bones whiten on the hill
sides of party.
He who at any hour is head of Tammany Hall will
not alone face foe without; he must fend against per
sonal overthrow by forces which arise within. A weak
man couldn't last; nor one unwise nor careless. It is
not that in the surroundings of a Tammany chief there
lurks uncommon treachery; it is due to the natural law
that the strong is to supplant the weak. Whatever
may be your place or fortune, you who read this, be
assured that in the sweating fret and jostle of exist
ence, where Self is king and Appetite is statute, there
are blind, ambitious thousands, unknown to you and to
whom you are unknown, striving dumbly, sightlessly,
yet none the less jealously, as against you, to seize
them both. And if you are to hold your place and for
tune as against them and their reachings, it must and
may only be by dint of superior power, whether of wit
or arm or position, which you possess. Such is the law
of life. Such it has ever been; such will it ever be; and

102 RICHARD CROKER.
that, too, for all the prayers and tears and curses to
find sigh or fulmination in demand of its repeal.
Croker guards himself against overthrow from within
by limiting the possibility of power-growth in those
about him. He does not have a deputy-chief to repre
sent him; he has four or five. He grants to no one sub
altern his whole countenance; he divides and sub
divides it among several. Among his lieutenants he
splits his proxy, and arms each with a fragment of
his authority. Each has his little field of domination;
each his work. Add them together, and you find the
boundaries of Crokerian domain. The reason given
for this subdivision is a labor-saving one; the logic
on which it bears runs to the effect that work is better
done where by division none is overworked. The
fact occurs, however, of safety to Croker's leadership.
By virtue of this system of cautious allotment of
powers in small parcels, no underling becomes over-
important or unduly tall. Also it breeds distrusts and
doubts and jealousies among Croker's subcaptains thus
distinguished. Each watches the other; and while
eager to promote himself, he is evenly solicitous to curb
and cramp whatever of a personal-political tendency to
bourgeon the others may exhibit. These four or five
under-captains, lacking confidence in one another, are
sure to be, for self-defensive reasons, in moods of per
fect confidence in Croker as the source of their impor
tance. This system, excellent enough for Tammany
Hall, is perfect for Croker. It curtails individual fol
lowing, denies concentration, and avoids the threat of
overgrowth by any under him.
Croker listens to slander; listens to disbelieve it.
He who bears ill tales to Croker makes a fool's journey

FRIENDSHIP A SPECIALTY. 103
and does the errand of a fool. He but rakes the pond
for the moon; he will take nothing by his effort.
Croker will listen in chill silence. The one effect of
slander, so far as Croker is concerned, is the injury of
the vilifier; and not infrequently a nearer regard for
him vilified.
Croker is loyal to a friend to the point desperate.
There was a journalist on terms of tepid half -intimacy
with Croker. He resigned from the paper whereon
he had been engaged. Two weeks later Croker returned
from England. A covey of folk, leading figures of
Tammany Hall, were on the dock as Croker came down
the gang plank. One of the " editors " of that paper —
a mere reporter not being held of metal heavy enough
for the enterprise — approached Croker. The State
campaign was at hand; the " editor " was cockily confi
dent of Croker's quick and bowing complaisance.
" I want to interview you, Mr. Croker," he said,
" on the matter of your plans for the campaign at
hand." " If I'm to be interviewed," replied Croker, " I would
prefer that Adams write it."
" Adams is no longer with the paper," said the
" editor " coldly; " if you were to give him an inter
view, he wouldn't run it in our columns. It's for that
cause I came to talk with you myself."
" Still," returned Croker, who felt the point of loyalty
to a friend at stake, " I should not care to be inter
viewed save by Adams."
" Then," retorted the " editor," with a spirit for the
haught and asperous, "I am commissioned to inform
you that the paper and Adams are not on good terms.
You must make your choice between the friendship of

104 RICHARD CROKER.
Adams and that of the paper I represent. You can't
have both."
" That's discouraging," observed Croker, and his
tones were pregnant of a sneer. " Since your paper
finds it necessary to put the case in that way, you may
return and say that it took me ten seconds to decide;
tell the paper I'll take Adams."
Those who, regarding Croker in his character of
a calculating general, would deem him weak in thus
casting aside the support of a powerful journal on the
eve of battle, and all for a sentimental favoritism for
one who could at best but render little service, would
reason with much of shallowness. There were two argu
ments to lift up their voices with Croker. His under-
chiefs, full five-score, were looking on. He would not
furnish them the weakening exhibition on his part of
sacrificing friendship to fear — of being forced into dis
loyalty to a friend by the threat of power. His
" leaders," observing, would say nothing; but it would
unsettle their ideals of him and shake his status.
Again Croker reflected: " If I yield to this paper in its
attempt to bully, it will despise me. Moreover, find
ing me weak, it will be back to-morrow with another
demand, and another threat. On the contrary, if I
stand rocklike by my friend, this paper will respect me.
It will say, ' His friendship is worth having; no pressure
can break down his loyalty and force him to set his
obligations at naught.' That very paper will be my
better friend in the end." And with the last word
Croker was wise and right. It was one of those occa
sional coils when the proverb, " Honesty is the best
policy," obtained.
Croker is by nature one irritable, nervous, and with

VENGEANCE A VIRTUE. 105
sensibilities fine as silk; also, he is of the tiger's temper.
Yet to the eye of most regardful inquiry Croker would
seem indifferent, phlegmatic, and of an epidermis the
thickness whereof might challenge the envy of ele
phants. His temper is there, however, albeit absolutely
within hand. Cool he is, but never cold; and his hates,
like his friendships, are fire-fed. Croker conquered
himself early; he has held himself in subjection
ever since. One, misled by a surface placidity, might
disbelieve in the existence of Croker's capacity for
wrath. Those who are most with him gain ever and
again a flash which plays on his face like sheet-light
ning, and then is gone. As a friend once said: " Those
who believe Croker has no temper might better lift one
of his griddles."
But as related, Croker has conquered himself. No
man has yet beheld the least slant of rage from Croker.
He is calm, tolerant, conservative, and was never
called nor driven to say corrosive word of any. Croker
will speak well of his most hateful foe, or steep himself
in silence. This serenity of tone and word and thought
with Croker has a threefold cause. It grows from his
policy, his religion, and his self-respect. Croker by
nature is revengeful, but he has broken the teeth of
that taste. He has now no quality of vengeance in
what he does; he will follow a foe no further than the
gates of victory. His friendships and gratitudes have
blossoms; his vengeances lie fallow and barren.
Croker will take from folk of meek pretense en
comium for this defeat of his temper for reprisal and
vengeful retaliation. In truth, it comes to be a weak
ness. It is unnatural, and the unnatural ia ever weak
and ever vrong. Vengeance is twin brother to grati-

106 RICHARD CROKER.
tude; that same mother of infinite order and an equal
justice bore them both. Does a man do you a deed of
good? your warm gratitude is out of breath with
eagerness to make return. That is because you recog
nize a debt — an obligation. By virtue of that great
natural law of poise and counterpoise, and which every
where demands an equilibrium, you feel the claim of
good for good. By that same argument you shall and
should retort harm with harm, and with injury pay
your debts of injury.
It's all of a like, and the terms good and bad — as
those others, heat and cold — are but different names
for the same thing. Gratitude and vengeance are
identical as an instinct of repayment. Also, in nature,
neither is discovered without its fellow. Meet him
with strength to be grateful, and you will have met one
at whom it is perilous to launch a wrong. Also, ven
geance is deterrent and goes to extinguish the general
flame of ill. Your sheriff is naught save a public
avenger; and if, for wrong done, the retaliation of the
individual be evil, then your statutes against crime are
but so much legislative sin. That blade of criticism
which hamstrings one will hamstring both.
Croker doesn't believe that doctrine, and with him
justice and mercy mean the same thing. That one
who in the courts of his resentment is convicted of in
juring him most, suffers no harsher sentence from
Croker than the loss of his aid. A refusal to help is
Croker's maximum punishment; and that, too, though
the malefactor had sought his life. This last is not a
figure, but a fact; and there be those to walk the
streets in proof of it.
Once Croker talked of the follies of rage. " One

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The Tammany Hall Portrait of Eichard Croker,

STEAD'S INTERVIEW. 107
should never fail to control one's temper," said he;
" I've done that from the first. No man ever saw me
angry. And the reason lies in the fact that anger, on
your part, weakens you and strengthens your enemy.
Coolness is a weapon, and you lose that weapon when
you lose your temper. And there's a peril in wrath.
If a man gets angry, his enemy can trap him into a
fight when he isn't ready. You give your foe an ad
vantage. You fight him when he is ready and when
you are not — if you're angry. This is wrong. Make it
a point to fight when you are ready, and when your
enemy is not ready. That is the A B C of victory.
You have learned the alphabet of contest when you
have learned to avoid wrath."
In this connection it seems well to insert a printed
conversation between Croker and the English editor
Stead. One will gain from it a double thought. It
will tell a story of Croker's philosophy, and glance also
on his book-attainments, concerning which last there is
so much of a malevolent untruth to be gadding about.
" Mendacity! " cry you. " But it was only a chapter
ago when you asserted the right to tell a lie! "
So I did, 0 reader! and you do well to pick me up.
But nowhere do I advance a reason for believing one.
The right to lie at times and under given conditions is
perfect, as I said; but the duty of disbelief is equally
perfect, with no relieving exceptions.
Stead was in converse with Croker, and printed the
result in the London magazine of which the former is
the publisher. The article from which the excerpts be
low are taken appeared in the issue of the Review of Re
views for October, 1897. No one will claim for Stead a
better honesty than belongs with any common man; but

108 RICHARD CROKER.
it is not an extravagance to assume that from Stead,
who is an Englishman, and vrith only a visiting interest
in this country and its politics, one would be as apt to
gain a truth concerning Croker as from confessed foes,
made doubly rabid by wrath and a vulture-hunger for
office which burns unappeased because of him. This
is from the Review:
" ' Tammany Hall,' Croker began, ' is much spoken
against; but unjustly. You will never understand
anything about New York politics if you believe all
that they [the public press] write in the papers. They
are ever abusing Tammany. But the truth is just the
opposite of what they say. Tammany's reputation has
been sacrificed by newspaper men whose sole desire is
to increase their circulation. They appeal to the pub
lic's itch for change and a malignant delight in the
misfortunes of our fellows.'
" ' Do you think the world is built in exactly that
way? ' I asked.
" ' No,' he replied with emphasis, ' it is not built that
way, but quite another way. These things I speak of
are temporary; the permanent law of the world and
humanity is quite different. You asked me how it
came that Tammany was overthrown three years ago,
and I have told you. But the issue of an election is
but an incident. The law that governs has exceptions.
The exception proves the rule.'
" ' And what is the rule ? ' I asked, somewhat curious
to know the ' Boss's ' theory of the universe. ' What
is the underlying fundamental law of the universe? '
" ' Sir,' said Croker, speaking with quiet gravity,
' the law is that, although wrongdoing may endure for
a season, right must, in the long run, come to the top.

CALUMNY IS MORTAL. 109
Human nature is not built so that roguery can last.
Honest men must come to their own, no matter what
the odds against them. There is nothing surer than
that. Calumny and thieving may have their day, but
they will pass. Nothing can last but truth.'
" ' Eeally,' I exclaimed, ' what an optimist you are!
I have not found so great a faith, — no not in Israel,'
I added, laughing.
" ' That's right,' Croker replied. ' If you put ten
honest men into an assembly with ninety thieves, hu
man nature is such that the ten honest men will con
trol the ninety thieves. They must do it. It is the
law of the world. Evil by its nature cannot last.
" Honest " John Kelly, who was leader before me,'
continued Croker, ' used to tell me, " Never mind the
odds against you, if you are in the right. Being in the
right is more than odds. Keep on hammering away,
and you are sure to win! " ' "
Boswell had an easy task. Johnson would talk.
His Scotch life-writer had but to smite the rock of
Johnson's vanity with the rod of query, and a cataract
of epigram poured forth. Sometimes it ran low in wit,
and again in wisdom; but it was ever flowing, pompous,
oracular, making up with sound what it wanted of
sense, and in all chance giving Boswell something to
write. Now Croker never says much; his ears have one
hundred labors where his tongue has one; he is indeed
silent and over-wordless. Yet is that nothing won
derful. Johnson was, when he talked politics,
which was two-thirds of the time, a theorist; Croker is
the practice. Theory is a talker; Practice was born a
mute. Croker does not say political epigrams; he does
them.

110 RICHARD CROKER.
Remarkable about Croker is a presence or atmosphere
not readily defined nor analyzed. It is sinister in
the sense of the occult. Croker takes natural command
of men, who as naturally obey. Call it magnetism or
magic, if you will; the attribute here talked of belongs
with certain folk. One might have beheld the same
thing in the instances of Cleveland, of Ingersoll, of
Reed; for lack of a term one might call it the hypnotism
of beef. Assuredly it comes not alone of the mind;
some of the wisest are without it.
Croker has this virtue to compel; others yield to him.
I was about, as a wonder-instance of this power in
Croker, to cite his personal over-running of Hill on
those three or four occasions when the exigencies of
politics brought them face to face. But I have another
thought in that solution. Croker, during locked-door
conferences of party leaders, has collided with Hill; and
the latter quailed and withered and turned sear as the
leaves of a November's beech. It was no vote defeat,
where numbers on one side overpowered numbers on
the other. Hill gave way before Croker mentally, obvi
ously, and as one cowed; and he who could think as
cleanly clear as a bowie's edge, and talk like a bowie's
slash, in the Senate, fell to be mentally stampeded,
and to mind- fumbling and word-blundering, before the
eye of Croker.
It was the more wonderful because none — not the
most sapient prophet of men — could have forestated
the phenomenon from those estimates of the two he
might acquire in personal talk and contact with them.
These incidents of Croker's power, and Hill's insta
bility when made to meet him, were as much a cause
of amazement to ongazers as they were to Hill. How-

THE FAILURE OF THE WIFELESS. HI
ever, as stated, I account not the said shattering of our
wifeless egotist of Wolfert's Roost to any Croker hyp
notism; I incline to lay it to his unwedded state. It is
not an explicable matter, and it leaps from discovery
rather than a thought, but I'm convinced of the certain
failure of the wifeless man. Go where you will with
those who have success, and whether you search among
warriors, or statesmen, or workers down to the one who
labors with his hands, your champion will fail not to
have a wife. Which is the cart and which the horse
elude me as proposals; whether one is weak because he
lacks a wife, or lacks because he's weak, I cannot tell.
Sure it is, however, that in all arenas of effort the wife
less man is weak.
There is but one writer to doubt this, and he is Sir
Francis Bacon. In his Eighth Essay Bacon relates
that marriages " are impediments to great enter
prises " and that " the best works and of greatest merit
for the public have proceeded from the unmarried."
But I shrewdly suspect the crafty courtier was aiming
a back-handed bouquet at the Royal Elizabeth; a
woman who, for her own fame, be it said, should have
been a wife full twenty times. Bacon's day — a day
when the Queen he complimented by such delicious in
direction made Hatton a chancellor because he could
dance — was not a time for sour argument; and even
Truth must then be heedful that its beard was
trimmed, its clothes splendid, its language in the mold
of Lyly's "Euphues," and its taste degenerate to the
sweetened mush of Sidney's " Pembroke's Arcadia."
Speaking of Elizabeth's court purely, it was an age of
ear and eye, rather than of turgid, irritating wisdom;
and be sure the Queen would have held it ill if her

112 RICHARD CROKER.
" young lord keeper," as she styled Bacon, had essayed
on that point of marriage other than he. did. But our
truthless philosopher — who was afterwards to take
bribes and be impeached — was false with his pen; nor
did he believe his own written words. He didn't take his
own medicine. He himself will have a wife, and weds
an alderman's daughter at the age of forty-five. It's
as I say: read where you will, the great are ever double.
Washington was married. Napoleon was married,
Cromwell was married — all were married. There was
never but one President of the United States to be a
bachelor. That was James Buchanan; and the best
thing one can say of him is, he's dead. Even Catherine
of Russia was married, and began her career by mak
ing captive her husband. Yes, in sooth! I can't get
away from the thought that Hill fell before Croker
because he had no wife.
But to continue with our work: Croker's talent of
control, whatever its cause in him, doesn't proceed
from capacity of perception on the other's part. I've
beheld this latter tested; and the man violent and
blurred of drink will tamely obey the quiet word of
Croker. " Chief " — shouted one obstreperous of many cups,
at the same time zigzagging up to the Tammany gen
eral — " Chief, I've been drinking for ten hours; I'm so
glad you've got home."
Croker was in talk with folk when the bibulous
one approached. He turned with half-cold mildness.
" You're drunk," he quietly said, " and should go
home. You mustn't talk now; go straight home."
" Chief," expostulated the stricken one, " haven't I
always been true to you? " He hadn't, but that was

BRAINS IS NOT ENOUGH. 113
no matter. " And now you talk to me like that! " he
concluded. " Chief, I wouldn't have believed it! "
" Go home now," replied Croker in his level tones.
" I don't want any lectures."
That one so deeply freighted said never a further
word, but, issuing deviously forth, fell into a hansom
and drove home. Yet he was a man of violence; he
would have obeyed no other voice; a platoon of police
couldn't have worked the witchcraft of his disappear
ance, nor yet the later miracle of that cold-water so
briety which has found footing with him since.
While one is unable to dig up, or develop in words,
those elements within Croker which give him his mas
tery, one may each day see the evidences of their exist
ence cutting the waters of events like the back-fin
of a fish. And one knows they're there. Yet one
would be as soon baffled should one attempt the
analysis of any other individual; and that, too,
whether the individual were failure or success. There's
more to make a victor, whate'er may be the stage of
his effort, than mere brains. Intelligence, promoted to
its utmost, doesn't serve alone. There was Carlisle,
once of the Cleveland Cabinet. Carlisle was among
the world's best thinking machines, but that was all.
With a genius for conclusion, Carlisle was incapable of
conviction. He was an attorney of the mental, just as
there are attorneys of law; he could produce you rea
son and conclusion by the multitude, without ability
or power of belief in one of them. There is a stub
born virtue in simple belief; many a bad preacher has
saved himself to interest, touch, and convince by the
sheer fervency of that integrity of what he said.
There is more needed to a Pompey than sole brains.

114 RICHARD CROKER.
Were I made to prognosticate the future of a man, I
would first put my ear to his heart. If the footfall of
his life was steady, firm, and strongly true; and if his
stomach walked even with his heart, and his lungs were
abreast the other two, his story of good fortune to come
would be four-fifths assured. My question would be
made on those three angles before ever I talk ten
words with him or studied the size of his hat. And
yet, in the end, the secret sought might lie in tempera
ment. Under that caption it should be added that
Croker has one of those temperaments of which Hume
was thinking when he wrote that they were " prefer
able to an inheritance of ten thousand pounds a year."
No; there is no mystery to be equal to the mystery of
a man. To read his future, or explain his past, or ac
count for his present, or whatever of loss or profit any
of them may show or promise, one must push the search
beyond the single discovery of brains. In fact, there
have been experimentalists of men to laugh at that one
attribute of a wisdom. It was Frederick the Great
who said, " If I wanted to punish a province, I would
have it governed by philosophers."
Nor can you tell the story of a man by measuring his
education. Books are like firearms; without enrich
ing one's native strength, they serve to put the weak
on partial footing with the powerful. One too weak for
towering mental efforts, unable at a crisis to evolve an
argument or make a right decision, may still, being a
scholar, find in books the thought-out and ofttimes
tested counsel of the very wise for that emergency
which scowls upon him. And that is the most of edu
cation in any strengthening effect.
But one might as well surrender. As I've already

A SMALL SHIPWRECK. 115
confessed many times and again when driven to turn in
the business, there is no saying in words that one, or
those fifty elements within Croker, which, being him,
yield to him his baton. One might repeat for the third
time, and it would seem to mark the verge of possible
explanation, that Croker makes daily stipulation with
himself to keep in " accommodation and correspond
ence with his times."
There is one more story to tell, and that will serve as
a postern to this chapter through which we may pass to
the next. It is but a little tale; yet it speaks eloquently
of two matters: the sensibilities of the ones involved,
and the hardy gayety of Croker in the teeth of danger.
"Is Croker given to humor?" said John Scannell,
repeating the question put by one of several gentlemen
who were discussing the characteristics of the Tam
many chief; " that depends. Ordinarily not; but I've
seen him face great peril several times, and it always
seemed to arouse a spirit for fun in him. Perhaps,
however, it was only his way of trying to encourage
others. I remember thirty years ago, when Croker
and I clubbed our small capital and decided to celebrate
the Fourth of July with a sail on the Sound. We hired
a sloop-rigged affair and, although not as good sailors
as I've seen, we got along happily for about two
hours. We were off City Island when, as if from am
bush, a squall struck us broadside on, and there we
were a capsized, total wreck in a moment. Richard and
I were clinging desperately to the keel of the boat; the
seas were washing over us and threatening to carry us
away. Of course he could swim like a Newfound
land dog, and may not, for that reason, have felt the
jaws of that awful fear that worried me. As far as

116 RICHARD CROKER.
I was concerned, however, I thought the end had come
and death was certain. I started to pray; as being the
usual, decent way of ending one's career. I was praying
aloud, and probably with much earnestness, for Rich
ard heard me, even through the howls of the storm.
" ' What are you doing, John? ' he asked.
" ' I'm praying,' I said.
" Richard inched along the keel towards me to grab
me, if he noticed any symptoms on my part of letting
go; at the same time I could see a gay smile on his wet,
storm-whipped face.
"'Praying, eh?' he said cheerfully. 'Why don't
you wait till we get ashore? ' "
It was a day or two later when I retold the story to
Croker. He looked a bit serious; then he said Simply:
" There's one part John doesn't tell; I'd have drowned
that day, save for him. When the sloop capsized 1? was
to leeward of the mast. I was caught in the ropes,
buried five feet under water, and held there. My
ability to swim was of no use; I was there in a tangle
and couldn't, get oujt. I never knew how John did it,
for I was senseless; but he came down after me and
stayed till he brought me up. He was going to get me
or go with me, he told me afterward. As it stood, I
was fairly drowned, and John had to hold both of us
on the keel of the sloop for fifteen minutes before I
was able to take care* of myself. We had been out there
an hour or more when we were taken off. John's story
is all right; but what he told happened towards the last
of our stay, when my wits and my strength had come
back. The part that he didn't tell is the part where he
saved my life. Well! " concluded Croker as he lapsed
into thought, " there's only one John Scannell! "

IX.

SOME CHURCH THOUGHTS.
I fear the devil worst when gown or cassock,
Or, in the lack of them, old Calvin's cloak
Conceals his cloven hoof. — Anonymous.
OuE three chapters in immediate precedence to this
in sort surprise the march of steady narrative and
shatter it. They have, however, a destiny. They are
meant, in their relation of half-grown anecdote and
matters trivial, to give one that near personal impres
sion of Croker which shall be of value as one follows
through his flight of politics whereof this story pres
ently has him on the brink.
Croker is now about twenty. We have come with
him through parentage, through childhood, through
school days; we have watched him as he practiced ath
letics for recreation and wrought with forge and iron at
his craft. Still, it is half in my mind that for the
three foregoing chapters, devoted to the small, I owe
apology either to Croker, or the audience, or both.
Aristotle might not have approved of them; his vote,
at best, would have depended on his estimates of
Croker. Were the latter without advertisement, the
Greek would have condoned that work; otherwise,
should he conclude on Croker as one wholly known.
In his " Rhetoric," where the Stagirite lays down rules
to be the law of sketch-making, he says, "If Achilles
be the subject of your inquiries, since all know what
117

118 RICHARD CROKER.
he has done, we are simply to indicate his actions with
out stopping to detail them; but this would not serve
for Critias, for whatever relates to him must be fully
told, since he is known to few."
Now that I've quoted our thoughtful Greek, I'm in
clined to disagree with him. I have, on occasion, quar
reled with the dictum of many a man, and why not with
Aristotle? After all, though a pupil of Plato, who
was a pupil of Socrates, he was but another blundering,
wrong-going, darkened thing called man, like the rest
of us. Take the Greek at his word. All he knew of
Achilles one of us may know. We find that the father
of Achilles was Peleus, and his mother, — that sea-
daughter — the sweet nereid Thetis. Also, by infer
ence, we are to remark that Achilles was first cousin on
his father's side of Ajax Telamon. At the age of six,
reared and educated by the centaur, Achilles slays lions
and wolves and runs down stags. Later he is dipped
in the Styx; and still later, accompanied of the aged
Phoenix and his friend Patroclus, he goes with a fleet
of fifty ships — quite a navy — to the Trojan War.
There you are! And nothing to come of it all save
a mad, wild hunger for more! For myself, I would
gladly bestow an hour on the details of whatever of
housekeeping the parents of Achilles put forth. Also,
I would he proud to know the daily routine of study
prescribed by that horse-and-man, his teacher; and
what system of rewards and punishments, credit-marks
and canings, Cheiron brought against Achilles to
fetch him to his book. And those lions; how big were
they? And those stags he overtook at six; how much
did they weigh? and what was the count of their tines?
And then the Styx; was it navigable? and was it fur-

ARISTOTLE ADVISED. 119
rowed by other keels than that of the dread ferryman?
There are a thousand questions to ask, and yet a thou
sand more. Even on that day when, in vengeance of a
dead Patroclus, Achilles dragged the hewed and slaugh
tered Hector thrice around the walls of Troy, speaking
for myself, I wotdd much prefer to hear what the hero
had for dinner, the state of his purse, his orders to his
valet, and the fault found with the cook, than to listen
to the blood-story. Distinctly I disagree with Aris
totle; holding as against him that once a man has done
great deeds, those small trite matters of common daily
routine with him swell to a vast importance. The best
book Walter Scott ever wrote was his journal; and all
for that it told of the little things that went hourly
with himself. On the thought second, one is not sure
that apology is due to anyone.
Croker, at the age of twenty, walks into politics and
enters Tammany Hall. There is a dominie of these
parts noted, rather than celebrated, for the imperfect
violence of his interference in civic affairs. It is not
understood that he has unusual vogue as a heart-mov
ing pulpiteer; nor are his preachments vivid of that
honey of character and sweet placidity of gentleness and
love so marked in the Master Who walked by Galilee.
Indeed it has been held by folk strangers to the town
and him, and therefore of no feeling, that our dominie
was gnawed of bigotry; vain and of an alert conceit;
one whose heat was that hunger-fervor for the calcium
of note, never to be satiated.
This moralist was in a recent public print speaking
with every license of opprobrium of New York, and
Tammany Hall, and Richard Croker, and what of
other men and matters that he happened to mislike.

120 RICHARD CROKER.
No one paid uncommon heed. The bitter output was
recognized as that conventional venom which made the
way by which he lived; which nourished and clothed
him, and paid those summer costs when each year he
leaves the town to Satan's tail and talons and flies to
coolness and to Switzerland. I have hopes that our
dominie has come with me in this book thus far. He,
in his printed scorn of all things save himself, expressed
him as one curious to learn, not the origin of Croker,
nor any native trait, but his education and home life
and the detail of that environment which kept him,
child and youth. Our dominie declared that once he
discovered " how one was brought up," he could ac
count for that one's after-life, and all but tell what good
works or bad were to come. All he sought to be made
aware of was the character of a child's education — in
the instance when he talked, Croker's education —
within doors and without, and he would foretell the
story of that child.
It is honest to admit that I step aside to the recol
lection of this dominie and his utterances in the spirit
of contention. There is some question which truth
might make with what he states, together with an
exposure of its character as nonsense. Withal, there
is a severity or two which calls for saying to the Church
itself. No, I never go to church; like Henry David
Thoreau, " I've no talent for worship." But what of
that? May not one look a church in the face and talk
with it? Your church presents itself as a wash-house
of the spirit — a place where one may have one's soul
laundered. Too often it comes to be a hive of hy
pocrisy. But whatever it is, it was made by man, and
is run by man, and man may speak with it plainly.

NATURE IS CHANGELESS. 121
One is not to decide that because one does not go to
church one has no religion. It is for that one has one
that one sometimes stays away. It is a good religion
that bases itself on a hatred of hypocrites, a loathing
of pretenders, a disgust of cowards, and a contempt of
fools. " Crouched," as Carlyle has it, " between two
eternities, the future and the past," the least among
us knows as much as any. And there's a deal of pre
tense to your church. He who unlocks the Will-be
should unlock the Was; the key that fits the future
should fit the past; tell one, therefore, oh. Church!
where one has been? That, as a fact, is fixed, and
should be easier of description than a future which
lies still in the lap of indecision.
"Faith," say you?
What faith? Is it that whereof the playwright
speaks when in his lines he observes, " Faith! Faith is
believing something that one knows isn't so."
But there is a fashion of faith; not your church
faith, truly! but faith none the less, valid and buoyant.
It is a faith in all the future, aye! though it be shore
less; faith in the unshakable, deathless equity of the
Plan. It is the faith which serves itself, stands by its
own strength, and asks no gardening hand to trim or
train it — no trellis of a creed for its support.
But to recur to our dominie, who waits for one this
space. Friar, observe thee: That good or that evil
which one is to do has its first sprouts in one's nature.
Those seedlings are immortal beyond any blow of yours.
They are not man-sown. No mere " bringing up," as
you phrase it, is to kill them in one breast or keep
them in another. That " bringing up," or " training,"
or " education of environment," or what you will for a

122 RICHARD CROKER.
term, is a film, a wash, a paint, and altogether of the
surface. Plant com in a hothouse, give it the care of
orchid or of rose, yet shall it come forth corn. Re
trieve the pigling of a day from the breast of his
mother; bestow on him such " bringing up " as you
prefer; robe him in silks, and sweeten him with baths,
and feed him milk and lilies. Do this while you please:
one year, two years, three. Then make your pupil loose^
That pigling, lusty now and grown, will hie himself to
the earliest mud- wallow and roll therein; he will crowd
among his fellows and shout and sing for draff; he will
guttle his mess with his feet in the trough, and then
sleep stertorously and offensively therein.
Training! One can't train a nature out of itself.
One may put on the pressure of an environment, or the
manacles of a " bringing up," and so enforce hypocrisy
and compel a pretense — an assumption of a virtue that
doesn't exist. But one cannot reach the nature. Re
move the pressure, knock off the bonds and your pig, or
your wolf, or whatever was student of that " bringing
up," is off for his sty or his cave like water down-hill.
Friar, even in thine own scolding and slanderous ex
ample, the futility of what you say appears. You stand
proof against your own preachments. You assume
to teach charity, and you show none; humility, while
pride grows on you like ivy on a wall; a score of
times you have taught from the text, " He that is with
out sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her " —
and yet you devote yourself to lashing Magdalens.
" By their fruits ye shall know them." This was
uttered of a church as much as any. What are the
fruits political of the Church? There is small pur
pose here, or rather none at all, to consider the Church

Exterior of the Democratic Club.

THE CHURCH POLITICAL. 123
save only as it shoulders its way into politics. There
is to be short patience with it in that part. As a vote
guide the Church is worse than a woman. Yet the
church-political comes and keeps coming. Peculiarly
is this churchly intromission true concerning city
government. And this last, be it known, in all that is
pressing on you, whether of tax or privilege, is of ten
fold moment with any rule of Washington.
And for that the Church is grown so brazen
to voice its surpliced views; and that, too, as one
arrogant, declining check or challenge, it should earn
some comment. The Church should be reminded that
the civil part borne by it in the centuries is not encour
aging. It was against church-avarice that statutes of
mortmain were enacted; statutes to have present reiter
ation in every English-speaking land. This was lest
at the ghost-scared death-beds of poor, sweating sin
ners, the Church should rob his patrimony from every
man of England.
In our own Constitution the Church is debarred from
linking up with State. Our fathers found in their ap
prehensions a call to build up a wall against it. To
their obdurate glory they builded wisely and builded
well. And now is it for us to permit the Church to
give counsel tantamount with orders to our wheels
men? Look well ere you consent to this. The cen
turies show the pulpit no better than the pew; nor half
so wise. Then keep the church-hand off your public
work. Decline a church word in your councils. The
law is the better bulwark; the altar seeks ever itself.
You may turn the pages of past time until your tired
arm sinks stricken, yet shall you not turn to any civic
good accomplished of a church.

124 RICHARD CROKER.
Why do I quarrel with the Church? Because, from
standpoints of the state, it does no equity nor justice.
It pays no tax when it should. It asks that public
money be put in its hands, in its own affairs, when it
shouldn't. Is it the law to do these deeds? Well,
then, and what of that? There is much to be law that
fails to be justice. As said an eminent jurist: " He " —
and the word, if it were " church," would be as true —
" he who taketh the law of the land for his sole guide
is neither a good neighbor nor an honest man." Be
cause a law built by the cowardice of politicians, or as
a bribe for churchly aid, opens villain door, must the
Church rush in? It should, when one studies its assur
ances, be the first to close it. And because it doesn't
close it, but both ways has greedy money advantage
thereof, one may know that in that spirit of avarice
which in the times that were stung the state to punitive
action more than once, the Church to-day is the Church
that was. The Church is never a patriot and always a
leech. It is a Bourbon, and in the words of the Cor-
sican, " learns nothing, forgets nothing! " Oh! I have
seen a church and met a clergy who did not in each
item meet this picture. But that was in a time long
away, and the region is a far cry from New York.
Let that wend.
It has raised its voice as a question, whether our
clergy, as they return from that world of politics
where they have been " going to and fro in the earth
and walking up and down in it," analyze the motive of
their activity? Is it because their zeal is asked for by
a coterie of rich parishioners with axes to gain an edge
by public grinding? They should read where it is writ
ten: " For the congregation of hypocrites shall be deso-

THEIR BELLY PREPARETH DECEIT. 125
late, and fire shall consume the tabernacle of bribery.
They conceive mischief, and bring forth vanity, and
their belly prepareth deceit."
It is but just to many a clergyman who is copy of
Goldsmith's " Village Preacher " to admit that my ex
perience among their fellows hasn't sent me the best
specimens. I have only an eye and an ear knowledge
of those four or five who are so impotently vigorous in
this town's concerns. And these invoke the honest
confidence of none. Wisdom pins neither faith nor
trust to what they say or do.
For a first discouraging thought they are a camera-
hunting litter. They have each more pictures
" taken " than some prince-noticed soubrette. And
of the same motive: the press. These clerics will
dispatch a half dozen new photographs of themselves to
each paper in the town each year. And with a cock
roach lust for ink, they are ever imploring the attend
ance of an interviewer. Also, they love the tents of
the ungodly. With the curs.e of rum in hideous exhibi
tion all about them, they offer you a sparkling example
across table of a glassful of wine. They talk of local
poverty and its relief — talk, mind you, not act — ^with
sixty-cent cigars between their lips. At dinners which
cost twenty dollars a plate, over vintages to call for
twelve dollars a quart, they debate the freezing and the
starving not a half mile away.
" So far as my observation goes," twittered a wren-
headed fop on an occasion as above painted — " so far
as my observation goes, the poor are a bum lot."
And the bishop who had brought up the subject
laughed as at the utterances of a second Theodore
Hook.

126 RICHARD CROKER.
Wren-head was right: " The poor are a bum lot."
But if these clerics be Christians, and not as he who
" covereth his face with fatness and maketh collops of
fat on his flanks," why do they not rise from their beds
of down, issue forth from their palaces to cost a king's
ransom, and with a fragment of their salaries of a
prince, lift for one day, even, the burden of some strug
gling, cold-nipped, hunger-beaten wretch? Aye! why
not, and they be Christians ? There live those who are
not Christians, and a long flight-shot from it in fact,
yet this wan business of other people's hunger has
bothered them out of many a dollar, I grant you.
These are the clergy — and it is they to stir the pot
of local politics — with whom I've collided. There is
much in them to distaste. And because of them one is
driven to certain decisions. One is made to reflect that
the professionally good cannot be very good; nor those
excellent for a salary of the best excellence. These
preachers are the mere hired evidence of the respecta
bility of their congregations. Their pulpits are wit
ness boxes from which they each week give their testi
mony. Their best methods of tendering that proof
they're paid for, and as well the one most delicate, is to
find scolding fault with all and everything outside the
Church. And they earn their money. Like members
of other professions, they wax vain of their craft.
They become pleasingly puffed with themselves. They
look often in the glass, and seldom from the window.
Stall-fed hypocrites these; the Pharisee and the Scribe
are their exemplars.
But were they of souls tender, honest, and patriotic
ally true, still one would be as witless as weak to heed
them in public matters. Of all who are peculiarly

PULPIT WEAKNESS 127
impractical and unfitted in what one may call the
coarser cares of life, he of the pulpit stands first.
You may not know a course to take in politics; surely
the pulpit does not. You, politically, may be dull of
eye; the Church, politically, is blind. And if you won't
read history to your caution, at least read that Book
where it tells of what passeth when the blind leads the
blind. Your Church, too, aside from its license as a pilot of
morals, is a business institution. In affairs cogent and
of moment to itself it can be both cunning and vigilant.
And there is a business side of politics easily stretched
to by the Church. Wherefore, you are to scan a pulpit
counsel as you would the word of any who may have
some personal iron in the fire.
Interest aside, however, your preacher is not like to
be any mighty storehouse of wisdom. The pulpit is
bound, in the character of the exercise it offers, to
grow of weakest head. No one contradicts a preacher;
he goes from cradle to grave uncontended with. For
him there is nothing to discover, it's all there; noth
ing to prove, it's all admitted; none to wrestle with,
it's all on one side. And so your dominie's mind-
brawn becomes flabby, faded, and wasted. Nature is
no spendthrift and throws nothing away. Nature is an
economist; she arms no one who has no foe, strengthens
none who goes unopposed. In any non-religious con
tingency, whether public or private, your dominie's is
the last door at which Wisdom, when it has lost its way,
will rap for direction.
However, I realize that I strive with the respectable
superstititions of men; or against their pocketbook,
which is the most active of all superstitions. There-

128 RICHARD CROKER.
fore shall we finish on this score. " Should a wise
man utter vain knowledge, and fill his belly with
the east wind? Should he reason with unprofitable
talk? or with speeches wherewith he can do no good? "
Tammany Hall was seventy-four years old when
Richard Croker, at the age of twenty, wrote his name
on its rolls. It was a tower of political strength at that
time; its battlements have thickened and broadened
and crept upward in the thirty-eight years since then.
On a bright afternoon Fourteenth Street bustles
briskly about its business. From Dead Man's Curve in
Union Square comes the clangor of myriad cable cars.
An elevated train rumbles uproariously into the station
in Third Avenue. Smart crowds, hurrying into the Den
Thompson matinee at the Academy, jostle you about,
and you pause to draw a breath. Opposite you is the
building to be the home of Tammany Hall. Looking
upward your eye catches the legend, Tammany So
ciety, and on either side the dates, 1789 and 1867.
Seventeen hundred and eighty-nine! A hundred
years roll back, and one is in quaint, colonial New
York! Fourteenth Street stretches away into sunny
meadow land. Down-town the great buildings dwindle
into low, rambling farmhouses. On the corner of
Nassau and Spruce streets stands a long wooden struc
ture, built after the ancient Dutch. This is the tavern
of one Brom Martling; a sore and drinking grief to the
quietly inclined.
" Brom Martling's Long Room " constituted, on
alternate nights, a dance hall for the festive and a
wigwam for the early Tammany braves. By reason of
its unsightliness, the " Long Room " was stigmatized
by Tammany's political adversaries as the " Pig Pen."

BROM MARTLING'S. 129
The joviality of the old-time gatherings at Martling's
is traditional. Of Tammany's good cheer the poet Hal-
leck has sung.
After the dispatch of regular business those of the
members who desired " to make a night of it " reorgan
ized. The " night " commonly lasted until morning,
and was spent in drinking political toasts, singing
songs, and telling stories of the narrator's own brag
ging exploits of peace and war.
Before the days of Martling's the earliest meetings
of the Tammany Society were held in Barden's Tavern
in Broad Street. It was not until 1811 that the
Tammany braves were able to rear a wigwam for
themselves. Then the old Tammany Hall, which occu
pied the present site of the Sun building, was begun.
Amid much pomp of aboriginal paint and feathers,
Clarkson Crolius, the Great Sachem of the society,
laid the corner stone. In 1812 the Hall was first occu
pied as the regular Tammany wigwam. It continued
to be the headquarters of the New York Democracy
until 1867, when the society erected the present Tam
many Hall in Fourteenth Street. A white marble
statue of the Delaware chief Tamanend (Tammany)
adorns the fagade of the Fourteenth Street building.
One reads of him in Cooper's " Last of the Mohicans."
From him the Tammany Society took its name.
Tamanend was a great Delaware warrior of the
Turtle clan, famed in folklore and savage story for his
sagacity and love of liberty. He ruled over the
thirteen tribes of the Lenni-Lennape (Delawares)
confederacy, whereof the home-region was what is now
New York, Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
Tamanend was present at the Great Council under the

130 RICHARD CROKER.
elm tree at Shakamakon, and signed the treaty with
William Penn. The legend runs that he was afterward
invited by Manco Capac to revise the constitution of
Peru, and made a journey through Mexico to the land
of the Children of the Sun for that purpose. On his
departure for Peru he dedicated each of his thirteen
tribes to some particular animal, such as the hear, the
beaver, or the otter, whose good qualities were com
mended to Indian emulation.
During Revolutionary days patriotic societies were
formed under the name of " The Sons of Tam
many." Later Tamanend was adopted as the tutelar
divinity of Democratic America. These early Tam
many Societies were scattered throughout the South
and West, but up to 1789 had no existence in New
York nor farther east. To William Mooney, a famous
citizen, belongs the credit of having organized the
Tammany Society in New York. Mooney was an
Irishman by descent, an American by birth. During
the Revolution he was a leader among the famous
" Liberty Boys." After the war Mooney went into
business as an upholsterer on Nassau Street.
It was Mooney's thought to call the society the
" Columbian Order," but he wisely yielded to the
Indian name, and in 1805, sixteen years after its
formation, the association was incorporated as
" The Tammany Society." Its members clung to the
musical Indian appellation. In the old records the
Christian Era was discarded, and all transactions were
dated from three events; the discovery of America by
Columbus, the Declaration of Independence, and the
formation of the Tammany Society. The year was
quartered into the seasons of Blossoms, of Fruits, of

WASHINGTON AND TAMMANY. 131
Harvests, and of Snows. The months were recorded
after the Indian method, as first, second, and third
"Moons." The charter of Tammany describes it as
simply a charitable institution. The society frequently
has assisted the needy. At its earlier meetings it was a
common custom for the hat to be passed around in
favor of destitute patriots or their widows and orphans.
In later years Tammany has contributed deeply in
times of public disaster — pestilence, flood, and famine
— both in this country and abroad.
But in its youth Tammany was exclusively a social
body. It made a specialty of celebrations. During
the earlier days the festival of Tammany, held on the
12th of May, was a notable holiday. Booming cannon
and waving flags heralded its dawn. Tammany braves
paraded the streets in a glory of paint and feathers.
In the evening the populace repaired to the only
theater in the town. On one occasion a play entitled
" Tammany, or the Indian Chief," was presented on the
boards. Washington, with several members of his
Cabinet, applauded the performance.
Tammany's first successful stroke of politics occurred
in 1790, a year after the formation of the society.
There had been trouble with the Creek Indians along
the frontiers of Georgia and the Carolinas. The
national debt was heavy. The people were war-
impoverished. The paleface for once wanted peace.
Washington, anxious to conciliate the would-be hos-
tiles, invited a delegation of the Creek chiefs to visit
him in New York, then the seat of government.
Washington realized that the outcome of this visit de
pended largely on the impression which their welcome
created in the minds of the Indian delegates. Upon

132 RICHARD CROKER.
their arrival, at Washington's request, the Creeks were
received by Tammany in the temporary wigwam at
Barden's Tavern. The Tammany braves had painted
and befeathered themselves to the last effect. The
Indian chiefs were delighted with their hosts. To
show their joy, they danced and sang the screeching
Et-hoh song. A satisfactory treaty was concluded
with Washington, " the beloved Sachem of the thirteen
tribes." Tammany conducted the first festival in honor of
the discovery of America by Columbus. The celebra
tion was held on the 12th of October, 1792, and com
memorated the three hundredth anniversary of the
day. But the early Tammanyites could be reverent as
well as gay. For many years it had been a reproach
to the Government that the skeletons of the eleven
thousand five hundred patriots who perished on
the British prison-ships at Wallabout, and whose bones
bleached along the shores of the bay, remained un-
buried. After many wasted appeals to Congress the
members of Tammany Hall raised a sum sufficient for
their honorable sepulcher. On the 26th of May, 1808,
a solemn funeral pageant passed through the short
streets of old New York and crossed to the Brooklyn
shore. There, in a vault in Hudson Avenue near York
Street, the bones of those who foimd death at Walla
bout were laid to rest.
When civil war descended in a red flood in the early
sixties, the " Tammany Regiment," or Forty-second
New York Volunteers, organized in May, 1861, was
under arms with the earliest. Of twelve hundred and
ten who followed Colonel Kennedy to the South, the
report at the close showed: killed, ninety-two; wounded.

TAMMANY AND GETTYSBURG. 133
three hundred and twenty-eight; missing, two hundred
and ninety-eight. There was no better record; none
more valorous than the soldiers of Tammany. They
bore the brunt of Pickett's charge at Gettysburg,
the decisive movement of the decisive battle of the war.
To their honor, on September 24, 1891, Tammany Hall,
through a committee of three whereof Mr. James J.
Martin was chairman — himself a brave soldier of that
strife — erected a monument on Gettysburg field. It
occupies ground held by the Tammany Regiment dur
ing the pitch of the fight.
Tammany is the oldest and most powerful self-con
stituted political association in the world. It began
with the government itself, being founded within a
fortnight after Washington took the oath of office as
the first President of the United States. The organi
zation took place at the old City Hall in Nassau Street
near Wall, a spot within sound of Washington's voice
as he spoke his first Presidential words to his country
men.

X.
BALLOT DUTIES.
Stand to it, noble pikemen.
And look you round about.
And shoot you right, you bowmen.
And we will keep them out.
— Brave WillougKby.
There is ever the murmur of criticism to fill the
querulous air against the politicians, the parties, and
the " machines." The javelins of public censure are
leveled unremittingly at the three. There is justice in
these complaints; albeit, when the subject has last
elucidation, there is to be clipped and sour sympathy for
the complainants. Granted each violence of office, or
crime of policj^, that has been charged against govern
ment since government began. With the latest syl
lable the public is the one belaborable therefor. It
isn't for King, and Kaiser, and Parliament, and Con
gress, and President that rods should soak in pickle; it
is for those peoples who permit them, and in whose
names and under whose hands they act their sundry
villainies. The whole people, or even a majority of
the whole, can proffer no demand which the Prince will
decline. He will accede, not for his honesty, but for
his fear. The royal motive, however, comes to be of
light concern; it is the deed which counts. And the
deed will as unfailingly respond to a united public as
any shallop to any gale of wind.
134

THE WELSHMEN'S PRINCE. 135
It was in a day when the Welsh were not so wisely
capable as now. Weak they were, compared with that
monarch with whom they dealt, for he was bold and
crafty as against their untaught ignorance.
Yet the Welsh had one fixed thought in their heads;
they would be ruled by none save him native-born of
Wales. And thereupon the Welsh public — not a
mighty host in that day — with its uncombed hair in its
eyes, its rough attire, its savage feet shod with un-
tanned hides, confronted Edward and shouted, "A
native Prince! " Also, they, the Welsh, swore by their
oaks that war they would until they had their way.
Edward was wroth, for the blood of the Plantagenets
was not the coolest strain in England. But Edward
confronted a whole people, and was afraid. He piled
his arms and a sort of truce succeeded. There was a
lapse of a handful of months. Then Edward invited
the Welsh chiefs and head-folk to the royal castle of
Caernarvon. He gathered them into the great hall.
When they had eaten and drunk, and the King observed
that they gnawed their bones slowly and with dull in
difference, as ones surfeited, and that their bickers and
wooden stoups of liquor were left long untouched on
the board, he arose and inquired in tones of angry
loudness if they were still of that mind to have a native
Prince or war.
It was like a tocsin-bell and acted as a summons.
There was none of the Welsh so drunk nor dead with
over-meat but was on his feet with the moment. They
answered the King with much clattering of arms, and
oral affirmations which were pregnant of storm.
Drunk and sober, full and hungry, they stuck for their
point to a Welshman.

136 RICHARD CROKER.
Edward was fain to smile even while his heart was
hot with anger for them. Their attitude was one of
high defiance; and defiance to a King is insult; and in
sult is the last thing your true-born King may stomach.
But Edward swallowed his spleen, as rulers, whether
elective or named of God, when faced by a whole pub
lic have ever done, and salving his hurt vanity with the
thought, vox populi, vox Dei est, passed into another
chamber. Edward was organized to yield to the wild Welsh
when they would not yield to him. A cry — a baby's
cry — was heard; and the King came into the banquet
hall with the infant in his arms. Scowling on his
Welshmen as they made a curious crowd about him, he
held his puling burden high so all might see, and
shouted, Eich dyn! and so gave the Welsh a Prince,
and the Prince a motto, with one and the same breath.
It was but sorry Erse, that Eich dyn; still it meant.
Here is your man, or strictly. Your man; and the
assembled chiefs as they gazed on the first Prince of
Wales, a Prince who had been to the trouble of a great
journey to be born among their hills, felt the point of
honor satisfied, and were at peace. A native Prince
had been granted unto them.
And as it was in the day of Edward and his Welsh, so
is it now with you and your officers of state. The pub
lic may have aught that it demands; and if wrong of
" machine," or party, or crime of place exists, it is sure
proof that, whatever hypocrisy may say aloud or put in
print on that subject, the public privily consents to,
nay, fosters and flatters its existence.
There is stern word to be said to publics concern
ing their treasons to themselves. It was a recent

AND NOW THE CRITIC. 137
day when a critic, who was also an officeholder, arose
and made unto the world a harangue. It was in its
nature a criticism of politics and politicians, and
the critic bent himself to inform a bevy of callow stu
dents about to fly from that nest of learning, the uni
versity, and spake veraciously as follows:
"Being an officeholder myself, I may be pardoned
for saying that most of the men who are holding the
offices and wielding authority will be forgotten before
the grass has had time to grow over them; for they are
not the great captains, they are not the leaders of our
progress and of our civilization. Their vision is
limited to the weather-vanes of public buildings. They
never give the order for advance on any great question;
they wait to be commanded to move, and then hesitate
until assured that it is the voice of the majority call
ing to them. They wait until the leaders of thought
have captured the stronghold of a wrong, and then they
try to plant their flag over the ramparts that were
stormed by others. As a rule, they are moral cowards,
following the music wagon of their time, and holding
the penny of immediate advantage so close to their
eyes as to shut out the sunlight of eternal prin
ciples." There your critic gives one a true etching of the
average officeholder — one selflsh as an oyster, hun
gry as a shark, and as sublimely egotistical as either.
He holds office not for its duties, but for its perquisites,
and all else may go to moth and rust so that office be
preserved to his lips and his pap-sucking does not
perish from the earth. Like the gambler of the story,
your officeholder cares not what happens, so it does not
happen to him. One is glad our critic puts the case

138 RICHARD CROKER.
with plainness. Should he keep on talking in that
strain he will tell much truth, and may even work some
good. In this day, when we have plenty — and misuse it —
when it is an era of abuse rather than of want, a critic
should be more thought of than a projector. 'Tis a
fat hour, rife of good things, opulent of the possible,
heavy with conditions of knee-deep richness; and your
critic to show a wrong, to indict an evil and pillory in
justice — in short, to object and carp and wield a lash of
biting sarcasm — is of excellent importance. We of
America don't need a William to found an empire, for
we have an empire; our time calls for no Charlemagne
to extend an empire, for we have enough; even a Wash
ington is no longer indispensable to our destinies, for
our Revolution is secure. What we could use is a
brigade of critics to act as whippers-in and keep our
hounds of office to their duty and see to it that the
honest, proper hunt of government sweeps ever on.
It is good that you re-read the words of the critic
printed before. You are a voter — a free citizen of this
free land of ours. And while the critic draws a picture
of your officers, he at the same time holds a mirror up
to you. " The representative represents," and he in
office is the reflex of the ones who put him there. Your
officer is as natural to his constituents as your apple to
its tree; and in his rottenness or his sound sweetness,
he tells the story of his origin. Your officeholder is
the creature of venal mud and mire the critic paints,
hut it is because of your choice, connivance, and con
struction. He is your fruit — your apple; and you must
own him. He wouldn't be there and couldn't stay
there, save for you, You want him, and there he is;

THE CRIMINAL PUBLIC. 139
you want him corrupt, and behold him a nest and lair
of foulness.
Truly, there will be a brood of hot, resentful
turkey-heads to rail at this. They will heatedly dis
claim responsibility for your officeholder. It will avail
them naught. The theory of this government is per
fect for its time; it is the practice that breaks down.
And the practice of government begins with the citizen
— ^with you who read this and contradict it. Who would
there be to withstand you, if you struck in for reform
and honesty in place? Your hands are not tied, your
voice is not stifled, only as your own mean hopes
and fears are found to bind and gag them. The path
is plain to the feet of every voter, and runs open to the
expression of his views until it touches the Courts, the
Congress, and the White House. There are neither
guards to detain nor walls to interrupt him. From the
highest to the lowest, in primary and convention and
at the polls; aye! in mass-meeting and by petition after
ward, your voter — ^you who read — may have word and
weight, both in the selection and ordering of every
tax-eater on the lists.
When a man can do a thing, and doesn't do it, that's
because he doesn't want to do it. If you didn't want a
rogue in office, there would be none; if a monstrous
policy offended you, it would disappear. Your officials,
whatever they are, may at least claim you as their
origin. If they are black, it's because you are black;
and there's not one word which the critic said of them
he couldn't say of you. A people — and that means
you — gets invariably a government to wed with its
deserts. Is it a tyranny, a monarchy, an aristocracy,
an oligarchy, or a republic, one may be sure it

140 RICHARD CROKER.
fits neatly and nearly the merits or demerits of the folk
over whom it has ward and sway. Be pure, and your
government will be pure; be brave, it will have courage;
be free, and freedom will abide in your high places and
descend therefrom to the rabble least among you. Be
dogs, and you will have dog-government — a kennel, a
collar, a bone to gnaw, and a chain to clank.
It is by no means sure that a dog-government isn't
that government howled for, hunted, and desired by
a huge fraction of our citizens who, if asked the
question, would describe themselves as ones high
hearted and noble, and bold, free gentlemen withal!
There be ever a moiety of folk who fear to be free.
They don't feel safe unless they feel owned. They
have — to pursue a simile suggested above — vastly the
dog-nature. They need a man to form on and draw
strength from, and to whom their trained, tamed
natures may refer and turn for direction and defense.
Half the world runs about hunting a master — seeking
to be owned. It hasn't the courage to dwell in man
hood on life's fearless hills. Such folk can't be free.
They are natural-born subjects — cringers from the
cradle; so bound are they in their prostrate natures to
have a king that they'd crown the town pump if noth
ing better offered. Yes, forsooth! the woods of our
citizenship are full of these dog-folk. Did you ever
observe a lost dog? how he skulks and yelps and, with
craven tail coiled close between his abject legs, ffies
from a shadow? That's all because the dog is lost.
He feels the desolation of being masterless — the hor
ror of the cur unowned. To-morrow you may meet
him with one who has consented to his title. And he
will prove a bold, insolent dog, and battle to the death

JOHNSON ON PATRIOTISM. 141
for black or for white, just as his master orders. There
be those to call these servile submissions to wrong in
government patriotism. It may be so. " And patriot
ism," said Johnson to the obsequious Boswell, " is the
last refuge of a scoundrel."
Reforms must ever begin with the people. Your
officer of state will seldom fail to be as much the ill-
monger as you concede him license. The demand for
better things must come from the public. It has been
thus through history. Whenever an ill condition was
to be fought and conquered, the torch of truth and pro
test had first to be kindled at some obscure, lowly
hearth. And once lighted and burning, it passed on
and on, from hand to hand, until that torch traveled
from low to high; and that which started with the
peasant was last seized on by the prince. The people
may have anything they demand. They have but to
be true to themselves — which they seldom are.
Whatever one calls his party politics, the name com
monly means no more than a screen for his self-
interest. Doubtless there is a sordid logic which goes
with money, and most folk consult their pocketbooks
when deciding their public duty. If one be killing
pigs, or building boats, or forging rotten armor plates,
or loaning money, those public conditions, whether of
war, or peace, or murder, or pillage, or liberty dead, or
law defied, or constitution invaded and set at naught,
which flow a profit to one's pocket are to one right, and
those one will sustain. One does not care though a
King be in the White House, and Satan himself that
King, so that it add and swell one's bank account. One
feels no further than the dollar, sees no further than
the day.

142 RICHARD CROKER.
And what is true of the high is true of the middle
and the low; what is true of the rich is true also of
the poor. As blinded slaves of selfishness they stand
abreast; each jostles the other as he crowds towards
that mess of pottage for which his birthright is for sale.
There's no such mighty difference between men; no one
is far ahead nor far behind; the race of humanity striv
ing is fairly well bunched, and one might cover the field
with a horse blanket. So-called politics, as expressed
by the parties, wouldn't assay ten. ounces of patriotism
to the ton. It is but a mad business — a lunatic dance,
and the piper is yet to be paid. And still the whole
dinner of government, as it goes a-cooking, is under
the palm of the public.
That critic aforesaid has given a true picture of those
who sit in your high places. He says they are thick,
slow, timid, greedy, dishonest; and they are. And you
don't like it ? Then make your stand. Those officers
will do anything, be anything, you say. Do you want
your taxes less? they will lower them. Are you tired
of tariff? they will reduce it to the flat levels of free
trade. Do you long for silver? you shall have it. Or
if you prefer gold, it is yours. Or say so, and you shall
have both. Those pliant folk of place will put the ship
of state about; they will sail to any compass point; or
they will set a staysail and heave to, exactly as you —
the public — demand.
You — the public — are in fault for whatever goes
forward in office. You have the whole tangle in your
lap, to mar or mend it as you please. Officers are a
stunted litter; from pathmaster to president they are
mere warts and pimply excrescences on the body politic,
which chance and the secretion of this and that poor

THE WORKINGMAN. 143
humor have forced into a more or less inflamed and
hectic exaltation. And you — the public — may instantly
have your will of all or any of them to make them go,
or stay, or do. No; there should be no high belief of any
instant, lightning-like mutations for the better; and
good comes slowly and seems shod with lead. Affairs
will trundle onwards in much the same old villain
way of bad. But, inspired of the critic's view, it does
one good to say these things and leaves one's mind
relieved. There is no uncommon outlook for a better condi
tion in any pose the labor element shall take. The
masses are as full of treason as the classes, and sell
out for less. The so-called workingman, as he pre
sents himself in politics, is not a spectacle of hope.
There is but one greater fool than the workingman,
and that is the fool he works for. Both are the
worst of Esaus and fairly contend with one another
as to which shall be more deeply deluded by the Jacob
of politics as now is. The public is on the bridge
when all is said and done, and it is the public's fault
when the nation is on the rocks. You — the public —
should never forget as you gaze on an officeholder that
in him, whether he be sound or foul, you see your
self revealed as in a looking-glass. Your Pj-esident,
for instance, — whoever he is or may hereafter be, —
is but a pocket mirror of the people he presides
over. It is fair-faced and honest as a question why such
often ill is spoken of Tammany Hall. And since I am
no member of that organization, mine should be as just
a pencil to spell an answer as any other. If my words
should sound for Tammany's defense, at least they are

144 RICHARD CROKER.
from the general grandstand and not from any rank of
partisanship. Tammany from the flrst has stood for the rights of
man rather than the privileges of money. The rights
of property are second to the rights of humanity in the
teachings of Tammany Hall. This is and was as
should be. Tammany Hall was and is made up, in
the grand aggregate of its membership, of poor
folk — those whose craft is of the hands. With ninety
thousand names on its tallies the collected private
riches of Tammany's whole membership would not
reach the single figure of any one of a half dozen
fortunes which dwell in this town. And as nothing
of the East is fashionable which does not found on
money, Tammany, as was before explained, is unfash
ionable. And what thing of New York City earns
or heirs the epithet of unfashion is summarily de
nounced and spat upon and as if it were Crime's self.
Moreover, the evil told of Tammany is not the relation
of the common voice; it is ever the partisan word of an
enemy. Tammany has, and since the first has had, two
natural foes. There is the party legitimately of oppo
sition; once the Federal, later the Whig, and now the
Republican. And next there is the party of the Mug-
¦mimp. These two influences are to fling furious and
never-ceasing calumniation against Tammany Hall.
Nor should fault be digged for. Such verbal siege
and storming are by nature's own decree. It is the
law. Politics is mere war, wanting the incident of
blood. In real war one might speak compliment of
one's foes; it would reflect self -credit as a word mag
nanimous, and never dull the falchion's edge for that.
But in politics — as conducted humanly — one may not

THE MUGWUMP GOOD. 145
give good report of one's enemy; for since politics is
only a war of words — the balloting being indeed but
a counting of the slain — to speak well of an opposition
would be half equal to surrender. Wherefore is Tam
many, naturally and incessantly, the subject of assault.
And as naturally and incessantly the chief of Tam
many, being presently Richard Croker, is selected and
vehemently arrowed against as the center of the butt.
On its part, Tammany retorts similarly against its
assailants; and as result — as has been for all time true
of true politics — one does not hear ten words of honesty
from any side. Each party sits up of nights brewing
mendacity against the other two; and then devotes the
next day to feeding therewith all willing ears.
There is a born reasonableness in the Republican at
tack on Tammany. That party, the grandchild of the
Federal organization of a century ago, is, as, one should
say, innocently, or perhaps the better word is properly,
in the field. This is not true of the party-Mugwump.
The presence — nay, the existence — of the Mugwump is
exotic. One is by no means sure, however, that your
Mugwump is not an excellent institution of Providence.
Of course, one speaks of the bred and pure-strain Mug
wump, and not of those others spurious, who for prac
ticed villainies, whether private or public, have been
drummed and driven from the divers camps of politics
to the music of the "Rogue's March." Your true
Mugwump serves felicitously the purpose of a critic;
and a critic of politics, as we have lately beheld, is a
desideratum. Your Mugwump, like poets and others the plain
whelps of Genius breeding, is born and not made.
And some are greater and more brilliant of mug-

146 RICHARD CROKER.
wumpery than others, just as one finds in Byron a
more scintillant poet than in Hood. By one sign
one may know them; and that, too, whether the
individual Mugwump considered be of the giant or of
the pygmy tribe. Ever is your Mugwump one whose
education is in excess of his capacity. Your Mugwump
is a quart of whisky in a pint flask. Or he is a No. 8
foot in a No. 6 shoe. Also, his policy is to leap from a
window rather than descend by the stair. Being
critics, no brace of Mugwumps may be found who
agree. And, being of a reboant herd, the uproar of their
constant bicker resounds afar. Withal mugwumpery
is brittle, as moods of self-fraud ever are, and breaks
into many pieces. There are the mental Mugwump,
the moral Mugwump, and the common Mugwump of
political commerce.
That validity of purpose and good-possible of mug
wumpery might gain display with the story of a con
versation as it befell among three. The trio were of
the genus Mugwump, species, mental. They discussed
matter, extant and apparent to feel and smell and
taste, as, for specimen, the earth.
" Matter is universal," remarked the first Mugwump
sagely. " Not so," quoth Number Two, and whose mien was
the mien of a trained sapiency — "not so; matter is
diversal." " Pardon me," observed the third, and he was of
a sagacity with the others — " pardon me, my friends;
matter does not exist."
And these Mugwumps of the mental were dining as
deeply as ever dined farm-hand, while rhetoric found
tireless coinage.

MUGWUMPERY DEBATES 147
As one gazed and heard, it was forced on one
that this dinner and discussion of three sides —
this isosceles triangle of mugwumpery — would find
parallel in the collection of three vrise fleas on the back
of that dog whom they honored with their inhabi
tation. " Dog is universal," cries the first.
" Dog is diversal," shouts the second.
"Pardon me, gentlefleas," breaks in the third — he
speaks thickly with a mouthful of dog — " pardon me;
dog does not exist."
Your common, practical, everyday intelligence would
pitch its camp in perfect comfort on the fact of dog; it
would go no further. Not so the Mugwump. Discov
ering dog, he leaps flashily to dog's highest point, and
from there goes ballooning off and aloft to the utmost
spaces of conjecturings. Your Mugwump declaims and
chops logic. He splits hairs, and then re-splits the
splints. Mugwumps are not gregarious. They occur no more
in flocks than do eagles — or owls. When discovered in
council or convention, as they sometimes are, one is to
observe that your Mugwump is not gathered unto his
kind in any spirit of solidarity or fraternal purpose.
Bach Mugwump attends, riding his own hobby, and
from motives self-exhibitory.
Your Mugwump of politics is solely critical; he is
not initiative, has nothing of plan nor of idea where
with to stoke and fire-up a future. Your political
Mugwump is a fault-finder; and born with his face to
the past, he never turns him about. He passes his
existence, as Butler once said, " like a man riding back
ward in a carriage; he never sees a thing until it's by."

148 RICHARD CROKER.
'Tis a harmless and not ill-meaning mammal, however;
and it is by no means settled that in his part of fault
finder your Mugwump does not serve in abatement of
that roguery which goes so frequently with the occu
pation of place. Elections at best are but exercises of
dark depression and dispirit; the one thing therein
certain is that, whosoever may win, the people will
lose; and it is not unlikely that, with such the situa
tion, your Mugwump comes prettily for alleviation
and as counter-irritant to general ill. He produces
nothing; but he may serve to some least degree in
prevention of the wrong.
Tammany — and the word in the Indian signifies
" affable " — has been in days preterite too affable for its
best standing in " society." It was ever friend to the
common borrel folk. It was not of the dandies, not of
the macaroni, and did not smell of musk and attar of'
roses and Fifth Avenue. It has lacked sadly in a spirit
for the exclusive; and so failing of patricianism, it has
failed also of ton. Tammany has, by these traits
of the common, become vulgar. Therefore it abides
the natural victim of never-flagging slander on the
essenced and fashionable parts of our local aristocrats.
And be it known that your nobility slanders with skill.
Vilification is the born weapon of an aristocrat, just
as is poison of a Turk.
Tammany is a " machine " in politics. Likewise is
its Republican opponent. Also, there is a Mugwump
" machine." But of this last it must be said that in the
congress of its parts there is so much of misfit and
want of unity, and again such a beggarly absence of
both oil and steam, that it comes to be a ramshackle
contrivance of neither force nor direction, and falling

TAMMANY IS NATURAL Ud
at once into its hundred incongruous pieces with the
earliest shiver of real effort.
Whatever of effective politics exists in this town —
and for that word, in the nation — ^whether of Tam
many or an opposition is distinctly the politics of the
" machine." One sees more of the " machine " in the
politics of a city than in regions rural. The "ma
chine," in its best flourishings and flowerings, is in
digenous to urban soil.
In either the theory or the ethic of politics the
" machine " cannot find defense; in the practice of
politics, and peculiarly in cities, the " machine " cannot
find dispense. That is because both theory and ethic
deal with man as he should be, while practice deals with
man as he is. And hence the " machine."
It is worth one's attention that your " machine " is
not artificial; it constructs itself, and comes as product
of conditions. Tammany Hall, be assured, would not
have lived almost a century and a quarter, were it not
of vitality inborn and of itself. Tammany will never
be " uprooted " — the common phrase of its foes. One
would as easily " uproot " the East River. The roots
of Tammany, and with them the roots of the two
counter political " machines," are the roots of the town
itself. The day of the town's destruction will be the
day of theirs. Each will ever bear the others company.
Cities are inventions — the inventions of the farms.
Being invented, cities in their turn invent. And one
inevitable upcome of a city is " machinism " in poli
tics. Observe, also, as proof of a parentage; there are
"machine" vestiges discoverable in bucolic politics; and
among your agriculturists there dwell shadowy Tam
many Halls of hoop-pole characteristics. The seeds

150 RICHARD CROKER.
of the " machine " are in the natural man. Hive or
herd him into a city, and behold the swelling and the
bursting and the sprouting of that seed. And the
blossom is such as Tammany.
There is an iron constraint to be the attribute of
cities. They crowd one's morals and one's politics just
as they crowd one's person; and even Freedom herself
must maintain her hands in her pockets, and sit with
knees clewed to chin, while in your city. Folk are
thereby fretted into the anarchistic. The " machine "
— even the poor " machine " of the incubated Mug
wump — has its good. It is in perpetual arms political;
and it acts as coast-guard of American institutions.
The " machine " makes captive the ignorant, the an
archistic, and the unrepublican, as he lands. It ties
him hand and foot with its discipline and makes him
harmless. As a suppressive influence, moving for pub
lic order and to the subjection of what else might be a
mob spirit and rise to become those small first gusts of
violence which unchecked conflate as riots, the " ma
chine " is to be extolled.
One cause of a disfavor of Tammany, and likewise of
all " machines," — that is the disfavor felt for them in
the land at rural large, — lies in the native hatred of the
country for things urban. The farms dislove the
cities; the country glowers at the town. Clay, in
his day, failed to understand this sentiment in
its existence. In the third Jackson campaign. Clay
it was who made Jackson's attack upon the United
States Bank an issue. Clay reflected that the bank
was a great Pennsylvania corporation. Clay counted
on that State coming to the rescue of its child.
But Clay was all abroad. The United States Bank

PHILIP HONE'S DIARY. 151
was a Philadelphia rather than a Pennsylvania com
pany. And the country hated the town. The Penn
sylvania rustic went against the Philadelphia-United
States Bank, as against that one dear foe for whom he
had trained and waited. And he beat it like a carpet.
This resentment of matters metropolitan burns
in every country heart. Massachusetts is opposed to
Boston, New York to the city of New York, Pennsyl
vania to Philadelphia, Maryland to Baltimore, Illinois
to Chicago, and Missouri to St. Louis. The country
contemns the town; and this feeling, even though he
who entertains it be of kindred politics with Tammany,
lends credulous believing ear to whatever of lie the
malice or policy of Tammany's enemies may forge to
its unfavor.
Tammany was from its birth-bed a disturber of
Money and of an aristocracy. This was true when in
Adams' White House time it toasted France; when
later it with Burr defeated Hamilton, destroyed his
party and plowed and sowed its site with salt. It was
true of Jackson's day; it's as true of this.
Old Philip Hone's diary, a personal journal kept
during the thirties, gives one a murmur of how Tam
many was disesteemed by the nobility current of sixty
years and more ago. Hone was rich and easy-going; a
worthy old gentleman, indeed, who had been mayor,
and was then retired from both business and politics,
and who with a certain Dr. Hosack — in attendance,
thirty years before, on the Burr-Hamilton duel — di
vided and did the society honors of the town. The
worthy Hone's strictures on Tammany Hall found
birth in this fashion: The Patroon Rensselaer owned an
estate, embracing about eight hundred square miles,

152 RICHARD CROKER.
near Albany. This estate was occupied by thousands
of tenant-farmers and mechanics, for the most part
Dutch. The old Patroon died; this was in 1839. The
tenants, who had been waiting for his death, arose as
one. They informed the heir, a Stephen Rensselaer,
that he was not to patroon it over them. They would
buy each tenant his farm or his house at its value, but
they would pay no further rent. Neither would they
submit to evictions. The new, young, little Patroon,
full of the pride of inherited millions, refused the de
mands of his peasantry. They would get no fee simple
from him. They would pay rent or leave. There
upon the mutinous Dutch peasantry deeply armed
themselves; whereat the young Patroon cast himself
and his griefs upon the bosom of the Governor and
sobbed for troops.
It was before an era of Coeur d'Alenes, and Pull
mans, and Standard Oils, and money-festered chief
executives, and the Governor was in no hurry to
send troops. He would wait a bit; things might cool.
They cooled. There was no spilling of honest, though
turbulent, Dutch blood. The young Patroon sold to
the tenants, and peace prevailed in that Albany region
roundabout. That is the story; here's what our excit
able old diarist said of that turmoil and the attitude
thereon assumed of Tammany Hall:
"November, 1839. A most outrageous revolt has
broken out among the tenants of the late Patroon,
General Rensselaer, in the neighborhood of Albany, of
a piece with the disorganizing spirit which overspreads
the land like a cloud [the spirit of Andrew Jacksonism]
and daily increases in darkness. The tenants of the

WAR ON A PATROON. 153
manor of Van Rensselaer, which is in extent about
twenty miles by forty miles . . . have risen en
masse. . . Dec. 12. The disturbances in the Eensse-
laer manor are in a fair way of settlement without
calling in the aid of troops. . . An attempt was made
during the course of the affair by the profligate politi
cians [Democratic] who are in the ascendant in this
devoted city, to get up a meeting of Tammany Hall to
express their horror at the thought of troops being em
ployed to shed the blood of their fellow citizens; and
to raise party capital by condemning the measures
adopted by the Governor; but this cankered sore of
Jacobinical corruption [Tammany Hall] did not come
to a head. Their hearts were black enough. . ."
There, in word and phrase, reason and conclusion, is a
fair and proper example of the fault found and charges
made concerning Tammany Hall. And thus it has
ever been, and thus it is. Tammany Hall is made up
of " profligate politicians," it is in all and sweeping
things a " cankered sore of Jacobinical corruption,"
and of those to form its membership it is written
that " their hearts were black enough " — and all be
cause Tammany Hall would meet and " express their
horror at the thought of troops being employed to shed
the blood of their fellow citizens."
Unless one seeks to ship a cargo of untruth, one
should take sedulous guard as against stories and tales
anent Tammany Hall. They will have origin among
Tammany's foes — not the safest historians — and be
commonly the offput of some Grimm of the Mugwumps,
or some Hans Christian Andersen of the Eepublicans.
Your world general believes too much and too easily.

154 RICHARD CROKER.
It should break itself of this habit of the credulous. If
the world would but think with one-half the assiduity
wherewith it listens, it would not so often be cast for
the "Simple Simon" role. The world does not so much
as understand and know itself. The world has a belief
that it prefers to laugh. The world is in error; it pre
fers to shudder. There is a joy in dread not found in
pimple pleasure. The world would sooner wonder than
learn; it delights in amazemient rather than instruction.
And with such doting care does it conserve its wonder,
so zealously does it resent any subtraction from its
amazement, that his reputation is made unsafe and his
name despised who seeks to brush aside even such as the
myths of Pocahontas, of Tell, of St. George and the
Dragon, or of King Arthur and his sword Excalibur.
It isn't religious heat that stands wrath-eyed when one
disputes the story of the prophet, the she-bears, and
the devoured gamins. It is that nursing solicitude, a
first trait of humanity, for the Horrible-wonderful
which comes screaming to its protection.
Verily! the world believes too readily and with
not enough of challenge. The surest countersign to
the confidence of folk is a tale of horror or wonder.
And believing a story of the marvelous, the world, go
ing a next step, is quick to name it miraculous and from
the blue above, or what further mystic thing for an
origin the relater declares. One touch of the acid of
common thought would show of these miracles and
wonder tales their bogus character.
Take the duel between David and Goliath. That
victory of David comes glancing through the centuries.
Hall-marked as a miracle, none has arisen to doubt
nor to discover the foolish falsity of that marking.

Main Hall of the Democratic Club.

DAVID AND GOLIATH. 155
Pause for one moment; bend the brow of considera
tion. By partial Way of a thought-help gaze on Moreau's
"David"; a statue which has fame. What is
he? A young, trained athlete in swell of power
and swiftest accuracy. His artillery of the sling
is wrapped to his strong wrist. He can hurl there
from a pebble the size of an egg, and to weigh a
pound, with the force of a bullet and the certainty of
English archery. Alert, nervous, strung like a bow,
and with the pliant strength of a sapling, stands David;
courage undauntable beats and bounds in his heart.
Observe Goliath; the ox-head creature who has
challenged David. Here is his description taken
from first mouths. " And he had an helmet of
brass upon his head, and he was armed with a coat of
mail; and the weight of the coat was five thousand
shekels of brass. And he had greaves of brass upon
his legs, and a target of brass between his shoulders.
And the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam; and
his spear's head weighed six hundred shekels of iron."
Later, when David beheads him, one learns that he has
a sword. Contrast the two. Our officious giant, a lubber
with a horse-load of brass on his back, and another
of iron in his hand, shufihng with slow and snail-like
difficulty, and never a weapon save clumsy sword and
clumsier spear. And neither of them lethal at a quar
tette of yards. David, lean, clean, and hawk-swift, free
and afar off; equal with his sling to death and doom
within a radius of a score of rods. Is one to find the
amazing-unexpected in the ending? Goliath, fatuous
Philistine! never owned a chance; he was as good as
dead the moment the match was made,

156 RICHARD CROKER.
Tammany Hall, as a "machine," is perfect. With
an enlistment, as stated, of ninety thousand, it has
thirty-five " leaders," one from each assembly district;
these make the great layer of power. The thirty-five
" leaders " select a finance committee of five; these five
name their chairman; and that chairman is the general
in command of the organization. Eichard Croker is
the present chief; John Kelly was his predecessor.
Each in his turn deserved his elevation, for together
they rescued Tammany, after years of conflict with
that ogre of the parties, from beneath the feet of
Tweed. Every Tammany " leader " is a subchief in his dis
trict. Under him he has a " captain " in each election
precinct of his district; and each of these " captains "
has a little " captain " under his orders in every city
block of his precinct. Thus is the pyramid of Tam
many power put up. First a base of ninety thousand
privates; then a " captain " for each city block; then
a " captain " for each voting precinct; then a " leader "
for each assembly district; then a finance com
mittee of five; then Eichard Croker. Aside from
the ninety thousand enlisted men, who represent
a " regular " army in politics, there are full two hun
dred and twenty thousand other voters held within
the harness of Tammany influence. The organi
zation has its main home in Fourteenth Street; its
property there is worth easily a million of dollars.
Then there is in Fifth Avenue near Fiftieth Street the
Democratic Club — practically a Tammany Club — with
a membership of three thousand, with real estate to the
value of three hundred thousand dollars, and of money
an equal amount in bank. Each " leader " has in his

THE TAMMANY FINANCES. 157
district a club and a clubhouse; the latter often of a
cost to touch one hundred thousand dollars.
To conduct a campaign Tammany Hall expends about
three hundred thousand dollars. This money is given
out the night before an election; each " leader " having
his share. The wage and the number of election
workers are fixed. There are to be ten men in each
voting precinct to wear the badge and get the people to
the polls. These receive five dollars each, or fifty dol
lars to a precinct, or over seventy thousand dollars for
this one item alone covering the entire town. Then
there are carriages to bring the lame, the halt, and the
blind. There are halls to rent, and fireworks to pur
chase, and stands to put up, and trucks to hire for
" orators," in the three or four weeks of a canvass. Told
and counted, the over-all expense clambers to three
hundred 'thousand dollars. This sum is not hard to
get. Contributions come from every quarter; some of
them secret and not caring to be known.
" Sometimes we contribute to one party, sometimes
to the other, sometimes to both," said Havemeyer of the
Sugar Trust to Gray's Senate Committee a quintette of
years ago.
This practice still obtains among the great com
panies; and the point— strange as it may come to ears
used to another tale — the point with Tammany Hall
is the point of not getting too much. There are hun
dreds to whom a part of their subscriptions is returned
as " too large," or " more than the organization needs."
Following an election, what money is left is generally
given to a charity or to some cause of worth. Within
the past four years there have in this manner gone, to
the poor of this town, forty thousand dollars; to the

158 RICHARD CROKER.
cause of Cuba, forty thousand dollars; almost as much
to the Galveston sufferers; almost the same sum to
rear a monument to Parnell, and to pay the mortgage
on the Parnell estates in Ireland and save them to the
family of that dead liberator. Tammany keeps no
books; there's no way of discovering who gives or how
much; the funds are banked in the name of a treasurer
who acts as secretary to draw checks and aid the work
of the finance committee.
That is the money, and in a sense, the military side
of Tammany Hall. There is still another, and it is this
latter which makes it well-nigh impregnable in local
affairs. Tammany is a political organization one day
in the year; it is a charitable-benevolent-fraternal or
ganization three hundred and sixty-five. Does a brick
layer, or carpenter, or laborer, or even such as a clerk
or a bookkeeper find himself minus work, he goes to his
" leader." One may meet from fifty to three hundred
of these out-of-work folk waiting in front of every
" leader's " house each morning. And the " leader,"
and his " election captains " under him, make utmost
effort to find places for these applicants. The
" leaders " haunt contractors and builders, and they
trade favors for places. This exchange extends to
street railway companies, express companies, and scores
of other enterprises. The man offered must be good
and capable of his duties; that is what the company or
the contractor demands. Satisfaction achieved in these
directions, the " leader " may send the candidate.
On their parts the contractors and companies call on
the " leaders," whom they have thus aided with situ
ations for folk out of work, to gain them what of
leniency, forbearance, or favor they may require from

VISIT THE POLICE COURT. 159
time to time of city departments such as the street, the
park, the health, and variously the other boards among
which the control of the town is lodged. In positions
other than ones of office, it is not an overstatement to
say that Tammany Hall places and keeps thirty-five
thousand souls to that work wherewith th.ey earn their
daily bread.
Again, go into one of the numberless police courts of
the town. " Ten dollars or twenty days on the
Island," mumbles the magistrate, and the poor wretch
is shoved aside without two bits in the present, and the
workhouse filling the future dead-ahead. Just as you
feel your sympathies at work for the puny malefactor
who for want of ten dollars must serve in captivity for
twenty days, a cool person, well clad and business-like,
pushes up to the clerk. He doesn't give the prisoner
a look; often he doesn't know him, save by word of his
undercaptains. " Figure up that man's fine and costs,"
he observes to the clerk. It is done; it is then paid by
the cool man, who walks away with no more of notice
to the liberated one than mayhap a nod of short indif
ference. It is all cold and commonplace as a brief
piece of political business. The cool person who pays
feels no glow as one who does a charity, for he performs
the ceremony, on an average, full two hundred times a
month. Nor does the beneficiary of his interference
boil with any turbulence of obligation. It is what he
looked for. The "leader" pays the fine with the
thought that our soiled and broken gentleman, in
present peril of the Island, will vote "right" next
time. And the soiled one does, when the time arrives.
And why should he not? It is the commonest, kind
liest animalism to be friend to one's friends.

160 RICHARD CROKER.
There is one last feature of a Tammany political edu
cation that is worth a note. It is meant to guard
the Tammany vote from purchase by its million-
owning enemies. It has quiet teaching among the
lower stratum, — and the " precinct captains " are, com
monly speaking, the teachers, — that it is a brave, good
deed, by any hook or crook, to get all the money from
the opposition that the rich and credulous foe will part
withal. Promise to vote the opposition ticket, promise
anything, and get the money; that is the quiet instruc
tion. Then break the promise and vote with Tam
many Hall.
" We have to do this," explained a " leader," " in
order to protect ourselves. The opposition is sure to
try and buy our votes. Now if we frightened these
' sell-outs,' and led them to think we'd call it a crime
if we found them with Mugwump money in their hands,
or discovered them in close confab with a Eepublican,
we'd lose a lot of men. They would take the other
fellow's money; and then they would feel guilty and be
afraid to come back to us. And there you are. Two
to one they would make good, and vote the Mugwump
or Republican ticket. So we teach people of the ' sell
out ' stripe that, so far from finding fault with them
for getting money from the opposition, it's the acme of
cunning and a feather in their caps. The result is that
not one of them can be bought. At the same time they'll
take the money off you so fast you'll catch cold. They
return and brag to us of the hauls they make. I've
seen time and again dozens of my own men, with, Mug
wump or Republican badges on, ' working ' at the polls.
No; of course they were all right. They voted with me
each time. But they took as much of the other side's

BARTLEY CAMPBELL'S APOTHEGM. 161
money as was handed out. It's the only way for us to
keep from losing twenty thousand votes in this town.
Make them understand that it's all right to take the
other fellow's money; that you like them the better
for it."
Well, well, well! One isn't sure whether one has
been in the mud or on the grass during the last ten
minutes. Decision, doubtless, as in other matters, will
wait on the point of view. " Fame and infamy! " ob
served Bartley Campbell in his play of " Clio " — and
the great dramatist was in a frame of wisdom — " fame
and infamy! It takes a sound philosopher to mark
the line that separates the two."

XI.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO.
Necessity, thou best of Peace-makers,
As well as surest prompter of invention.
Help us to composition ! — Anonymous.
Heavens! how one hates to begin! One's mind is
like unto some truant fowl of the air, vrith spread
pinions circling and whirling, and whirling and circling,
without being brought to perch on anything. Work is
a bore and tasks are loathly matters. And to write a
book is to work. Still, why should there be such toil
and travail thereover? Is it better to build a book
than to make a coat? Your tailor would not say so.
Also, he might exclaim that those who make only
books run but starved bills with him.
Yet a book is a good thing; that is a good book. It
shall abide a keener, longer wearing than a coat.
" Allah's three greatest gifts," says the Mussulman —
" Allah's three greatest gifts to man are a horse, a
woman, and a book." The last is the best, and that
false Paynim should have given it the right of the line.
A book is best; one may take it up with no fear of a
runaway, and put it aside without proceedings in court.
A book makes life worth living. Without it the play
might scarce be worth the candle. One's mind goeth
forth as the dove from the ark and findeth no rest for
the sole of its foot. The book arises and offers that
162

FOPPINGTON ON BOOKS. 163
lacking repose. True! there be those to dislike a book,
others to deride it. Such last was Lord Foppiagton in
Vanbrugh's "Relapse"; a most witty and licentious
comedy, this last, and therefore one much dog-eared
and worn of its leaves.
Said my Lord Foppington: " To mind the inside of a
book is to entertain one's self with the forced product
of another man's brain. Now I think a man of quality
and breeding may be much amused with the natural
sprouts of his own."
Lord Foppington never read a book; perhaps, how
ever, he solaced himself, when not on the painted,
peruked, and powdered warpath of his fopperies, with
meditation. And meditation, like a book, belongs
under the caption of good things. One may not be a
philosopher, but one — all of us, in amiable verity — may
be a meditator; which is to be a dwarf philosopher in a
dwindled way. Your meditator, be he puny, has
thoughts in knickerbockers; your philosopher is the
grown Anak of thought, profound of mental chest and
a clothyard wide i' th' shoulders.
Work, work, work! and what is the call for it? Man
is spurred to work by the sharp and lancing rowel of
his wants. And what are his wants? Food and sleep
and warmth and shelter — his board and his bed and
his clothes and his roof. He who toils beyond the ac
quirement of these works foolish overtime. 'Sure, folk
do. They go on heaping millions on millions — Pelion
upon Ossa to reach what gods they know not — and
ache, sweat, and swear with the pain of the effort
withal. Once I asked a multiplied millionaire — ^he was
one who in the name of nitrate had exploited nations,
and, like some weasel of commerce, sucked the yolk from

164 RICHARD CROKER.
the egg of more than one South American state — who
at the age of sixty-five, with digestion spoiled and slum
bers broken by robberies feared as well as robberies
planned — he called them " business " — was still in the
acrid thick of his dollar-getting, why he so struggled
for more money? I recounted his age and his millions,
and his dissatifying dyspepsia.
" Why do you," quoth I — " why do you chase dollars
when you have four-hundred-fold enough for every day
that's left you, and the most extravagant gilding
thereof? Why do you do this thing? "
" That calls for reflection to make the answer," and
my man of many millions swung to the tiller of thought.
" If you will tell me," he continued presently, " why a
dog will chase the hundredth rabbit, I'll reply to your
question. The dog doesn't need the rabbit. He will
even abandon it dead on the ground to any who may
find and care to lift it, once it be overtaken by him and
killed. The dog drops it from his memory when, cap
tured and slain, he lets it fall from his mouth. Yet
that dog, at the heel of the hunt or at the last of his
life, will chase his ultimate rabbit — and it may be his
millionth — with as much of anxiety to overtake it as
though it were the first he'd ever seen. As I stated;
when you tell me why your dog pursues that last rab
bit which he doesn't need, I'll explain to you why your
millionaire struggles for that other dollar that he can
not want." And then he lifted up his voice and
laughed. It was shrill and high and hard, that laugh
— a lupine laugh. So have I heard a wolf — that gray
" business man " — laugh in the still midnight of our
Western plains.
One may observe here, what I didn't say to my mil-

THE ARROW IN THE AIR. 165
lionaire, and that is that while his foregoing may be
called and indeed may be an explanation, it is not one
which should prevent the issuance of a commission of
lunacy based on that shattered moral intelligence of
which his dollar-chasing, when dollars are grown use
less to him, would amply evidence the existence.
One works to live, and life is no such lesson of suc
cess at best as to justify any heart-breaking or nerve-
gnawing strife for its propping. Life is but an arrow
in the air. Shot by some sightless archery of nature,
each of us is projected upward towards the skies.
None reaches them; some soar higher and some with
weaker flight, and each comes clattering back to bury
himself in the earth as if the grave were the bull's-eye
aimed at. Or life is as a flying fish, that springs from
the coastless ocean of the infinite, and skims and squat
ters for fifty or mayhap a hundred feet along the
surface, to plump at the last and forever into some bil
low of oblivion.
But whether, in the fact of one's life, one is compara
ble with an arrow, or a flying fish, or with some addled
spaniel which chases its tail and so gives one an exhibi
tion of much motion with no progress, one can never be
more than content. There was a well-lined genius
yclept Lubbock, a Sir John he was, who wrote a
volume, the " Pleasures of Life." And Lubbock did
very well for one who missed his purpose. Pleasure
pivots and centers on a good stomach, and Lubbock
didn't lay stress enough on that fact. Happiness
comes from within, when one talks of a birth, and once
the four cardinal demands of food and warmth and
clothes and roof are replied to, will never be far away.
Surely, happiness does not depend on much money, and

166 RICHARD CROKER.
too often finds in riches its murderer. How do I know?
Walk out and look about you; Third Avenue is having
a better time than Fifth. Happiness has no purse;
and so, to be alliterative, you find misery in a man
sion while hilarity hails you from a hut.
But, alas and alack! one must pull up. Posting and
pounding ahead on the courser of one's shaggy, lum
bering, thick-legged, uncurried fancy may be very well,
but it in no sort shortens one's task. One is no nearer
the heels of this volume than one was an hour ago. It
is wiser, since work one must, to regather about the
subject of Tammany Hall, and commit one's self to
currents of narrative which count for a shortening
of this voyaging.
Tammany Hall may with strict justice make one
mighty claim for itself as a powerful and long-standing
fortress in politics. It was Tammany Hall that a full,
round century ago gave to the Democratic party its
first national victory, and to the country Thomas
Jefferson as its President. Tammany took the first
steps as a social-benevolent organization. Within a
handful of years it began to be assertive in polities.
Tammany Hall, as written before, was ever an object
of aversion to those who were or would be aristo
cratic. Tammany had its conception among the
masses; its first membership was drawn from those who
had been private soldiers in the war of Revolution.
The object was to upbuild an order against the Cin
cinnati; which latter, organizing just before and re
garding itself as an order of American nobility, was
close in its membership, and felt about for its starched
and perfumed support among those rich, and who had
been officers of the Continental army. Founded in

ANCIENT TAMMANY TOASTS. 167
such feeling, Tammany couldn't in the very sap of
things refrain long from an enlistment in those forays
of politics which, one hundred years ago, were, if any
thing, more bitter than they are to-day.
In those last four years when Washington prevailed
as President, and France was tooth and claw in mortal
strife with England, the question American became:
" Shall we aid France as fifteen years ago she aided
us?" And general sentiment divided. Washington
was against aid, Jefferson was for it; and Tammany,
hating England, took side with Jefferson. The Tam
many position had setting forth in those toasts offered
at its banquet of 1796, whereof the following is a list.
The festival was in celebration of English evacuation
of the city, and the sentiments offered read as follows:
" The people of the United States and their Presi
dent. " The virtuous Congress of 1776 who decreed the
freedom of three millions of their fellow citizens, thou
sands of whom afterwards sealed it with their blood.
" The republic of France. May the wisdom and
energy of her counsels confound and dismay, while her
armies and navy overwhelm and annihilate her enemies.
" Spain, and those other powers who have acknowl
edged the republics of America, France, and Holland.
May they be an example to those despots of the world
who are yet blind to the happiness of the human race.
"A lasting peace, founded on the basis of equal
rights to the belligerent powers of Europe; may they
never more unsheathe the sword in defense of des
potism. " Citizens Jourdan, Buonaparte, Moreau, Boumon-
ville, and the other brave officers and soldiers of the

168 RICHARD CROKER.
French armies; success to their arms, and may their
exertions secure the constitution and liberties of the
French republic.
" Success and prosperity to all who contend for the
equal rights of men.
" May the late infamous British treaty be expunged
from the laws of our land.
" Eternal love and gratitude to the French nation;
may the men who would connect us with Great Britain
justly incur the resentment of every genuine American.
" The voluntary exiles of our city and country who
sacrificed their all to establish freedom and inde
pendence. " The memory of those American citizens who fell
martyrs to the cause of our country; may we never for
get to celebrate their glorious deeds.
" May the ' exercise of heels ' so nobly displayed on
the 25th of November, 1783 (Evacuation Day), be for
ever improved to the advantage of the [Democrats]
Republicans. " The American fair. May their smiles be propi
tious to the cause of freedom and their approbation be
only bestowed on the friends of their country.
" A speedy evacuation of the city by all Tories,
royalists, and British emissaries; may their retreat be
to the tune of ' Yankee Doodle.'
" May the tricolor flag soon wave in triumph on the
Tower of London, and may the oppressed citizens of
Britain regain their lost rights and enjoy perpetual
freedom. " The day we celebrate; may we ever remember the
greasy flagstaff and the triumph of Liberty."
Those were the sentiments of Tammany Hall in

JACKSON'S PICTURE. 169
1796; they are still her sentiments, as witness some
recent resolutions, not to say money contributions, in
succor of a Boer republic beset of the English; and a
yesterday failure to half-mast the city's flag on the
occasion of a royal funeral.
In the four years between the day of these toasts and
the election of 1800, when Adams went down before
Jefferson, and pure Democracy set its heel on the neck
of Federalism, there were a half dozen great minds busy
with the separation of American sentiment into parties.
The elder Adams was President; Jefferson was the over
shadowing name in Virginia and the South; Hamilton,
Secretary of the Treasury while Jefferson was Secre
tary of State for Washington, hitherto dictator in
New York, was being bluntly met in the lists of politics
by Aaron Burr; and Jackson, on the threshold of Con
gress, was just taking his first step in affairs.
Speaking of the latter, Gallatin remembers him of
that time, " as a tall, lank, uncouth-looking personage,
with long locks of hair hanging over his face, and a
queue down his back tied with an eel-skin; his dress
singular, his manners and deportment those of a rough
backwoodsman." Poor Jackson! His dress and de
portment no more suited the taste of the Federal Tur-
veydrops, than did, thirty-five years after, his admin
istration of economy, and the cutting out of that public
cancer the United States (Biddle) Bank delight the
Whigs. Uncouth and awkward indeed he was. And
singularly so did the British at New Orleans, and the
Calhoun rebellionists of the thirties, discover him.
John Adams was President, the man of whom Frank
lin wrote, " He is always honest, sometimes great, but
often wad." The vigors of Washington had ceased.

170 RICHARD CROKER.
Adams and Alexander Hamilton were the controlling
spirits of the Federalists; and because that party was
in power, of the nation also. The Federalists were the
party of the money interests and of the aristocracy.
They believed in American independence; but their
leaders at least stopped there and did not believe in
American republicanism. This was peculiarly true of
Hamilton, who referred to the organic law of this coun
try as " that crazy old hulk of a Constitution "; and
finally, disappointed of his prophecies of coming crash,
and defeated of his New York autocracy by Burr, and
Tammany Hall, and of his national supremacy by
Jefferson in 1800, wrote wailingly to a friend: "I'm
not the man for America; I never was."
Certainly your rough, rude Democrats, such as
thronged the corridors of Tammany Hall, and who fol
lowed Jefferson and Jackson and Burr to ballot-battle,
each in his region, were far from being favorites among
those who professed the super-delicacy and disesteem of
the vulgar which were so eminent in that English no
bility they with servile sedulity admired and imitated.
The rich, who in that New York day as in this were
the " respectable," were Federalists to a gentleman.
The poor — what portion the rich and "respectable"
didn't buy nor browbeat — the poor, who then as now
were the " vulgar," were Democrats and Tammany
men to a man. And these lines of separation ran even
into literature; such as Washington Irving and Feni-
more Cooper — although these two came notably into
the light a bit later — and others of the guild of scrib
blers, with wit enough to locate the butter on their
bread, were Federalists.
That high disregard of a hobnailed Democracy burned

John J. Scannell.

MARTHA WASHINGTONS RAGE. 171
now and again in social life, and it was Martha Wash
ington, our own country's mother, who, on coming into
the room to give some order about Mistress Nellie
Custis' music lesson, had her eye anger-riveted to an
oily spot on her wall paper, left by some visiting head
more laden of bear's grease than prudence.
" What is that? " demanded the indignant housewife,
and her scorn-shaken finger was pointed at the spot.
"What is that? A grease spot! Some low, dirty
Democrat left that; no Federal would have done it."
Some sign of that day's feeling, and of those near
years to follow Independence, may be discovered in
what Jefferson writes concerning it. Jefferson was
one known for his honesty. " Thought expands,
action narrows," says Goethe, and Jefferson was a phi
losopher. Wise, thoughtful, Jefferson was decisively
not the man of action. But he read, and he dwelt, and
he traveled, and he witnessed, and he turned matters
over in his deep, clear, transparent mind. His was a
genius of many sides, and Jefferson had rank as a states
man, a scholar, a philosopher, a litterateur, a traveler,
an architect, an inventor, a farmer, and he even played
on a fiddle. Jefferson conceived and drew the Declara
tion of Independence. At the same time he accom
plished and gave to posterity another and as great a
work. It was Jefferson who invented and made a
draught of the present mold-board of the plow, which
implement before had been a clumsy, unshapen,
steel-shod wedge of wood; and it was under his eye,
and by his blacksmiths in his forge at Shadwell, that
the first scientific furrow-turner was beaten and ground
and filed and polished into shape.
Jefferson believed in the people. Bred and born an

172 RICHARD CROKER.
aristocrat, he denied caste. More than Washington
even, he was the real American. Jefferson read and
thought and wrote. He liked not muscle-labor and was
with no army. His sole taste of war was when Tarle-
ton's cavalry made an occasional raid against Monti-
cello with a hope of taking prisoner the philosopher
of freedom. Jefferson never made a speech; which
fact should prove encouraging to ones in politics whose
thought hesitates at hopes of fame because they are
not Ciceros. Jefferson was in France following our
Revolution. He not alone experienced those in power;
he went into the cabins of the peasantry. He talked
with the poor, looked in the pot to discover the dinner
cooking, sat on the bed to note its hard uncomfort, ate
of the sour, black bread which mothers fed to their
children. Jefferson heard the story of the peasants.
He returned among the governing classes, and sound
ing the skimmish shallows of their intelligences, decided
against the folly of heaping importance on idiots."
When Jefferson returned from abroad he was a warm
believer in the cause of liberty in France and the French
Revolution; a movement of politics wherein Adams and
Hamilton beheld nothing to love. Adams and Hamil
ton hated Thomas Paine; Jefferson admired him and
read his " Rights of Man " with applause.
Paine's pamphlet is doubtless the document invin
cible, and so I hold myself. Yet I've often thought, as
I glanced it through, that had the Thetford corset-
maker written, instead of its present head, the " Rights
of Dogs," or the " Rights of Kine," and then gone over
his production with a blue pencil, editing in the " ani
mal " and editing out the " man," it would all come just
as true.

JEFFERSON ON HAMILTON. 173
By what title does your man gain more of right than
your animals? and from whom comes to him a fran
chise, wider, deeper, better than theirs? Surely he has
no favor from nature beyond what are the plain legacies
of both dog and ox. He starves where they starve,
burns where they burn, freezes where they freeze,
drowns where they drown, and the wound that lets out
their life lets out his. It is only our vanity which
prates of superior or peculiar rights inherent in, and of
nature's conference on man. Nature has no favorites,
and all her children, biped and quadruped, and even the
poor footless worm, are equal in her sight. Nature be
lieves that might makes right, and what privileges are
nature-granted to the individual animal, man or what
you will, find suggestion and measurement when one
searches the limits of that individual's strength.
Might makes right; it is the law. It does not follow
that wherever there is conflict there is wrong. Both
sides may be right, and more often than otherwise they
are. It's like two hands of cards; both are right, one
is beaten and the other wins. But we go astray; let us
scramble back to the towpath of our task.
Jefferson was called into Washington's Cabinet and
given the portfolio of State. As a lamp by the light of
which the political thought of that day may be glanced
over, one may turn to what Jefferson writes concerning
it. Also one will therefrom gain some reading of the
inner sentiments of those Federal leaders, Hamilton
and Adams.
" I returned from the French mission," says Jeffer
son, "in the year of the new government, . . . and
proceeded to New York in March, 1790, to enter upon
the office of Secretary of State. I found a state of

174 RICHARD CROKER.
things which of all I ever contemplated I the least ex
pected. . . Politics was the chief topic, and a prefer
ence of kingly over republican government was evi
dently the favorite sentiment. . . I found myself for
the most part the only advocate on the republican side
of the question."
It was at a Cabinet dinner, and Jefferson records this
conversation between the king-loving Hamilton and the
king-bedazzled Adams. Jefferson says:
" After the cloth was removed, conversation by some
circumstance was led to the British Constitution.
Adams observed, ' Purge that Constitution of its cor
ruption, and give to its popular branch equality of
representation, and it would be the most perfect Con
stitution ever devised by the wit of man.'
" Hamilton paused and said, ' Purge it of its corrup
tion, and give to its popular branch equality of repre
sentation, and it would become an impracticable gov
ernment: as it stands at present, with all its supposed
defects, it is the most powerful government that ever
existed' . . . Hamilton was indeed a singular char
acter. Of acute understanding, disinterested, honest,
and honorable in all private transactions, amiable in
society, and duly valuing virtue in private life, yet was
he so bewitched and perverted by the British example
as to be under thorough conviction that corruption was
essential to the government of a nation. Adams had
originally been a Republican; the glare of royalty and
nobility during his mission to England had made him
believe their fascination a necessary ingredient of gov
ernment." There is a comparison made by that best of biog
raphers, Parton, between Jefferson and Hamilton,

WHAT PARTON WROTE. 175
which, besides being true, tells the plain story of Dem
ocrat and Federalist — Tammany and its aristocratic
opponents. The differences of the two men indicate
the differences of the others. Parton writes: " Hamil
ton and Jefferson could not be an harmonious pair of
Cabinet ministers. Hamilton hated, Jefferson loved,
the French revolution. Hamilton approved, Jefferson
detested, the monarchizing forms of Washington's ad
ministration. Hamilton was for a strong and over
shadowing Federal government; Jefferson was strenu
ous for the independence of the States. Hamilton was
in favor of high salaries and a general liberality of
expenditure; Jefferson, liberal with his own money, was
penurious in expending the people's. Hamilton de
sired a powerful standing army; Jefferson was for re
lying chiefly on an unpaid patriotic militia. Hamilton
would have had our ambassadors live at foreign courts
in a style similar to that of the courtly representatives
of kings; Jefferson was opposed to any diplomatic
establishment. Hamilton had a great opinion of for
eign commerce; Jefferson knew that home production
and internal trade are the great sources of national
wealth. Hamilton gave a polite assent to the prevail
ing religious creed and attended the Episcopal church;
Jefferson was an avowed and emphatic dissenter from
that creed. And finally, Hamilton the ex-clerk
[grocery], was a very fine gentleman and wore the very
fine clothes then in vogue; Jefferson, the hereditary
lord of acres, combed his hair out of pigtail, discarded
powder, wore pantaloons, fastened his shoes with
strings instead of buckles, and put fine gentlemanisms
out of his heart forever."
There have been such as Hamilton in every year to

176 RICHARD CROKER.
roll since then; luckily there has been a never-stinted
flood of Jeffersons. The parties to-day are as the
parties then, and the leopard of politics has not
changed one spot. Seventy years after Jefferson and
Hamilton encountered in Washington's Cabinet — this
by way of a curiosity of sentiment — one Wadsworth, a
senator, made a speech against certain of the yeomanry
of its pews who held that the aristocratic vestry of
Trinity Church, made as it was with much point of the
exclusive, should not have an unwatched and unchecked
ordering of Trinity's vast estates. It was the old
Federalist speaking in Wadsworth when he says, as one
who is delegate of the elect, " I represent the Jays, the
Hamiltons, and the Kings." Then Wadsworth pro
ceeds to characterize the pew-peasants who presume to
a knowledge of and a voice in their own churchly
business. " Neither Jack Cade," shouts Wadsworth —
finely rising to the occasion — " neither Jack Cade nor
Ledru Eollin ever proposed anything bolder. All
Jacobinism stands without its parallel. The attack
upon the noblesse of France, when untold millions of
property fell the prey to plebeian rapacity, furnishes
the only fit illustration which my mind can recall to
express my abhorrence of this outrageous proposition."
Wadsworth in 1857 still sounds like Hamilton; one
might imagine that our fop of a Federalist, who like all
promoted vulgarians was prone to despise and condemn
the ranks from which he came, was still alive and ora
torical. Jefferson was elected President in 1800. For the prior
four years Adams had been President, and it was his
blunderings and un-Americanisms, added to the Burr-
directed efforts of Tammany Hall, which served to put

PRESIDENT JOHN ADAMS. 177
Jefferson in the White House. Adams was a well-mean
ing bigot of a man, crowded of suspicions. His men
tality was as strong as the paw of a bear, and as much
moved of a clumsy curiosity. The nose of the Adams in
telligence was into every current thing, to everything's
disaster. Johnson said that Goldsmith "touched
nothing he did not adorn." This could not be stated
of Adams, who touched only to disarrange. He was
the genius of error, the spirit of mistake, and knew
more of fiends and angels than he did of men. Decid
edly he was bankrupt of that grand sense, superior to
other sense, called common sense. An egotist, con
stant in his own thoughts, he believed himself to be
ever in the minds of other men. Timid where there
was no threat, he ordered arms from the arsenal into
his house in Philadelphia to protect himself from
non-existent perils and against mobs which never
had him in their thought. He was finicky and
small, and tenderly apprehensive of his dignity as
President, without the tact or taste to keep himself
from being laughed at. While he was going through
Newark, a foolish cannon banged uproariously in his
honor. An onlooker, with little humor and less cau
tion, not respecting Adams, wished audibly that the
paper wadding had struck the President on the part
amplest of his rear elevation. Under the acts of Alien
and Sedition whereof Adams was a tireless advocate
this was a kind of lese majeste, and the Federal Presi
dent caused the ribald one to be sentenced to jail, there
to sup sorrow for a month. This and kindred deeds of
politico-imbecility did he; and one and all they paved a
Presidency to Jefferson.
" John Adams," said one of his near adherents and

178 RICHARD CROKER.
cabineteers, " is a man who whether sportful, witty,
kind, cold, drunk, sober, angry, easy, stiff, jealous,
careless, cautious, confident, close or open, is so always
in the wrong place and with the wrong man."
That Adams was a bad Eepublican and a worse Amer
ican has display in a letter of argument to his wife.
After saying that the revolution which overthrew the
throne in France was from the first " a goblin damned,"
the Bay State narrowist continues. " By the law of
nature," he writes, " all men are men and not angels
— men and not lions — men and not whales — ^men and
not eagles — that is, they are all of the same species; and
this is the most that the equality of man amounts to.
A physical inequality, an intellectual inequality, of the
most serious kind is established unchangeable by the
Author of nature; and society has a right to establish
any other inequality it may judge necessary for its
good." Thus stood men and matters on the eve of the
Presidential canvass of the year 1800. Jefferson and
Burr were the candidates of the Democrats; Adams
and Pinckney opposed them for the Federalists. The
Democrats favored France; the Federals gave their
sympathy to England, so lately with her clutch at the
throat of America. The Democrats sympathized with
the revolution in France; the Federalists denounced it.
The Democrats demanded the repeal of the Alien and
Sedition laws; the Federalists, who were their authors,
defended them and their retention. Finally, the
Democrats were for the common folk against the aris
tocracy; and the Federals, who believed in caste, faced
them on that point. The Federals talked of the rights
of property and were the party of Money; the Demo-

JEFFERSON AND BURR. l79
crats laid emphasis on the rights of perishing flesh and
blood. And Tammany Hall, then as now, was the van
guard of State and National Democracy.
Jefferson felt no hope of victory; he looked forward
to Adams and a Federal success. Aaron Burr did not
share the Jefferson forebode. Burr believed that tri
umph for the Democracy was probable, and already be
held in gloating anticipation the chagrin of his enemy
Hamilton, with whom, at the bar and in politics, he
had been at point of rapier for a space of fifteen years.
Hamilton was the head of the order of the Cincin
nati. Also he was son-in-law of General Schuyler; and
the Schuylers — Federalists — were a formidable tribe.
The city of New York at that time panted with a
population of fifty thousand souls. The politics of the
community was controlled by four great families; the
Schuylers, the Jays, the Clintons, and the Livingstons.
The two first were of the Federals; the two latter of
the Democrats. Hamilton was the leader of the
one, and Burr of the other. Hamilton, as stated,
was in control of the Cincinnati; Burr was in command
of Tammany Hall. And the last was sworn foe of the
other. Piatt to-day has that position in State and city poli
tics held by Alexander Hamilton one hundred years
ago; Burr, who opposed Hamilton, and who was chief
of the then forces of Tammany, was line for line
of leadership, and power for power, exact with
Eichard Croker now. The Tammany of then,
save for numbers, was a picture of the present
organization. Speaking of the Tammany of 1800,
Renwick relates: "All who numbered themselves as its
members were prepared to yield implicit obedience to

180 RICHARD CROKER.
the will of its majority; that majority was made to
move at the beck of committees which concentrated the
power in the hands of a few individuals. Denunciation
as a traitor was the fate of him who ventured to act in
conformity with his individual opinion when it did not
meet with the general indorsement." One may not
count many alterations, whether of discipline, or prin
ciples, or changes of front, to have come over Tam
many Hall in a century. Renwick reads as if he had
written of the present.
This is a good place to halt and pitch one's camp. It
is here on the boundaries of that struggle where a
White House was to be lost and won; where the elect
ors were to fail of a choice; where a tie-vote was to
hold the House in its dangerous folds for days; where
first and last the Constitution — " that crazy old hulk "
of Hamilton's — was to be strained and tested to the
utmost; where Adams and Hamilton were to fall, and
Jefferson and Burr rise over them; where Tammany
Hall was to give to Democracy its first victory and its
first President, that one may with propriety draw hard
on the puckering strings of relation and close the
chapter.

XII.
BURR AND TAMMANY.
'Twas when they raised mid sap and siege
The banners of their rightful liege,
— Bose.
It was long ago, eighty years or more, when Disraeli,
the father, wrote the " Curiosities of Literature," and
later the " Calamities of Authors," and still later the
" Quarrels of Authors." I have often reflected what
thriving tales might flourish under such titles as
the " Curiosities of Politics," the " Calamities of Poli
ticians," and the " Quarrels of Politicians," if only
some Disraeli of the parties were extant to their con
struction. Indubitably it was the organization of the
self-sufficient Cincinnati, evoking in a spirit of resent
ment the counter-organization of Tammany Hall,
which stifled the American monarchists under the
name of Federalists and gave to this nation Jefferson
as Presideni^and a true Democracy as a result.
Contributory to such conclusion were the long-stand
ing quarrels of Burr and Hamilton. These differences
had beginning close on the back of British departure
from New York, and the peace which followed Corn-
wallis at Yorktown. They ran through their law prac
tice, their social life, their action of politics, until in
1800 the feud thereby engendered brought them front
to front as rival captains, one of Tammany and the
Democracy, and the other of the Cincinnati and the
Federalists, in this the city of New York.
181

182 RICHARD CROKER.
Stepping aside for one pace, it might be offered as
hint to whomsoever shall essay the series suggested
that under the head of " Curiosities of Politics," and
perhaps that of the " Quarrels of Politicians," he
should begin with Jefferson's attempt to convict
Burr of treason at Richmond. It was this which
taught Jackson, who was Burr's friend and partner for
the Mexican expedition, to hate the Man of Monticello;
and, as corollary thereunto — for Jackson was by nature
an extremist, ever to mix his passion with his logic —
to hate also the doctrine of " nullification " and pos
sible secession from the Union, of which Jefferson was
the author and with it the inventor of the word. To
these, also, our author-to-come should add those Cabi
net inharmonies of Jackson whereof the lively Peggy
O'Neil was the motif, and which — considering the ar
dent sort of Jackson — overflowed in his wrath against
Calhoun, and the issuance of that toast to the plotting
diners at the old Indian Queen Tavern, " The Union;
it must and shall be preserved," wherewith the strong
Jackson palsied, heart and hand, incipient rebellion,
and staved off civil war for thirty years.
Before one goes to the tale of Tammany victory in
1800, and the consequent election of Jefferson to a
presidency, there might be written, with propriety and
perhaps with good, a personal word or two of Burr
and Hamilton who were Wolfe and Montcalm of that
field. There has been no one in history or out of it
to be more maligned than Aaron Burr. It seems
hard to speak the truth of eminence. Either it be
comes sacrifice to eulogy, as with Washington and
Jefferson; or falls victim of the vilifier, as in the case
of Burr. Four-fifths of present popular estimate of

SOME ANCESTRAL NOTES. 183
Burr depends on that speech of Wirt against Burr de
livered during the Richmond trial, and which was for
years kept in the hands of every school-child as an
exercise of those " Readers " which were their text
books; and which must have had certain compilation
by Federalists or their Burr-hating cubs. Verily! a
most solvent source from which to have the truth of a
man's act and character — the address of that paid
attorney who had taken fees to prosecute him.
In the conventional comparisons of Burr with Hamil
ton one has been ever offered that cleanly impression of
a high, proud aristocracy as the ancestry of Hamilton.
Burr, as against this, was the mephitic bubble on some
chance-hollowed mudhole of humanity, which the
storms had filled and the swine enjoyed. For myself I
care little for an ancestry, preferring rather to hear of
one's own deeds than those of one's grandfather in de
ciding one's worth. But, as has been already set forth,
this matter of pedigree is important in New York; and,
therefore, in the stories of Burr and Hamilton may
as well be understood.
Burr was grandson by his mother of the worthy
Jonathan Edwards of Connecticut. Burr's father and
his father's father were, and still are, famous as the
two most learned Presidents which the seminary of
Princeton has known. Hamilton was born in the Isle
Nevis, a poor pin-prick of the Antilles. His Scotch
father was a grocer who failed at his trade. His
mother, descended by the Huguenots, was a Mile. Fau-
cette. She had been married before she met with the
father of Hamilton; but finding her first husband more
gay than true, she retreated to a divorce, her father,
and her maiden name.

184 RICHARD CROKER.
At the age of thirteen Hamilton left school, and
himself engaged in West Indian commerce behind the
scales and counters of one Cruger of St. Croix. The
latter maintained a drygoods and ship-grocery at that
port. For a number of years Hamilton struggled with
tropical trade as expressed by cod fish, rum, and sou'-
westers, and laid the foundation of that money-knowl
edge which was to render him great as the first Secre
tary of our national Treasury.
Coming to New York when a youth, for reasons
which his biographers appear to skip in silence, Hamil
ton set himself to a further education. He was irregu
larly a day student at what is now Columbia University,
then Kings College, and wound up by a study of the
law. Both Hamilton and Burr were brave soldiers of the
Revolution. Hamilton was at one time private secre
tary of Washington, and was in the same skiff with the
latter when he " crossed the Delaware." Burr rose to
the rank of colonel and distinguished himself with the
mal-fortuned Montgomery in the campaign against
Quebec. There, before one, lie the bones of the per
sonal stories of both Burr and Hamilton.
Burr's detractors have laid much lowering stress on
his blushing gallantries with women. He offered them,
truly, opportunity both wide and full for these strict
ures. But your purist of to-day should reflect. Those
were far times, and tumultuous. They were times
strong with passion, and tinctured of the revolutionary.
The heroes of those days were folk volcanic, with
hearts like Hecla; and their same traits of courage and
stamina and unyielding force which fought a King
through seven years of Freedom's battles, became in

PLATONIC LOVE. 185
softer hours the attributes which turned to woman's
sweetness like flowers to the sun. Burr was
in no wise unique in this weakness of the ewige
wcibliche, as Goethe named it. What was said of Bun-
might have been told — and was — of Washington, of
Jefferson, of Franklin, and of Hamilton. The latter,
in truth, in 1797, went to the borderland of duel with
Madison, later to be President, concerning a certain
Mistress Reynolds. The business drove as far as
seconds, and Burr was acting for Madison in that trig
ger-oiling, bullet-molding behalf. It didn't reach the
burning of powder, however; negotiations, which at
one time looked hopefully towards it, struck some peace
argument and glanced off.
For myself, I've never felt appointed of my star
to condemn those thinkers and warriors who won our
Independence, for their warm-eyed interest concerning
woman. And one may distrust as knaves and hypocrites
those males who do. Sought after, beamed on, courted
and admired of women, as each of them was, it would
have weathered the Cape of Miracles if, with all those
hot gales blowing, their morals had maintained an even
keel. " What! " cries a feminine voice, bubblous with in
cipient indignation; " what! do you mean to assert
that a woman may not admire a great man and tell
him so?"
" It is an exercise of much unsafety, madam."
"Are you willing to say," cries the same feminine
voice, " that a man and a woman may not maintain a
platonic friendship for one another?"
" Pardon me, madam; not unless they're married to
one another."

186 RICHARD CROKER.
" But these heroes," cries the voice, " were as eager
to invoke the admiration of woman as she to offer it."
" True, madam; that arose from excess of the
natural." It is right to admit that I do not understand woman,
and may no more follow the windings of her nature,
wanting the aid of some Ariadne and her clew of silk,
than Theseus might the labyrinth of Minos. But man
is a simpler animal; I know him in each detail of his
contradictions. Man is a paradox, and a paradox is
ever a fraud. Man is at once his own captor and his
own captive. In his nature he is both hare and hound;
ever a fugitive, ever in fervent pursuit of himself.
This genius for the Self-opposite runs through all he
does. It will find evincement in the matter of religious
thought. His reason will go one way, his instinct an
other. He will ruminate the subject of himself: his
past and his hereafter. His reason will alarm him
with the fact that his each act or thought is result
of cause, itself result of other, further cause, and
so ad infinitum. Your man, reasoning, will hear
the linked chain of effect and cause clanking rear-
wardly until dimly the clanking is lost and died
away in the last hollows of his heretofore. He
does not understand, he may not comprehend, more
than he understands and embraces the fact of f rameless
space. But he believes he knows; just as he is aware of
the eternal granite without grasping, even with the
hand of conjecture, the promise of its first production.
The decision of your man reasoning is that he's a
fatalist. The whole future is decreed; man himself is
locked helpless as a fly in amber.
And yet in his instincts, and that despite his reason.

Fireplace in Cafe of the Democratic Club.

MAN'S CONTRADICTIONS. 187
he fsels that he is free. Knowing himself tethered to
some picket-pin of the inevitable, also he knows that
he has liberty of body and soul by the testimony of
sheer instinct. It is likewise to be said — and the race
has comfort and good fortune therefrom — that man's
fatalism, child of his reason, never drags him beyond
the stage of theory. On the contrary, each item of his
goings about, and all he does and tries to do, find their
feet in his instinctive knowledge that he is free.
And, madam, — for I am still moved to your instruc
tion, — never engage to know a man's sentiments by dis
covering his deeds. In those multiplied contradic
tions of man-nature which say both " yes " and " no "
to every asking, one is not, when considering the
problem of man, to determine his belief by his action.
In this one matter of man's attitude towards woman,
which, if I err not, was the start-point of present
trouble, one would often go mightily astray were one
to deduce man's conclusions from his conduct, and'come
at what he thinks by what he does. There are many
who with the instincts of a Roundhead have the habits
of a Cavalier; they act like Charles the Second while
they think like Cromwell.
Discussion was never fair nor liberal with the name
of Burr. There came no charity to cover the multi
tude of his sins. Burr said, for example, that " Law is
anything that's boldly asserted and ingeniously main
tained." He had much abuse for this, as he
who, with no respect for justice, was adept of de
ceit, plot, conspiracy, and chicane. Choate, who
does our present louting before Royalty at St. James',
observed of the Courts of New York and that suspi
cious instability wherewith they held the scales, " It is

188 RICHARD CROKER.
better to know the judge than to know the law," and
was regarded for his sparkling wit as another Curran.
Yet why assail Burr while one garlands Choate?
Again, a century agone, the Federalists, controlling
the banks, and as well the legislatures at Albany, would
grant no bank charter to Democrats lest they collect
therein and thereby the sinews of war. Some
Socrates of carnage, and one profound of blood,
once wrote, " There are three things needed to wage
successful war; the first is money, the second is money,
and the third is money." One may say as much of
politics. Wherefore the Federalists were not weak
enough to open any chapter of chances in favor of
Democrats by granting them a charter for a bank.
Yellow fever came ashore. It slew its thousands
and its tens of thousands. Most thoroughly did it
weed and thin the city of New York. The Wise Men —
as they commonly do to this day — attributed all mor
tality to bad water. Burr saw an opportunity. He
asked the legislature for a charter wherewith to form
a water company. It was to be known as " The Man
hattan Company." The capital was fixed at two mil
lions; a healthful sum for that hour.
Mild and meek as one might wish to see, squatted
cozily away in a far corner of the charter, was a clause
to the effect that, after water had been provided, " the
company's surplus capital might be employed in any
way not inconsistent with the laws and constitutions of
the United States and the State of New York." The
charter was granted. Burr and his fellow stockholders
complied — and no more — with the strict water condi
tions of the document. They dug an excellent well,
the same being still abroad in the land. It was of that

THE MANHATTAN BANK. 189
capacity, perhaps, which might serve the thirst of what
cattle should belong with an ordinary farm. Then
Burr and his stockholders tumed the balance of their
capital and energy to the organization of that present
giant concern of money known as The Manhattan Bank.
Burr was, and still is, by Federalists and their de
scendants most gloriously assailed for this deception.
Had he been a Federalist they would have twined
wreaths for him.
in the summer of 1800, Burr at the head of Tam
many Hall, and Hamilton as chief of the Federals,
looked with evil eye one upon the other. They sat
down to plan their campaigns. Hamilton, whether as
trapper or hunter of politics, was never match for Burr.
Whether it was to set some midnight snare, or whether
the plan called for battle-axes at noon. Burr showed
cleverer, stronger of the two.
Hamilton, who was immensely the egotist and as
much in love with his own reflection in the pool of
politics as a Narcissus, was not aware of this. He felt
himself infinitely the greater man. He was " son-in-
law of Senator Schuyler; " he was flower of the local
aristocracy; moreover, his party of the Federalists had
never met defeat, and in the year before, 1799, had
carried New York by a majority of nine hundred.
Burr, with Tammany Hall at his back, believed he
would triumph, but knew he must work. And Burr
waxed indefatigable. He was the first "Boss" of
Tammany Hall, and resolved to make a record. Burr
span his policy as spiders spin their webs. Theft was
not theft in Sparta unless discovered in process of
commission. Burr and Hamilton so far emulated Ly-
curgus that they scrupled at no act of eavesdropping.

190 RICHARD CROKER.
nor larceny of documents, nor what else might serve;
they feared no disgrace where there was no detection,
and held with the swart Tarquin, " the fault unknown
is as a thought unacted."
Burr was as sedulous as sleepless. He had a spy in
every council, an agent at the elbow of every oppor
tunity. Burr put off Tammany Hall's ticket-making
until Hamilton had made his. Burr got a copy of
Hamilton's ticket before it was public, and within
twenty minutes after it was decided by the Federal
managers. Burr was elated with the Hamilton names.
There wasn't a good man on the list; each was the
hand-made puppet of Hamilton himself.
Then Tammany, with Burr in council, selected its
candidates. There were never stronger names pre
sented to the voters of New York. Among others,
and leading them, were ex-Governor Clinton, Judge
Livingston, and General Gates, the latter the conquerer
of the English at Saratoga.
Tammany's committee, with Burr as spokesman,
waited upon these people of pedestals to notify them
of their selection. Gates said he'd " run " if Clinton ac
cepted. Livingston said the same. Burr and the Tam
many chiefs headed for Clinton. Now the latter states
man was a child of certain stubborn, self-willed, canny
Scotch-Irish, and possessed the family traits in ex
aggeration. To add to that, as against Jefferson or any
one else, Clinton mightily preferred that he be Presi
dent himself. Four years before Clinton had received
thirty electoral votes. Clinton had hopes, and there
fore didn't want to commit himself to the Jefferson
canvass. He refused to permit the Burr-Tammany folk
his name. Clinton " wouldn't go on any local ticket."

CLINTON CONSENTS. 191
Burr argued, flattered, besought, and cajoled. Noth
ing might move the ambitious ex-Governor. Clinton
was polite, but positive. His name must not be on the
Jefferson-Tammany ticket. Then Burr shifted the
wind of argument.
"When it comes to that. Governor Clinton," said
Burr, and he'd grown as haughtily high as the ex-Gov
ernor — " when it comes to that, our appearance before
you, preferring the request that you run on this ticket,
is a function rather of courtesy than need. With the
last word, and regardless either of your plans or your
preferences, the public is perfect in its right to name
you and compel you to run. And, Governor, should
you continue to withhold your consent, we stand al
ready determined to retain your name despite refusal,
and pursue the course I've indicated as one entirely
within the lines of popular right."
Clinton was at a loss. In the end he gracefully con
sented, but with the understanding that he didn't per
sonally favor Jefferson, and was not to make any speech
in his advocacy, reservations for which neither Burr
nor the Tammany folk cared ever a penny. They had
gotten the names of Clinton, Gates, and Livingston on
their ticket, which was the vote-winning desideratum
sought. As an at-the-polls finale, Tammany Hall and Burr
ran over the Federals and Hamilton in the city of
New York by a majority of four hundred and ninety.
This gave Jefferson the State. Without New York,
Jefferson at the last would have been defeated and
John Adams returned to succeed himself.
Hamilton was frantic. It was beyond belief. In
his resentments of things as they were — ^it casts a side-

192 RICHARD CROKER.
light on the Hamilton character — he wrote a private
letter to Jay, then Governor (Federal), and urged him
to a special convention of the legislature (Federal)
when measures would be concocted to steal from Jef
ferson the State. In apology to Jay, a man of spotless
honor, for the iniquity proposed, Hamilton said at the
close of the letter that it was the last method " to pre
vent an atheist in religion and a fanatic in politics from
getting possession of the helm of state."
Jay did not call an extra session of the legislature,
nor did he answer Hamilton's letter. The villain
proffer never would have been known, save that long
afterward the missive was found among Jay's papers,
stiffly indorsed in .Jay's own hand, " Proposing a meas
ure for party purposes which I think it would not be
come me to adopt."
As sequel to this election the choice of President
went finally to the House of Representatives— as was
then the law — on the failure of a majority of the
Presidential electors to unite on one name. Many of
the Federals, breathless to defeat Jefferson, proposed
Burr against him. The decision hung in the wind of a
House tie for many days.
Jefferson believed, and Burr's enemies declared, that
Burr gave countenance to this Federal plot and strove
to seize from Jefferson the Presidency. The proof is the
other way; two specimens of the evidence on that point
might be printed, the more readily since they seem to
be conclusive. During the progress of ballot-taking.
Cooper, a Federalist of New York, an anti-Jefferson
man, and incidentally the father of that Cooper who
has fame for " Leatherstocking," wrote to a friend:
" All stand firm. Jefferson eight; Burr six; divided

AN ELDER BAYARD. 193
two. Had Burr done anything for himself he would
long ere this have been President. If a majority would
answer, he would have had it on every vote."
Following Jefferson's election as President and that
of Burr as Vice President, one Bayard of Delaware, the
first of a family now happily extinct in American poli
tics, wrote to Hamilton. Bayard said: " The means
existed of electing Burr, but this required his co
operation. By deceiving one man (a great blockhead)
and tempting two (not incorruptible) he might have
secured a majority of the States. He will never have
another chance of being President of the United States,
and the little use he made of this one gives me but a
poor opinion of his talents." How very like a Bayard!
Burr's name and fame are choked with weed of lie
and slander even unto this day. But there will come
the rescue, and a future shall do him equity. Truth
is not to die, nor prejudice to live, and so Burr's day
will dawn. There was never a fiaw nor a falsity in
Burr's attitude towards the public. He had been brave
as a soldier, he was leader of the bar, and in things
political Burr was all American. Burr never had a
dollar with spot or stain to mark it. He was honest,
he was generous, he was loyal. He deceived none who
was his friend; deserted no obligation, betrayed no
trust. If his downfall is to have solution, Burr was
crushed by his own triumphs. Like that Paul Jones
who was England's terror and the sea-hero of the
Revolution, Burr found his destruction in those envies
bred of his success.
Jefferson never forgot nor forgave Burr that heart-
shaking tie for a Presidency, and to the end was in-
veterately on the track of Burr. Jefferson charged

194 RICHARD CROKER.
Burr with public treason. He tried Burr three times;
in Kentucky, in Mississippi, and in Richmond. And
thrice by court and jury Burr was acclaimed innocent.
It is among the best words to be spoken of Marshall
that, cold and firm and right, he could declare the law
and displease the White House at one and the same
time. It may not be to Jefferson's whole discredit that
he was so fiercely and, one might add, unscrupu
lously the enemy of Burr. It shows that he had those
blazing weaknesses that make of man a man and not
a god. Find that one who has done no wrong, and you
will have overtaken one who has done nothing. Much
that is hailed excellent is only the absence of activities
— the good-passive. And the good-passive is a com
modity of lameness. It is hueless, gray, and wan; it
has none of the vivid richness of those prismatic seven
which, for aught one knows, may be the convicting
register of seven sins of the sun.
Jackson, however, was one who never exonerated
Jefferson for his pursuit of Burr. During the latter's
trial Jackson came hot-foot from Nashville to Rich
mond to express his contempt for the President; a
ceremony he accomplished in divers set speeches, and
with much applause from the multitude.
Another disaster to Burr was his duel with, and the
death of, Hamilton. His enemies, both in the Federal
party and in his own, used it to his tearing down.
Burr was right and his detractors wrong.
Burr met Hamilton honorably and by the custom of
that time. Hamilton professed the duello; his own son
had been killed, but a brief few years before, on those
very grounds where he fell before the pistol of Burr.

THE BURR-HAMILTON DUEL. 195
Hamilton was made mad with his overthrow by Tam
many under the captaincy of Burr. Hamilton there
after, at each chance and by every covert method,
maligned and traduced Burr. Nor is there scrap
to show that Burr followed a course similar towards
Hamilton. Burr was mute while the other ex
hausted malice in incessant and baseless tales against
him. Burr was Vice President, the second officer
of state; Hamilton was politically nothing. Burr
was the war-general of a militant Democracy and
had led it to its first success; Hamilton was
that defeated commander whom he'd crushed. Each
was evenly endowed of worldly goods. Each had
his law practice. Each had his town house, Ham
ilton at 52 Cedar Street and Burr at 30 Fulton;
each had his country seat, the one at the Grange and
the other at Richmond Hill. Of the two, when each
is counted in his all — Burr in a blush of triumph and
Hamilton in the jaundice of defeat — it will find notice
that Burr by that duel risked more, since he had more
to lose.
Burr, for his honor meanly assailed, came down from
his high place as President of the Senate, and in a
series of letters, easily obtainable, backed Hamil
ton across the river to the New Jersey side and took
his life. Burr, who did all things well or left them un-
attempted, was as complete with the pistol as he was
with politics. At the word Burr fired, and shot Hamil
ton in the midst of his body. Hamilton, raised to his
toes by the horrid shock of it, fired the moment after.
His bullet clipped the harmless twigs about Burr's head.
Then Hamilton fell on his face; and then he was taken
away to live some hours, and at the last to die.

196 RICHARD CROKER.
During those hours of life Hamilton had a duty to
do, and he missed and failed of even its attempt. And
the omission smells of littleness and tells against his
manhood. What was it?
Out in the sun-burned far Southwest is a cluster of
adobes called for compliment a " town." Two men
played with each other that device named seven-up for
a stake of twenty dollars a point. One may be called
Driscoll and the other Burlison. Both belonged to
that region and were of the trade of cows. Driscoll
was " bad," and as prone to trouble as sparks to fly up
ward; his six-shooter was known for its offensiveness.
Burlison, though steadier, was likewise " bad," and like
wise, to be dialectic, "packed a gun." Of a sudden
both men were on their feet; three shots were fired.
Each had birth in Burlison's pistol, and the sounds of
that firing trod on each other's heels like the striking
of a Yankee clock. Driscoll fell with three bullets in
him, and the day of his death was written. Two hours
later, on his bed in the Jackson House, Driscoll was
able to speak. These were his first words.
" Where's Burlison? " he said.
" He's surrendered himself to the sheriff," he was
told. " Do you want to see him? "
" No; don't bring him here," Driscoll whispered.
" I'm hit too hard to shoot; so there's no sense in my
seeing him. But there's a word I want to say to you-
all, and it's what I want done. You didn't see this
shooting and I did. This killing is on the square, and
Burlison is right. I reached for my gun first; and if
it hadn't hung in the scabbard I'd have had him in hell
in a second. I'm to die, and I want my death to end
it. I've no use for Burlison, and if I could get to my

THE WESTERN WAY. 197
feet and my guns I'd hunt him now. Still he was right
to shoot. He filled his hand and I didn't. He outheld
me; that's the whole story. And you-all are to throw
Burlison loose."
Driscoll, who could hate and still do justice, died
with the demand for his foe's release on his lips. The
West has a balanced hand, and Burlison walked free.
Hamilton's death-conduct should have been some half
brother with Driscoll's. It would have testified to
that heart-honesty on Hamilton's part of which there's
a deal too little evidence.
Burr suffered for this duel. The Jefferson folk, and
the Hamilton folk, and every Burr-hater found in it a
weapon to his use. Those also who were opposed to
dueling, with that ill-logic too often between the un
thinking teeth of your sentimentalists, were harsh in
their attacks on Burr; they denounced him when, had
they possessed consistency, they would have denounced
the custom.
And while one has that topic between one's hands,
why is it that the system of dueling must be so denied
and tumed upon? It is because folk lose their lives
by it? Is it that death and that blood, its incidents,
which are to shock us into opposition? Nonsense!
we care little enough for death and blood. We sit here
while our surface railways slay folk at a better average
than a death a day, and are no more than by the fall
of a sparrow to be disturbed thereby. Indifference
to life is a prime national characteristic; stoics, afore
time, were hysterical by comparison with us. On each
and every hand the half-searching eye may see at what
trifle we value life. Then why so fiercely forward to
cow this duel custom? The argument once offered by

198 RICHARD CROKER.
a gentleman of South Carolina had some cogent spunks
and sparks.
" Yes, sir," observed the gentleman, in deference to
query on that point — " yes, sir; I favor dueling. I
understand neither the sentiment nor the rule that ob
jects. Surely, the law is highly inconsistent. Should
I be aroused in the night by a person in my smoke
house stealing hams, I am permitted by the law to
stroll to the rear door, clad in a shirt and a shotgun,
and shoot the marauder dead without giving him a
chance. That same man, by fagot of slander and brand
of lie, might be striving to burn the reputation of my
sister at the stake of his own villainy; and yet the law
threatens to hang me if I summon him to the duel, and
face to face, with equal weapons take his life. I may
slay the wretch — hunger-driven he might be — who
steals a dollar's worth of bacon; but the miscreant who
would rob a woman of her good repute is safeguarded
from the wrath of those who, being of her friends and
family, are also with her his prey. There's neither
justice nor good sense in the law situation I've de
scribed." There's a deal of drivel concerning this same busi
ness of the duel. Claptrap, chatter, cant, and coward
ice are all distinguishable among its component parts.
From the same sources of a vapid and mindless
conventionality come similar twitterings about Lynch
law and committees of vigilance. We expand our
shirt fronts and, after reading of some Southern or
Western lynching, express our horror, and speak in
tones and words of self -felicitation of that "law and
order " we, ourselves, and in our own communities of
the North, uphold.

COMMITTEES OF VIGILANCE. 199
Two-thirds of this, our self-applause, are the veriest
snivel of hypocrisy. Law and order! Law and dis
order! rather. The worst governed of the whole roll-
call of the world's communities are the Northern and
Northeastern cities of this Union. Take the city of
New York: a sober and discreet committee of one hun
dred, clothed of a purpose of justice and a bale of half-
inch rope, would bring such order and security to the
public as it has not thus far known. The first Ameri
canism, and with it the first safety of life and limb,
goods and good repute, are to be found in the South and
West where your committee of vigilance can be con
vened at call. That committee is the best expression of
the popular will. It comes up through no crookedness
of tortuous and interested legislation; it smells of no
vote-rottenness; it is as bribeless as a storm, as much
beyond corruption as the light of day. It has but one
thought: justice. And it never fails. One may say of
committees of vigilance what one may not of courts.
No committee of vigilance ever hanged the wrong man,
nor let the wrong man go.
From motives of safety to his reputation Burr
should not have gone abroad. It was a mistake; doing
nothing for him in Europe, while fanning obloquy at
home. And then the woe he must have met! Driven
from England, he goes to Norway, to Denmark, to
Prussia, at last to France. Burr tried to enlist Na
poleon in his programmes of Southwestern Empire.
He failed; just as failed Robert Fultoa when he sought
to recruit the same personage for his water-campaign
of steam. Burr met Talleyrand; that crook-foot rascal
of state who was never grateful save for favors to come.
Burr had given Talleyrand countenance in the bright

200 RICHARD CROKER.
days of Richmond Hill, and when the Frenchman,
dodging the guillotine, was fugitive. But that counted
for nothing in the eye of Talleyrand, with whom grati
tude had rating as vice, and any decent goodness of
memory for those who had been one's shelter and de
fense was, as he phrased it, that thing worse than
crime — a blunder.
Burr came back to America and practiced law. He
lived to be eighty-one. His latter years were poisoned
of poverty, which last, as Lytton says, " is the wicked
man's tempter, the good man's perdition, the proud
man's curse, the melancholy man's halter," Burr was
poor. Yet as he fell not into temptation, nor took his
life with a rope, one is allowed the thoughts that he was
neither " wicked " nor sad. How far, being a good
man, he experienced the "perdition," or being proud,
to what extent the " curse " of poverty, Burr was in too
much command of himself to disclose. One may only
surmise. Sure it is that unto the day of his death his
bright, dangerous eyes looked folk in the face; what
ever may have overtaken a world's respect for him, he
still was in full conquest of his own. From youth to
age, in prosperity or loss, no one in glance or word or
step of Burr beheld a change. He was the man
immutable. And it is this very immutability that is the one sure
mark of greatness. The truly great, those who are
great of themselves and not of their conditions, are
changeless. Go he up or go he down, the great man is
ever the same.
Grant, who from a wood-hauling, hide-tanning ob
scurity was a world's greatest soldier in five years, and
rode with a million and a half of men at his horse's tail;

THE CHANGELESS BURR. 201
who was twice President; who was flattered and ban
queted by Princes in a round-the-world progress such as
Kings had never made; Grant was with it all and
through it all the same silent, modest, earnest gentle
man whom folk knew before Lincoln was inaugurated,
or ever the first standards of rebellion were free-shaken
to the winds. Grant was great.
Burr, who had destroyed the dynasty of Federalism;
who was himself within a vote of the White House;
who had been a Vice President and ruled a Senate; who
had dreamed conquest like a Cssar and seen it almost
within reach, went from high to low. And yet, the
Burr who under fire bore the dead Montgomery from
the field of battle; the Burr who conquered in politics;
the Burr who guided a Senate in hours shaken of
passionate effort; the Burr who killed Hamilton at
Weehawken; the Burr who planned an empire at his
feet; the Burr who spread his calm blankets in the
Virginia jail; the Burr who lived his last years and died
in the folds of want, was note for note, and word for
word, and thought for thought, and look for look the
same unchanging Burr. No success could add to him,
while disaster took nothing away; no bad fortune nor
good was to recarve or redraw him in any least of detail.
Burr was ever Burr. And Burr, like Grant, was great.
Time, that last repositor of justice, will yet rear a
stone to Burr. And it should appear thereon that he,
with Tammany Hall, supplementing at the polls the
work of the war-fields of the Revolution, rescinded the
laws of Alien and Sedition, rescued the country from
Monarchy, set up Jefferson to be President and not
Kaiser, and fairly, first and for all time, established
civil and religious liberty in this land.

XIII.
THE VENGEANCE.
And if we do but watch the hour.
There never yet was human power
Which could evade, if unforgiven.
The patient search and vigil long
Of him who treasures up a wrong.
— Mazeppa.
Tweed, bom in 1823, was twenty-three years of age
when Richard Croker came as a child to America.
Kelly, whose nam de guerre of " Honest " was conferred
on him by popular voice, and under whose command
Richard Croker was later to fight against Tweed and
his Ring, at the time pointed to had witnessed twenty-
five years, opening his first eyes in 1821. Both
Tweed and Kelly were native Americans, born and
cfadled of the city of New York.
When in the sixties Richard Croker began his
life of politics and became a member of Tammany Hall,
Tweed was the most powerful figure of that organiza
tion. Tammany was not then come to the military
excellence of discipline and concert of movement which
it has reached under the chiefship of Croker. Condi
tions of " machine " or military perfection arise from
characteristics to repose in the man at the head; and
where Croker is the soldier, both Tweed and Kelly were
quite the opposite. They were lax and loose of rule;
and while folk of unblinking courage, and Kelly
notably stubborn and obstinate withal, they had none
303

TWEED AND KELLY. 203
of that capacity for organization which forms men into
companies, into regiments, into brigades, into divi
sions, into corps, into armies; and which then moves
the whole as one. Neither Tweed nor Kelly owned
aught better than commonest talents for labor of this
sort; Croker's genius, on the other hand, lies in
that direction. Croker comes more to the model of
such as Cromwell, whom his ancestors followed so
freely; Kelly was rather a herd-leader like unto Wat
Tyler; Tweed, a rogue whose end was plunder, is better
comparable to some admiral of pirates who, with per
sonal force and courage, has no discipline about him,
and is followed for spoil merely; whose retainers leave
him and return to him and leave him again, as their
wills or caprices move, or some appearance of present
advantage addresses itself to their eyes. Tweed's
people were inclined to consult their own pleasures in
matters of obedience, and regarded or neglected his
orders as at the time conformed to their tastes.
Tweed's forces were as a band of marauders; Kelly's
as a concourse, honest yet unruly with many views;
Croker's following is that marshaled and commanded
army where none disputes, nor doubts, nor does aught
save as directed.
This latter is the only thing to last. It is the very
egg of conquest; and following triumph, can protect
itself in possession of whatever prize is made. Such
as Tweed's supremacy cannot endure, and is in every
instance of its assertion shortly to be stricken down as
the pertinent retort to its own villainies. Such con
trol as Kelly's, being honest means honor surely, but
little else beyond. Undrawn, straggling, stricken of in-
concert, it is non-discipline against discipline and

204 RICHARD CROKER.
goeth forth only to defeat. Croker's rule, better than
the others, the rule of the soldier, is parent of victory
in perpetuity; or, if not quite the last, then in such
stretches as make reasons for hard work and grant to
war some wisdom.
Tweed's story has been told and retold, and much of
it is part and portion of the crime relation of this town.
Tweed lived and died. He was in early life of those
volunteers of fire whereof there has before been word
or two in these pages, and at one time found disport as
foreman of " Big Six," in which water-pumping office
he fought and bit and gouged and smote himself into
much glorious renown. Tweed was once a Congressman;
but the halls of legislation offered no true stage for his
talent, which was rather of the rude, burglarious kind.
Tweed held many offices, and while throughout the
sixties, he was, unchallenged, the strongest spirit of
Tammany Hall, it was not until 1868, when he caused
himself to be elected to the legislature at Albany, that
he could point to himself as the one, sole domineering
influence of that body. Then it was that his evilisms
ran riot. Then it was he donated fifty thousand dol
lars to the poor; when his daughter's nuptials cost
seven hundred thousand dollars; when he built his
" Castle," still standing with its Norman battlements
and ivied walls, on the banks of the Hudson; when the
splendors of the Americus Club — Tweed's club — out-
gleamed the Orient; and when in these things and
others, all and sundry, Tweed re-enacted the criminal
antics of a Nero before the fall. Pride precedeth over
throw, and puffballs puff but to be punctured and to
explode. Alas! for our American Caesar! His public
was not of that innocuous and castrate inconsequence

THE WAR ON TWEED. 205
with those pathic hordes of Rome. Destruction de
scended with the rush of a storm, and the sweet echoes
of his daughter's epithalamion were not died on the
ear ere the roar of his downfall swept up every other
sound besides.
Years prior to that end, however, Kelly the
"Honest," knowing the ill doing of Tweed, had at
tacked him for the robber that he was. And Richard
Croker was earliest and latest and most trusted at
Kelly's shoulder in that strife. Kelly and Croker, and
with them such as Scannell and the latter's brother
Florence, were quickly the first to assail Tweedism.
They fought Tweed within the walls of Tammany,
and they strove with him at the elections.
Tweed went down in 1871 and '2. For the four
years before, to their disgrace as time-servers be it writ
ten, those and all of them to be at last prominent in
Tweed's taking-off were as well aware of Tweed's venal
ity and the looting of public treasure going forward, as
on a day later when, evidence adduced, trials over and
convictions had, Tweed lay dead in Ludlow. For four
years these good folk knew him and his deeds, and
never moved; while two of our excellent imprints
shouted themselves hoarse with editorial urgings of a
" Monument to Tweed." For four years our Choates
and our Tildens, our Peckhams and our Noah Davises,
were fully informed of Tweed; and never one of them
to move in condemnation. Kelly and Croker and the
Scannells and others of their loyal tribe made manful
war on Tweed. And while they did so the town, half-
bribed, half-bullied, stood still and saw its pockets ran
sacked of the Ring. Never lived thieves to whose crimes
came so many accessories before the fact as the Tweed

206 RICHARD CROKER.
thieves; the whole community, with the few exceptions
of stubborn honor noted, were their accomplices.
Those were bad, stained days, the Tweed days; they
are days well gone and dead. They came sharp in the
black wake of civil war. Take notice, you who read;
War is ever corrupt. The moral disintegration at the
rear is worse than the death at the front. Death — sim
ple, decent death— isn't such a disaster, mauger the
hard assertions that Christians act and think and make
against it. Death isn't understood; if it were, one
would behold nothing in your catafalques save cars of
triumph. Do you talk of the horrors of war? They
are songs of sweetness to the horrors of peace, as one
may learn who looks into an east-side tenement on any
August night. The true horror of war lies in the
moral degeneracy which grows on its trunk like rootless
mistletoe on oak, and which makes thieves of folk who
else had been honest save for those money temptations
of contract-swindle and plunder which war placed in
their ways. War is corrupt; and the canker of our civil
war, central in Washington, projected an influence of
sin on the government of this town. The New York
city hour, as if in sympathy with the hour national,
went reeling drunk with rottenness.
Tweed was overborne, and died in his cage of Lud
low. The public was avenged. Nor were Tweed's
robberies during the years of his bad domination the
worst element of his rule. Those who opposed him too
vigorously were not safe of life, liberty, and limb.
Tweed controlled the courts, the public attorneys, the
juries, the sheriff, and the police. Tweed was the law;
his word was statute, he had but to lift his finger to
cause its carrying out. Offensive partisanship was a

OFFENSIVE PARTISANSHIP. 207
" crime " of moment and serious sequence; and many
an honest rebel against Tweed was taught a terror-
lesson in proof of it. Hundreds of men innocent were
sentenced and sent to terms of Sing Sing for crimes
that never had commission.
That man marked of the Ring and against whom
"word had been sent out" — he who, by the success of
his opposition or the truth he told, had grown danger
ous to the Ring — might be walking the street. A
policeman's sudden hand would grip his shoulder.
'" Come with me," says the Tweed myrmidon in blue.
" This is a mistake," cries the innocent one.
He is wrong; it is no mistake; he is borne to the
station. " What's the charge? " asks the sergeant.
" Robbery," replies the officer; " he stole a watch and
here it is." And with this last word the watch is taken
from the other's pocket where the officer slipped it
but a moment before.
"Who complains against the prisoner?" asks the
sergeant, as he continues to blotter down the particu
lars. " I do." The speaker is an individual on whom the
prisoner's eyes have never rested — a mere hired per
jurer of the Ring. Of such false witness there were
hundreds, Ring-trained, to make oath to order.
" I do," repeats the creature, while the dazed quarry
of this Ring-hunting dumbly stares. " The watch is
mine. This man," pointing to the accused, " lifted it
from my pocket. The officer saw him do it."
Then followed trial, conviction, and sentence in mer
ciless quickstep. Then came the term in prison. It
was longer or shorter, contingent on what power of

208 RICHARD CROKER.
harm to the Ring the victim possessed. If he were of
slighter sort, a year; twenty, if he were manifest peril
to the Ring. This process was styled " putting away ";
and an upright many came to suffer therefrom.
Ring-fears and Ring-revenges dictated these deeds.
And when Sing Sing didn't promise entire Eing-
security the man obnoxious was murdered. There
were bravos at the beck of the Eing who would snuff
out life on the slightest nod of the powers that were,
and with as little of scruple as might attend the imbi
bition of a glass of rum. The victim was " waylaid by
footpads," or " died by hands unknown," or even " com
mitted suicide," just as accident, or a word let fall,
opened a door to that Eing jury at the inquest for a
phrase of explanation. And that — the Coroner's re
turn — was the closing in of the crimson picture. The
Eing murdered as well as robbed. And it robbed folk
of liberty and good repute, while it robbed the town's
strong box of its money.
There is a story to tell — a story of murder and retri
bution. The story is germane to this work, for it por
trays conditions under the Eing. Eighteen hundred
and sixty-nine was the year. Tweed and his crime-
grimed coterie were at fullest head of power. There
were two brothers, Scannells: Florence Scannell, aged
twenty-three, and for two terms prior a member of the
city council; and John Scannell, — of whom we have
had former word in this book, — aged thirty, at that
time holding no office, since of regard as the city's Fire
Commissioner. The Scannells were folk of respect and
note. Also they were forces of politics. The Scan
nells were among the most dauntless of the Eing's foes;
they fought Tweedism by day and by night. Florence

FLORENCE SCANNELL. 209
Scannell, from his place in the city council, was a
menacing grief to the Eing.
In December of 1869 Florence Scannell was in a can
vass for his third term, with victory — despite the
Eing's worst efforts — assured. The Eing was des
perate. For two council terms Florence Scannell had
been a blundering block in the paths of Eing license.
Money couldn't buy him, it had been tried; threats were
powerless, for recourse had been made to them. Nor
did the time-worn trick of arrest and trial and sentence
to Sing Sing on false charges offer certainty of success
in the dangerous occasion of the Scannells. They
were rich, prominent, of coolest courage; moreover,
they were intrenched as behind ramparts in the friend
ships of a multitude. But the Eing was urged of a
great need; Florence Scannell must be " stopped " at
any bloody cost; he must not return to the council.
And the " word " — that word which no man heard
and all men understood — was sent among the Danites
of the Eing; Florence Scannell must be dealt with.
There was no plan; no suggestion of when, or how, or
by whom the murder was to have accomplishment;
that was left to the decision of event. But the
" word " was in the ears of a dozen Eing assassins, any
one of whom was to act on the first safe chance that
proffered. Florence Scannell must die — die that the Eing might
live in its crimes, uninterrupted. And the doom de
nounced of Florence Scannell went also to John Scan
nell; both were perilous folk, the Eing feared them,
and both by Eing edict were devoted to death.
John Scannell cared nothing for politics save what
pride and joy he found in the triumphs of his brother.

210 RICHARD CROKER.
for whom he felt more than brother's love. He was
little of the politician in the common city sense; his
thought was for books. He was among the world's
scholars of Shakspere. His pronounced attributes
were tastes for romance and adventure. John Scan
nell came three centuries too late; he would have been
feather for feather and to the glance of an eye the man
with Drake and Ealeigh and Oxenham and Amyas
Leigh in Kingsley's "Westward Ho!"
It was registration in December, 1869. The vote of
the city — the local elections were then held late in
December — was making that preliminary answer to its
name required of the law. The Eing, set to the de
feat of Florence Scannell by all foul methods since it
might not be fairly brought about, was with the use of
repeaters falsely swelling the registration whereon to
lay foundation for the final steal. Florence Scannell,
together with John Scannell, was busily about in
efforts to prevent these wrongs of the Eing.
There was one, Donahue, who kept a drinking place
at Twenty-third Street and Second Avenue. This
Donahue was himself of the Eing's Danites. He had
killed his man and nearly slain his second. His drink
ing den was a harbor for Eing criminals.
Donahue had office ambitions. He argued with a
dark sagacity that were he to " remove " Florence
Scannell, the Ring would not only protect him from
the law — which in that day was the Ring's will — but
prefer him to some coign of party height and fatness.
On registration day Donahue's resort was made head
quarters for those imported " repeaters " who were to
be used in that ward. There were fourscore or more
of these ruffians in the room to the rear of Donahue's

THE MURDER. 211
bar. Florence Scannell, accompanied by John Scan
nell, on the scent of fraud, came into Donahue's.
Florence Scannell, aware of the whereabouts of the
"repeaters," walked to the door of the rear room
and sought to enter. The door was locked. Donahue
stood behind the bar.
" Don't go in there! " cried Donahue to Florence
Scannell as the latter tried the door.
There was murder in Donahue's heart. It glowed
dully in his bleary eye; and had the Scannells been a
whit less brave, and therefore a bit more cautious, they
might have noted it.
" Don't go in there," said Donahue.
Florence Scannell, baffled by the locked door, turned
and stood against the bar. His elbows rested on it;
his back was to the bar and to Donahue. One in the
room with the " repeaters " unlocked the door. John
Scannell pushed it open and entered among them.
About one hundred men were therein gathered. The
entrance of John Scannell fell like a fear upon these
lawbreakers. They deemed him the advance of jus
tice in pursuit of them. With that, many sought to
be rid of the place; there was a deal of commotion; the
door through which John Scannell had entered was
closed in the stampede.
At the top of the hubbub a shot rang forth in the
barroom. John Scannell, closed into the rear room,
couldn't see and would only guess the reason of that
firing. Donahue, seizing the safe advantage of
Florence Scannell's position and John Scannell's
absence from the scene, had shot the younger Scan
nell in the back. There was no word of warning; be
tween them passed no looks of difference; murder

212 RICHARD CROKER.
cold and safe and cowardly it was, and the victim's first
touch of his peril was a bullet in his back. The effect
was to paralyze; Florence Scannell slipped to the floor
without falling, and as John Scannell rushed in, his
eye rested flrst on his brother half lying against the
base of the bar. In front of him stood a lesser thug of
the Eing.
John Scannell's hand sought his pistol, a 44-caliber
Colt's. There was a flash and a crash; the Eing thug
fell, shot through the neck.
"John, it was Donahue," whispered Florence Scan
nell. John Scannell sprang to the front door. Donahue,
fear-spurred, was a block away, pistol in hand, running
with all speed.
To see was to act; an instant and John Scannell was
in pursuit. The glance he gave his brother as he
passed told him that the latter was wounded to the
death. Whereupon a great hunger of revenge seized
him and swallowed him up.
Donahue made what speed he might, but a vicious
life was clogging him. His pursuer, perfect of habit,
was hate-winged with the one vast thought of ven
geance. The sharp chase of John Scannell was over
whelming the murderer.
Donahue, whose frightened eye each moment swept
his shoulder, beheld his fate as it was descending upon
him. Despair had almost claimed him. There was a
police station near at hand. If Donahue could but win
to that, he would be safe; the police — the Eing police —
would protect him. They were allies as well as officers.
This thought upheld the murderer. He begged of all
his energies; they granted strength; he panted to the

JOHN SCANNELL'S VOW. 213
door. Scannell's pistol cracked, and Donahue fell in
among the police. The Scannell bullet had shattered
an arm. It was a long shot; still Hate and Eevenge
have eyes of hawks; the bullet reached, though it only
wounded. John Scannell, heavy of heart, carried his brother to
the hospital. Then he gave bail on charges of shoot
ing both the Eing mffian, whom he mistook for the
murderer, and Donahue wounded in the door of the
police. Donahue, the assassin of Florence Scannell,
was not arrested. Such was the hardihood, not to say
the power, of the Eing.
Florence Scannell lived eight months and was dying
every moment. Paralyzed — for the bullet had struck
his spine — he reposed on a cot, without motion and
while life wasted away.
Florence Scannell was powerless to move, but he
could talk. And each day he besought John Scannell,
who hung over him, to cry off that vendetta which he
had sworn against Donahue.
" If you die," said John Scannell, " and the law
doesn't punish Donahue, I shall have his life. If the
law fails, I will myself take that justice which is mine."
For eight months the dying Florence wrestled with
his brother for the life of him who was his murderer.
But his strivings were of no avail. The resolves of
John Scannell had set as relentlessly as water-chilled
steel. He would have life for life; an eye for an eye
and a tooth for a tooth. There was something ethnic
in the grim resolve of John Scannell; and his gray eyes,
soft enough with sympathy as he bent above his
brother, turned agate-hard with the first naming of
Donahue.

214 RICHARD CROKER.
While Florence Scannell, bound to his cot, was
dying, the election took place. In the teeth of the
Ring he was successful. But the Ring promised
to rectify that " error." On the " official " count
Florence Scannell would be defeated. John Scannell
heard this crooked news.
There was one who stood for the wisdom of Tweed.
He will not here be named. Suffice it that he was the
Tweed intelligence; the potent one behind the throne
of the Ring.
This wise one, and potential, was alone at his desk.
It was the scant, gray afternoon of the December
solstice. The door opened and John Scannell stood
before him. He wore the tranquil air that was com
mon with him.
" I owe you an apology," said Scannell to the po
tential one, "for this unannounced invasion. But I
had a most important word to communicate."
"What is it?" queried the potential one, not much
at ease with his formidable visitor, calmly the finished
gentleman though that visitor might be. " What is
this that you should tell me?"
" My brother," observed Scannell, " lies nigh unto
death. There is small, if any, hope of his recovery.
He was fairly elected at the polls. Despite that fact,
your corrupt hoard is about, officially, to ' count him
out.' My thought is thg,t if my brother were given the
certificate of election it would be as medicine in wine
to him. It might aid him to be well."
"Very right," replied the potential one; "I'll look
into the matter and let you hear from me in a few
days." John Scannell closed the door which had stood ajar.

THE MATTER CONFIDENTAL. 215
When he again tumed to the potential one his pistol
was in one hand and his watch in the other.
" I will give you one minute," said Scannell, and his
tones were cool and true, "wherein to promise that
my brother will not be robbed of his election. If the
minute dies wanting that assurance, I'll kill you where
you are."
In the gray depths of those eyes bent upon him, the
man of power read his death half told. The whole
dread story would be finished unless within the pent
spaces of a minute he interrupted its recital with a
promise. It was fate; and the one potential doffed his
hat to it. He promised. Scannell returned his pistol
and was about to depart.
" I do not doubt your word," said he to the potential
one, " for I do not doubt that you are wise enough to
keep it."
" I'll keep my word," faltered the other, " but I re
quest you to say nothing of our interview."
For the first time since his brother lay with Dona
hue's bullet in his life, the least shadow of a smile fell
across the face of John Scannell.
"You need take no alarm," he observed; "I'll re
gard our interview as confidential."
Florence Scannell was given the election; the man
of potency had kept his word. Also, as reward of it,
the potential one at full threescore still dwells among
us in quiet ease and peace.
Those months to follow the day when he was shot
down by Donahue went tiptoeing into the past, and the
hour of death came on for Florence Scannell. Worn
of pain and starved by sickness, he was only the
shade of what he was. John Scannell was with him.

216 RICHARD CROKER.
as he had been day and night. The one dying, too
weak to speak aloud, motioned his brother to draw
nearer. " John," he whispered, " I shall not live an hour.
And before I die I want to say a word to you. I feel
differently about Donahue; and now that I die I want
to leave his punishment to his conscience. If he were
here, and I held his life in my hand, I'd give it back to
him. John, you're my oldest brother and my best and
oldest friend. You never refused me in my life. I
have one last request. I want you to spare Donahue."
" Florrie," replied his brother, and the tears were
wet on his face — " Florrie, so surely as you die and I
live, I shall kill Donahue."
There was a moment's pause. Then:
" John," whispered the other, " you have broken my
heart." And he died without further word.
On the cot was the dead, and by its side knelt the liv
ing; and there John Scannell made his vow anew that,
be it late or be it soon, be it far or be it near, yet should
his vengeance find a time. He would have life for life;
he would pay with death his debt of death.
John Scannell made a visit to Donahue. His hope
was to force him forth to battle; he would not kill him
as his brother was slain; Donahue should have his
chance. Scannell was coldly steady when he found
his man.
" My brother is dead," said he, " and you murdered
him. If you had killed him in honest quarrel and with
his face towards you, I would not harbor thought
against you. But this was murder — murder plain and
cowardly. You killed him when he had no differ-

DONAHUES FEAR. 217
ence with you, and while his back was turned. For
what you did there's no excuse, nor shall you find
escape. Yet I will deal better by you than you
did with him. You shall see your death and defend
yourself against me; your hand shall hold every ad
vantage that I hold in mine. You must come and
fight. You should not hesitate; you are not new to
weapons nor to taking life. You have already killed
two men, and dearly wounded one. And you must
come with me. To help you to decision, I promise
it's your only door to safety. You've killed my brother.
You must now kill me or I shall kill you."
Donahue turned white as paper. Donahue was bold,
but there was that so inveterate in the one before him,
he seemed so fraught of all that crushed and killed,
that Donahue shrank from him as from a mystery of
midnight. Donahue smelled his death off Scannell as
kine smell in the wind the unborn storm. Donahue
refused to meet with Scannell.
Four days had passed. Donahue, in company of two
of his adherents, was walking in Fourth Avenue.
Scannell leaped from a carriage and approached Don
ahue. As he came near he called to the other:
" Get ready; you are not to be killed without de
fense." Donahue turned and fled; he was gone in a twinkling.
Scannell made no attempt to shoot nor follow; his
thought was still to have his man at bay.
There was that to happen which would show
Scannell that his enemies were not so frank as he.
He was waylaid on Twenty-eighth Street by seven
bravos of the Ring. The notorious Owney Geoghegan
was at their van. Their " orders " were to slay Scan-

218 RICHARD CROKER.
nell on sight. The seven poured a volley against him.
But his own pistol spoke with theirs; and as he fell
with three wounds, a bullet-convulsed brigand re
mained to bear him bleeding company. The others
fled. As they ran, the indomitable Scannell raised his
shot body and fired twice. Each bullet stopped an
enemy. There were no deaths to be the result of this
attempted assassination. Scannell recovered, as did
also the wounded trio of would-be murderers. The
Ring still sought to compass his death. The Ring
again " ordered " it, but there was now none among
the Danites of a courage to hunt this Hector.
Following this last collision John Scannell disap
peared. Some there were to say that he'd left the
town; others told that he was still here, but disguised;
the thing sure, however, was that none might make
certain of aught concerning him. And with that, not
alone Donahue, but Tweed and Sweeny and Hall and
others of the Ring's highest, went nervously lest their
lives, too, were written in the books of Scannell.
Donahue remained, for the great part, out of town.
He crept to his home at intervals to lie in hiding for
a day or two; then he would flit again. A fugitive day
and night, Donahue's every moment was fevered of
fear, and his life already fallen into a semi-eclipse of
death. It was a few months following the attack of the seven
Danites on Scannell. Donahue came secretly to his
home. The night following, with two others, Donahue
was about in one of the more retired streets. Sud
denly, and wanting sign or warning, one whom none
recognized stood before them in the gloom. Not
a word was spoken; there was the bluff bark of a Der-

m m

m m

Statue of St. Tammany, from the Faqadb of Tammany Hall.

A MAN AND A DERRINGER. 219
ringer, and Donahue fell, shot through the body. The
stranger disappeared like a dark ghost, as he had come
like one.
Donahue, tenacious to live, got well of this wound as
of the first; but before the fact was abroad, he had gone
where no one knew.
It is a curious thought, and one which tells for
the self-centered sort of Scannell, that none dared
speak to him of Donahue. Richard Croker, his nearest
friend, was asked to interpose his influence with Scan
nell. Croker shook his head.
" I'd give all I'm worth," he said, " and ten years off
my life, if the matter might end as it is. It's bad; and
more will make it worse. But " — and Croker paused —
" but I can't speak to him. I best know John Scannell
of all his friends; I've no closer friend myself than he;
but I don't know him well enough for that."
Now come we to the last act of this tragedy; a
tragedy born of conditions peculiar to the dynasty of
Tweed. The time was November of 1872. The day
was Saturday. Lacking a fortnight, three years had
slipped away on the slow tides of eternity since the
murder of Florence Scannell. Donahue was never
seen these days, and seldom heard of. Now and again
a half whisper would go about that Donahue had been
in town, but was fled again. John Scannell, on his
part, was about in his own affairs, calm, equal, and cold;
he never smiled and never spoke of Donahue.
It was the evening of the day. In a basement at
the northwest corner of Broadway and Twenty-eighth
Street, and under the present " Fifth Avenue Theater,"
was a poolroom. John Scannell, who was walking in
Broadway at the time, paused and entered. Donahue

220 RICHARD CROKER.
was not in his thoughts; he believed him full one
thousand miles away and more, for a waif-word blew
about that Donahue's refuge was Havana. Scannell's
flres of vengeance glowed as hotly as ever, but by long
waiting they had become banked. In the lapse of years
the tooth of sharp expectancy had dulled. Scannell
wasn't longing and looking to find his foe with every
moment, as was earlier true.
John Scannell entered the poolroom. There were
full two hundred in the place. Scannell saw only one.
Before him stood Donahue. That man who had slain
his brother, and for whom he had hoped and hunted,
was delivered into his hand. Almost three years had
sped since John Scannell beheld his brother lying in
bloody helplessness, and worse than dead, by the hand
of this man. The picture was with him still. Almost
three years had gone — more than one thousand days
and one thousand nights — and each day he had re
sworn himself to vengeance; and each night he had
prayed that the hour might come. It was here, and he
welled with happiness. The murky glory of the mo
ment filled his heart; his pleasure overflowed in
laughter. John Scannell gazed on Donahue. The dogged mo
ments seemed to pause. Scannell's face shone with a
smile. His eyes were lighted brightly up yet pleas
antly, with the lamps of a white hate. Donahue,
opposite, was as one of stone, and with a cheek of
ashes. Donahue had courage; but it was of bludgeon
kind; it would not carry him against this man of joy
and death. Donahue couldn't command himself, he was
in a dream of horror. Gripped in his right hand, and
hidden in his coat, was a heavy pistol. It was found

DEATH AND HIS PREY. 221
frozen in his fingers when he was dead. Donahue
pointed this weapon at Scannell through his coat; but
his hand was nerveless, he couldn't fire. Twice he
called in a dry, hoarse voice like a raven's croak:
" John! "
And again, " John! "
Donahue was calling to one who should have been
with him. Scannell smiled only the more. The
blood of his brother was calling to him.
John Scannell still looked on Donahue while the
moments snailed away. Scannell reflected of Donahue
as with a comic lightness that matched the smile on
his lips. This was what he thought:
" They say you're bullet-proof, and that no lead will
kill you. Perhaps this is true. And I'll make a
promise in your favor. If you live through this — if
you get by me this time, I'll call my vengeance off — ^I'U
let the dead past bury its dead."
Something of that was running in the mind of Scan
nell. Then his thought went to other matters. He
could see that Donahue grasped in his hand a pistol.
He hoped that Donahue would shoot. Scannell cared
not if he died or no; he was sure in his heart that he
would live to kill Donahue, and that was all his prayer.
From the first Scannell spoke never a word; Donahue
at intervals called:
"John! "huskily.
Then a third thought came to Scannell. " My pistol
carries the heaviest of balls. When I shoot this man,
the bullet will go through and through and wound
or kill one of those behind."
There was truth in this; for, as Scannell stood in the
door, the onlookers, as pale as Donahue, — for each fore-

222 RICHARD CROKER.
saw the sequel, — were crowded to the rear, and in the
line of fire. This would not do; Scannell wanted no
man's blood but one's.
Scannell began to pace slowly around Donahue. The
other, fear-stiffened and incapable, could only turn
to meet him. Scannell ceased not to smile. His un
winking eyes did not waver from the eyes of Donahue.
The latter was held as by a spell. Slowly Scannell
went about Donahue to the right, never widening,
never lessening the distance. At the last he had forced
Donahue cross-wise of the room, with naught behind
him save the safe, insensate wall. The time had come.
Not until then did Scannell's hand seek his weapon.
And he went slowly after it, with pauses full of pleas
ant hesitation. Scannell still tacitly called Donahue to
action. It was not to be. Donahue was as rigidly
helpless as a statue of ice. With iron deliberation
Scannell drew his pistol. Donahue, licking a dry lip,
stood at gaze and as one planet-struck.
" Bang! "
Between those murderous eyes which had lined the
shot that stole his brother's life, Scannell's revenge
went crashing. Donahue crippled forward, half-
turned, and with a sob, which broke on Scannell like a
tune of music, fell headlong down.
John Scannell looked on his prone enemy for a
moment while his bosom filled with the tides of a
generous peace. It was as though a stone had been
rolled from his heart. Then he went slowly forth, and
no hour had seemed so sweet nor the world so bright
before. An officer touched his elbow. Scannell tumed and
followed him. The officer led the way. The dead

VENGEANCE IS MINE! 223
Donahue was where he fell. A captain of police stood
close at hand.
" Do you see your work? " asked the captain.
" I do." The sudden sparkle to glance in Scannell's
eyes showed how burned the fires to be kindled in a
brother's breast by a brother's murder. " I do; I see
my work; observe how I approve it."
" Bang! "
And Scannell sent a bullet through the dead Dona
hue as he had sent one through the living Donahue be
fore. The body jumped on the floor with the springy
concussion of the shot, and then lay still. The ven
geance of John Scannell was full.

XIV.
JOHN e:elly.
statesman, yet friend to truth ! of soul sincere,
In actions faithful, and in honor clear !
Who broke no promise, served no private end,
Who gained no title and who lost no friend. — Pope.
John Scannell was made acquit by jury for the
taking-off of Donahue. The argument to lead to his
enlargement was the full pistol fast in the death-grip
of Donahue's right hand. It assumed a peril for Scan
nell, and by that word the twelve men vouchsafed him
free and blameless.
From this acquittal of Scannell an essay might be
reared. The twelve who heard and made decision were
born to the manor, all and each Americans. Their an
cestry for more than one remove in every instance was
American. Had it been a jury of folk emanate of
Europe an opposite settlement might well have been
arrived at. Your American is a sentimentalist; your
European, comparatively, is not. The latter lacks
in imagination. And he has been adjusted and re
adjusted in all his rights and wrongs, for over two
thousand years, by force and effort of the law. Where
fore his natural thought has been revamped and made
over until his notion of justice is his knowledge of law.
If it be law, it is right to your European; and thereby
the converse of " wrong, if illegal," is equally alert.
Your American with imagination, and therefore
2Zi

THE UNELASTIC ALIEN. 225
ideals, and therefore sentiment, does not adhere to this
theory of Europe. He has his law; yes. And he will
follow it — with limitations. Your American has his
law of murder builded on models English. It is no
more, in its terms or their construction, gifted with
gates of escape than are the laws of England, Germany,
or France. But back in the recesses of American sen-
timentalism there are maintained exceptions. These
make a safety for many who, by strict letter being
transgressors, would otherwise be lost.
In this gloomy business of homicide, your man of
Europe, fitting law to fact, would cut and baste and
stitch a guilty verdict as a tailor might a garment. But
without and above and beyond strict terms of statute
your American can understand a justice. The reading
of his law would grant one no relief. But were one to
slay him who had murdered a brother, or wronged a
mother, a sister, or a wife, your American will step to
his defense despite a statute — do a justice and undo a
law. Your unelastic European has no such good flexi
bilities. True, it is all sentiment. Americans are the most
sentimental of the tribes. More than half the world's
sentiment is American and north of the tropics. Senti
ment is not here written as the opposite of common
sense. Rather is it employed to distinguish that last
commodity in a character, sublimated and etherealized.
Common sense of the sort that goes about of week days
on four feet — and a most excellent fashion of sense is
this — is never showy and has no brilliantisms. Its
motto is " Progress with Safety." Risk is crime in the
eyes of that common sense. It will face danger and be
coolly intrepid, if forced by conditions which listen to

226 RICHARD CROKER.
no refusal. But it will never rap at the door of a great
peril of free will; and that, no matter the profit or the
glory to be derivative of the deed. Wherefore Senti
ment is ever the warrior, or the poet, or the singer, or
the lover at his best. And your American replies to
every one of these.
And that is natural enough; a philosopher of species
would have foretold it four centuries ago, at the be
ginning of the Western settlement. America from the
first has been fed for her citizenry with the picked
peoples of Europe. This is true, and will be while
steerage passage to these shores obtains. The emi
grant is self-selected; and thereby is he the best
selection. Who is there of Ireland, England, Scotland,
Norway, Germany, or where you wUl, among those poor
and stint of lore and fortune, to gather the courage,
the enterprise, and the money to come to America, and
not be best and strongest of his race? The clods, the
weak, those of a dull dispirit, live and die in Europe;
the choice among them come to us. Thus for a quar
tette of centuries we have been gaining to ourselves the
bravery, the imagination, and the sentimentalism of
the elder, other world. And conditions here — condi
tions of nature — rough and honest and manly, have
magnified these attributes and strengthened them.
American existence has ever been a combat. Life
has been a Peace with War. For two hundred years
our frontier was a line of savage battle. Is it, then,-^
for one instance of racial trend, — marvel, when one re
flects on strain and stock and education, that your
American is the natural soldier? From the beginning,
life in America has moved among dangers whereof your
man of Europe never dreamed. And it has bred a

THE AMERICAN WARRIOR. 227
hardy optimism of the physical in American folk.
Does your American go to war? He goes to kill some
body. The thought that he may be himself slain is
second; it is dim and not much dwelt upon.
Your European, criticising what he might not equal,
charges this optimism of your American about to
war with being braggadocio, and is rhetorical over an
American tendency to " underestimate a foe." It is
wiser, and more to one's final profit in blood, to under
estimate than overestimate a foe. If one may not make
exact anticipations, at least one should give one's self
the benefit of doubts. If you will but underestimate an
enemy while he overestimates you, and though you
have no more than one about your standards for three
with his, you may still dismiss alarm. You shall con
quer with little effort and still less of risk. Courage is
belief in one's self.
Bacon has somewhat to write anent this in his
Twenty-ninth Essay. Says the scribbling Chancellor:
" Walled Townes, Stored Arcenalles and Armouries,
Goodly Races of Horses, Chariots of Warre, Elephants,
Ordnance, Artillery, and the like; all this is but a
sheepe in a lion's skin, except the breed and disposition
of the People be stout and warlike. Nay, number (it
selfe) in Armies importeth not much, where the people
is of a weake courage; For as Virgil saith, 'It never
troubles the Wolfe how many the Sheepe be.' " The
world had some American proof of Bacon's accuracy
of thought when Schley's fleet, being boat for boat and
gun for gun no unfair match for its adversaries, utterly
destroyed — root and stalk and standing grass — the
Spaniards at Santiago, and in short order truly burned
them from the sea.

228 RICHARD CROKER.
Sentiment is an excellent goods — nationally it comes
to be the backbone of popular will. And while
America leads in sentiment, she will command in
every brave thing else. And if braggadocio as
a term means to make claim when one cannot
make . accomplishment, then America is not brag
gart. Her record for war and for cold valor, by any
average to be developed for the past century and a
quarter, tops a world's tables. All the wars of Na
poleon, and all that has since happened of carnage
kind, to or in Europe, wouldn't make a companion piece
for a picture of our civil war. And if bloodshed is to
be the test, there was battle after battle of that civil
war with counts of killed and wounded to go from
twenty-five to sixty-six per cent, of all engaged, or two
or three or four times the blood-rate of such fields as
Marengo, Solferino, Austerlitz, and Waterloo.
Aside from considerations of an aroused sentimen
talism, one may verily believe that life in America in
duces a fraternal and withal a filial love, better,
stronger, more vivid than one finds abroad. No
where, save in Ireland or the Highlands of the Scotch,
does the clan or family spirit burn so fiercely as in
America. Go to our South, which holds the truest and
cleanest strain of your American with least of alien
crossings. There you will have instant teaching that
war on a member means war with the family, even unto
cousins of fourth and fifth degrees. The American
loyalty of blood to blood has its fair parallel in the clan
spirit of a colony of hornets. And while it may be a
whit less obvious of manifestation in Northern regions
than in those Southern whereof I have fore-written,
this loyalty of the family is abundant and pronounced

JOHN KELLY RETURNS 229
among Americans wherever they are found. And,
when one digs to the bottom with his twelve native-
born folk of the jury, it was that excusing clan spirit,
and nothing more besides, that worked acquittance for
John Scannell.
When Tweed was destroyed, John Kelly was in
Europe. Tammany had fallen in ruins. While many,
like Kelly and Croker and the Scannells, of Tammany
had been fighting Tweed from the earliest hour, the
organization, because of Tweed its head, was crushed
in his downfall.
It was Richard Croker who urged Kelly in Europe to
return. He put it to him as a duty to reorganize and
rehabilitate Tammany Hall. Kelly came back and
assumed the headship. The outlook was darker than
was Washington's at Valley Forge. Tammany Hall was
disrated, disgraced; to be of its muster was not a royal
password to high political repute. Wherefore two-
thirds of its membership deserted, and reared from
time to time against it such rival keeps of Democratic
pride and strength as the Irving Hall and the County
Democracies. With this the situation, what might
Tammany do? Surely there must be works of re
pentance following Tweed; a past must be lived down,
and a public granted time wherein to forgive and to
forget, ere anything like majorities at the polls or
ascendency in party conclaves could be hoped for by
Tammany Hall.
Kelly was the ideal leader for that sorrowful time.
If Tammany had been in power, owning a supremacy,
Kelly would have gone backwards. Kelly would not
have accommodated himself to a day of Tammany
prosperity. He was too much the theorist, too much

230 RICHARD CROKER.
addicted to principle and too little to policy, to succeed
in a time of success. To put it bluntly, Kelly was too
honest. But when on the reefs of disaster — peculiarly
the disaster of disrepute — Kelly of all names was the
man for the hour. His honesty, his courage, his char
acter above reproach, were admirable as wrecking aids
to refloat and repair the castaway organization.
Tammany at that moment didn't need a leader that
could win, for of victory there was no hope. In the
dry dock your bark wants a ship carpenter, not a cap
tain to sail her round the world. And Tammany, fol
lowing Tweed, must be dry-docked. In the hospital
your soldier, wounded, needs a surgeon, not a general
to lead him to the charge. And Tammany, bleeding with
the wounds of Tweed, must go to the hospital. With
the case as painted, " Honest " John Kelly was that
one best endowed for the emergency. He was a ship
carpenter of party, rather than a sailor; a better sur
geon than general in a war of politics. It took John
Kelly years to mend and make Tammany over and
strengthen it, with honest men and folk of character, to
a point where the public would re-intrust it with affairs.
But Kelly did it, and there is none on the pages of
Tammany to whom more of honor and of praise is due
than Kelly. With his quality of honesty and the great
respect a public held for him, Kelly doctored and
cherished and conserved Tammany, broken and
wounded to all but the death with Tweed, back to
health and power and life, when in other hands than
his the organization would have perished.
But Kelly had his sides of weakness. Kelly was a
soul of theory — an abstractionist more than a man of
practice. He cared all for a principle and nothing for

THE TOO-HONEST MAN. 231
a policy. One may be a philosopher, or a philan
thropist, or an angel, and give way to these virtues.
But one cannot on such terms be a victory-winning
Chandos of politics. Look in the average human face,
and particularly, glance in the face political. What
does one see? Hog and wolf in struggle for a mas
tery, with the hog a bit the better of the two. Kelly
was too fair, too honest, too loyal. He looked for these
traits in equal turn in others. Thus was he cheated,
disappointed. And Kelly, thus morally excellent, was wrong.
From standpoints of ethics, Kelly was admirable; from
those of triumph at the polls, he was buried in error. To
be sure, and as has been said, in the day of Kelly, when
no door opened to the least of chance for Tam
many to rise, what were Kelly's defects of leadership
came to be no harm. Tammany was doomed, follow
ing Tweed, to do a proper penance. It must be, even
in its own party, a hewer of wood and a drawer of
water until redeemed. Caesar, after Tweed, couldn't
have conquered with Tammany. Wherefore, as writ
ten, Kelly's inflrmities of chiefship came to no loss;
and, since all one might hope to accomplish was a trifle
day by day of better standing for Tammany, they
really worked for good.
Still, whether it be Kelly or another, he is wrong
who in those sterner matters of the world, and which
are distinguished from what constitutes one's religion
and one's pleasure by the name of business — this in
cludes politics — believes but to be deceived, tmsts only
to be defrauded, and whose loyalty has naught save
treason as its lone reward. That is what one means
when one tells that Kelly was too fair, too honest, too

232 RICHARD CROKER.
loyal. One can't afford a sentimental extravagance
more than one may a money one. It leads even to the
bankruptcy of Hope itself. To quote it from the lips
of a gray gambler, — though he would start at the
term, — evilly experienced and sapient of much sin:
" You can't afford to play a fairer or more liberal
system with a man than he plays with you. If it be a
game at cards and he cheats, your sole safety lies in two
courses. You must cheat him or quit. Luck in the
long run will range equally; and if he is to add his skill
to his luck, and his roguery to both, while you are made
to depend on the two first with no help from the latter,
he'll defeat you. To reduce what I mean to an example
of dollars and cents, the statement might be put in
this way: If you give a man five hundred dollars every
time he gives you four hundred, he'll break you, though
you carry to the transaction the gold of Solomon or
Standard Oil."
John Kelly was one readily deceived and as quick to
trust as a child. There is this difference between Kelly
and Croker. Kelly seemed to distrust, and trusted;
Croker seems to trust, and his suspicion is never
asleep. It is marvelous, with his experience, and the rough,
fierce, stormy school of life wherein he grew, that Kelly
was a no-better reader of political men. He would not
and could not be brought to see a treason by proof short
of its dagger in his heart, and then it was too late.
Kelly should have been more a gardener of distrust and
cultivated suspicion as a tree. Old Louis the Eleventh
was of an opposite kidney. It was this cunning King
who soliloquized — " Treason! She sits at our feasts;
she sparkles in our bowls; she wears the beards of our

LOUIS THE ELEVENTH. 233
councilors, the smiles of our courtiers, the crazy laugh
of our jesters, — above all, she lies hid under the
friendly air of an enemy reconciled. Louis of Orleans
trusted John of Burgundy; he was murdered in the Rue
Barbette. John of Burgundy trusted the faction of
Orleans; he was murdered on the bridge of Montereau.
I will trust no one — no one."
Confidence — I state but general truths — confidence
in politicians is pearls before swine. One who abides
afar from the big party tempests — who dwells apart
from the storm-centers of politics, and who, natheless,
is of a mood to know the kind and sort of politicians
— may be granted a helpful hint. In politics there are
two classes: the Warwick and the King, the manager
and the candidate, the potter and the clay. Of the
second, if one cannot come by some specimen of
one's own to study, one may have much clear under
standing from a close and apprehensive contemplation
of the hog. It is not true that every office-hunter is
porcine, but he is the exception who is not.
Men have double natures, personal and political.
The man-political is never the man-personal. He who
in his character of politician is the apex of piggish
voracity, lacking scruple of honesty or grace of grati
tude; who, wanting courage and a spoil to cowardice,
will with the flush of danger desert his cause and com
rade both, is oft and frequently, when taken apart from
politics and upon grounds of private, fair existence, dis
covered liberal, true, and brave to word and friend. As
a politician, however, he recalls the sty-people and one
may truly have his portrait from the pigs.
Would you know the politician? Then, briefly, the
hog! One should study the swine in his pen-fold and

234 RICHARD CROKER.
bear witness to him as he goeth about and fiUeth his
mouth with the straws of gladness! Your hog is fero
cious, and will devour an unguarded and inadvertent
infant, should such fall in his way. He is craven to
the point which flies shrieking from the least ' and
puniest attack. He is pertinacious without valor; ob
stinate without bravery; cruel, selfish, egotistical, with
out dash of liberal, frank courage. Nor is there obli
gation in your hog. Feed him from youth to age, and
though he may know he has these favors from your
hands — for your hog, mind you! is not without sagacity
and will yell for food at the suggestive sight of you — yet
will he never bear you gratitude nor love, for all you
bring him. Dogs and horses are a different folk.
They have hearts as well as memories.
There is another sublime thing about your hog. He
is led by appetite; never by reason. His thought of
right is his thought of want, and what he desires is
what to him is just. So far is he ruled by appetite, to
the abeyance of reason, that he is proof against lessons
of pain. Your hog may wend thievishly to your gar
den thirty times; you may set corrective dogs on him
thirty times; singing with fear and grief, a dog swing
ing to each ear, he will come from his vandalage thirty
times. And then clear but the way before him; call
back your dogs; and, within such space as one may
count a score, your hog will return to the garden for
the thirty-first time. He knows that it means trouble
and a cataract of curs. But he goes. Disaster is no
teacher to your hog!
Such is the hog; such also, for rule, is your office-
seeker; such he has been, and such, doubtless, he will
continue to the end. And Kelly, fighting with, sur-

THE TAMMANY MOSES. 235
rounded by, and herdsman to such squealing litter,
shoald have known his cattle better. Kelly would tmst
and be deceived; repose a confidence, only to be
betrayed. And then on him who cheated he would make war.
It was thus that Kelly fought with Tilden, with Robin
son, with one hundred more of weaker moment. Great
or small, giant or dwarf, Kelly, once deceived by him,
was his implacable foe. And for that, as we've beheld,
the Circe of politics turns all who seek her, and
particularly those of candidational circles, into swine,
Kelly met ever that ingratitude and selfishness and
coward trustlessness which are the jewels to adorn
swinishness. And so Kelly was in perennial hot water,
and each day beheld the swelling of his feuds, while
peace grew less and less. His enemies multiplied, while
his strength decreased. It told against Tammany in
the practical way of politics. The organization took
no prizes; nor were its views of vogue nor deep concern
with party.
As comfort to counter this, Tammany, chastened
with little power and morally excellent with much
weakness, was rapidly regaining that decent, sweet re
pute which Tweed had in this or that part tarnished or
destroyed. Kelly was the Moses of Tammany Hall.
He led it forth of that Egypt of 111 where it had toiled
in the venal brickyards of Tweed. He was with it in the
desert of No-hope, and for fourteen years upheld it and
kept it compact against enemies without as well as
within the Democracy.
John Kelly throughout his captaincy had one ad
vantage — a pleasant one, and say the least — over
Eichard Croker. Tammany and Kelly were not, dur-

236 RICHARD CROKER.
ing the supremacy of the latter, subject of any viru
lence of print. The papers, truly, were not in Kelly's
day distinguished for an amiable content with either
that leader or the organization he controlled. But,
compared with this later day of Croker, they said little
about them.
That clemency of the papers — for so, perhaps, would
the papers phrase it — arose from a paucity of Tammany
success. There was no threat of Tammany strength;
wherefore the papers did not feel called to level spear
against it. The story became changed with the coming
of Croker. He won immediate triumph and secured
control of the town. With that the papers awoke;
they have been baying both Croker and Tammany with
a rabid unanimity since that time.
This newspaper violence towards Tammany has
an easy cause. The local unfashion of Tammany, and
that deficiency of favor bestowed upon it by the very
rich, have been explained. And whether one likes the
thought or no, there be none so quickly supple to the
moods of Money as the papers. For one, however, I'm
inclined to defend the press in its right to hold as to
Tammany, or Money, or whatever may come to be of
moment in its eyes, what attitude it will. It is free to
pick and choose its alliances, to meet its taste or in
terest as much as any private individual.
There is current hubbub as to the " public duty " of
the papers. Justice will discover no public duty de
volving on the press more than bears upon other folk.
A paper is private property; not public. Your citizen
buys or declines it at his choice. He reads it or casts
it aside, believes it or denounces it, as he deems fit. If
your paper loses money, no public reimburses its pub-

THE NEWSPAPER DUTY. 237
lisher. The loss is the latter's, and his alone. Where
fore he may open it to this relation, or close it to an
other, as freely and by the same right as your merchant
may his store. There is no question of " public duty "
to break into the problem.
It might be said, as matter pertinent, that the phrase
" public duty " is one commonly overworked, and found
more than frequently in the plain employment of fraud.
Public duty, and its sonorous synonym. Patriotism,
should be jealously looked to by the listener with their
each invasion of his ear. " A fool's a patriot in every
age," says Pope, and the Twickenham hunchback, for
all his " Dunciad," his peevish quarrels with Gibber,
Addison, Hervey, Montagu, and the rest, was not al
ways wrong. The duty one owes the public may be
easily lighted upon. It is in black and white, and stares
one in the face by open word of law. And beyond the
law there lies no one's duty even by an inference. Does
one give to the public aught beyond the true and sure
outreaching of the law? it is so much largesse.
Not alone does the law set whoUy forth one's duty
to the public, but the latter in its rule-making has left
nothing to the honor, the honesty, nor the generosity
of the individual. Before one is born the public be
gins to threaten one through printed tons of laws.
Does one murder? one is to be hanged. Does one
burn? or steal? or make a mayhem? one is to be im
prisoned. Does one owe and not pay? writs of exe
cution are to run against one's property, and now and
then one's person. And so the tale is told. AU is
compulsion; nothing is permitted to the good nature
nor generous integrity of the citizen. And when such
is the situation there can be no talk of " duty to the

238 RICHARD CROKER.
public " beyond that which the public has preferred by
clear assertion.
What belongs to the individual belongs equally to
the newspaper, and the public duty of the one begins
and ends with the public duty of the other. In issues
of politics — where one party is ever found to defend
Money against the individual, and the other to defend
the individual against the talons of the Money-harpy,
— it has been shown by newspaper experience that he
who, fending for the individual, makes front against
Money, finds at the year's end no count of profits in his
till. And of publishers there be few so rich, or fond of
labors Sisyphean, or weak of a gold-wisdom, as to walk
daily forth to certain loss. And who is he to blame
them? Therefore comes it that the papers commonly, and al
most without exception, are in the ranks against Tam
many Hall. And while one is not to condemn them in
thus carrying their own eggs to auction in their own
way, one should none the less avoid error yawning in
discovering the motive which decides them. When
one, however, considers the gratitude of Money, and the
ingratitude of men, one must be driven to admit that
the papers with the worst word preserve more of a
popular generosity than one might reasonably expect.
And while one discusses the press one should ever
remember, when debating what one may question as
defect, that among the institutions of men the news
paper is young. It is yet in the childhood of its days,
and not arrived at any adult, ripe perfection. In this
connection of newspapers it is curious to read Ben Jon-
son's comedy, the " Staple of News." The dramatist,
three hundred years ago, told the tale of a newspaper

THE PRESS IS YOUNG. 239
that, word for word, is a perfect story of those two
or three fevered journals of our town which, remem
bering that folk prefer amazement to instruction,
stretch in admiration of the marvelous, and get them
selves before the public in perfect Alice-in- Wonderland
style. While the newspaper has been struggling from the
press for a round trio of centuries, it was not, save for
the last one hundred and forty years, uncensored and
free of pen and types. As recently as 1670 that titled
imbecile Berkeley, Governor of Virginia, — he whom
Charles the Second characterized when he said: " The
old fool has taken more executions in that naked coun
try than I for the murder of my father," — ^wrote in a
report to the home-state, " I thank God there are no
free schools nor printing; and I hope we shall not have
these hundred years; for learning has brought diso
bedience and heresy and sects into the world, and print
ing has divulged them, and libels against the best gov
ernment." The earliest Virginia printing press — one
at Culpeper — arrived in 1681. It was slave to cen-
sorism until within a decade of our Revolution. In
New England, Harvard College set up one of these
peccant and distrusted engines in 1639. This, too,
was held in the leash of strict censorship until 1755.
And as none may find fault with slaves or captives for
moral or mental deficiencies caused of their bonds, so
should criticism of the press pause somewhat on the
fact that it has had no longer than, say, a century and
a third, wherein to expand and mold itself free of
argus-eyed and tyrannous obstruction of the law. For
so brief a growth-space the press shows exceeding well.
There is one error of management which our news-

240 RICHARD CROKER.
papers are prone to make. Those to be guilty thereof
would find it profitable and working-water on their
wheels to rectify it. That is the system of paying
news-writers by space and not by salary. Under the
present rule, and particularly on papers which fatten
on sensation, there is inducement to exaggeration as
well as sheer, invented lie. The more sensational the
story, the more space will be granted it; and therefore
and thereby the more money to the pocket of the
writer. The present space plan is a bid for fiction
rather than news; and as sensational fiction, when
told of living men, is wondrous apt to be slanderous fic
tion, the ending in a cloud of instances is damages
against the publishers. True, divers of our imprints —
precoce and rebelly these, like boys of ten who smoke
tobacco and blaspheme as do sinners of forty years —
will scowl denial of this observe. What is written will
be none the less fact for that. For the profit of their
reputations, and their purses, too, the papers should
abandon the " space system " in every comer of their
comings-out. " No man," said Johnson to Boswell — " no man but
a blockhead ever wrote except for money." And be
cause this is rooted verity, and the modern papers in
taking advantage of it have fairly destroyed the litera
ture of our age, they have in that behalf to answer
serious charges. " Literature," observed some wise
acre whose name eludes the pen, " literature is a good
cane, but a poor crutch." Which in English means : it
doesn't pay. As a common rule, writing, whether of
truth or fiction, poetry or prose, never bought the au
thor's crust and cup until the daily papers came to be.
One glance rearward and one is aware of this. Spenser

EDMUND SPENSER. 241
writes his " Faerie Queene," and it is not the public's,
but Philip Sidney's gold which first gilds his muse.
Spenser sends in his verses and waits humbly in the
court to learn the word of Greatness reading. It is
a kind one.
"Give him fifty crowns!" cries Sidney at the end
of the first stanza.
That somber, close official whom he addresses thinks
Sidney mad. He waits ten minutes. Then he inter
rupts to remonstrate.
" What! " shouts Sidney, " did you not give him the
fifty crowns? Give him one hundred now; I have
read another stanza."
At the end of the third stanza, Sidney orders another
one hundred crowns to the waiting poet.
" And send him then away," commands Sidney, " for
should he remain, and I continue to read, I will con
clude bankrupt." .
Swift is upheld by Sir William Temple, and at last
lives by the Church. Warburton is another who would
have starved without a pulpit. Gay, for all his
" Fables," and the shouting success of his " Beggar's
Opera," is fed by the Queenberrys. Bums turns
gauger, and finds that bread by the excise which his
verses would not earn. Hogg is given a farm, or the
Ettrick Shepherd would have gone wanting fiocks and
fleeces to the close of his Scotch days. Goldsmith
abides in a garret and has sixty pounds by the " Vicar
of Wakefield" — a rose of fiction fadeless to this day
— and is captive for rent in the talons of his landlady
when Johnson brings it to his emancipation. Johnson,
himself, sponges on the Thrales for the better part of
twenty years; and at last quarrels with his benefactress.

242 RICHARD CROKER.
for that, becoming a widow, she marries again and so
breaks up his nest. Chatterton starves to death. Poe
has thirty dollars for his " Raven," and five dollars a
stanza for his " Bells." Thirty dollars for the " Raven "
might be deemed a just reward for that poem, since
both verse and thought were thefts. The Raven in
volved was North's raven, as one may see who reads
" Noctes Ambrosianae "; and as for the verse, one may
find both style, and march, and now and then the very
phrase itself, in the " Lady Geraldine's Courtship " of
Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Coleridge, the tun-
bellied, leaves wife and children for poor Southey to
support — it was leeks and lentils, one may promise
— ^while he throws himself upon the Gillmans, who for
sixteen years are willing to feed and lodge a lion for the
illustrious advertisement of his roarings. The list
might be made long indeed. There is Hood, dodging
duns; Lamb, creeping in sad and rusty surtout to his
India House; our own Hawthorne selling the Mosses of
his Manse for those peas and pulse which were their
returns. Thoreau lives on a dime a week at Walden
and makes it the reason of a classic. Also he sells
hardly two hundred volumes of his work, which does
not pay the one-fifth cost of printing.
But while to starve or beg or sell one's self for pam
phlets to the politicians was the fate of writers for the
past three centuries and more, still the system bred a
literature; which is more than goes on now. Our man
ners may be finer, but the grace has left our pens. In
the day of that ruffed and pearl-sown dragoness Eliza
beth, when folk fed savagely with their fingers, and
forks were a curious weakness of Italy, still a Sidney, a
Lyly, a Shakspere, a Jonson, a Beaumont, and a Donne

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 243
were in bloom. And behold the names that cluster
about the morning of the eighteenth century. Dryden
has just died, and his funeral, interrupted by drunkards
in its beginning, is after a fortnight made consummate
at Westminster. But Dryden leaves Pope and Swift,
and Gay and Garth, and Steele and Warburton, and
Bolingbroke and Mallet, and Addison and Defoe, and
multitudes behind. Defoe, spy, prisoner, wolf of poli
tics, and what not, is still the grand-master of them all.
His books, generally on autobiographical lines, are
examples later for such as Smollett, and Fielding, and
one had almost said Sterne; while his essay-editorials
taught Addison and Steele their trades and made them
models for their "Tatlers" and "Spectators." One even
finds the paunchy old Defoe, in intervals of " Robin
son Crusoe," struggling with the servant-girl problem
in quite a modern way, and indignantly denouncing
those labor unions which taught his kitchen hussies
tilt-nosed airs and higher wages two hundred years ago.
Consider the year eighteen hundred. Consider the
names that gather about the Edinburgh Review and
Constable's, and BlacTcwood's, and the Quarterly maga^
zines. Take the one hundred years to follow 1750,
and what names look down on one! Johnson,
Goldsmith, Sheridan, Richardson, Burney with her
lisping daintyisms of " Evelina " and " Cecilia "; Bos
well, Charles and Mary Lamb, Byron, Scott, Blackwood,
Hogg, Burns, Croker, Jeffreys, Wilson (Christopher
North), Lockhart, Gifford, Southey, Shelley, Coleridge,
Wordsworth, Moore, Lever, Campbell, De Quincey,
Hazlitt, Lytton, Disraeli, Tennyson, Dickens, Thack
eray, Hunt, Cornwall, Jerrold, Carlyle; and, of our own
side. Cooper, Irving, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Lowell,

244 RICHARD CROKER.
Thoreau, Emerson, Parton, Poe, and him best of all,
old Whittier. Where are the names now to march with
those of one hundred years ago? Or where such a
rendezvous as Murray's parlors in Albemarle Street —
where one might have found of an afternoon Scott
meeting Byron, and every literary notable besides from
Channing to De Stael?
Where is one to seek such names to-day? Who is
there of our own times, the heart of whose labors is
still to beat one hundred years away? Stevenson,
some of Kipling's, and two or three of Conan Doyle's,
perhaps. And yet there are as good folk writing now
as ever wrote. The world is as rife of Scotts and
Byrons and others of as spry a genius for phrase or
sense or sentiment as in that age Augustan — that
golden age a century gone by.
But they toil on the daily papers.
They are offered stipends which no aforetime author
— with now and then an exception— ever had, and are
paid more for a week than poor Goldsmith might earn
in a sixmonth. The papers pay best; and present
cakes and ale are preferable to fame. The possible
literature of the age is bribed out of existence, and all
our Lambs and our Lyttons, our Grotes and our
Gibbons, our Coleridges and our Carlyles, are grind
ing at " editorial " or " news stories " the mortal lives
whereof are not to exceed the day. They are to come
up as a flower and be cut down with each day's edition
of the paper. Yes, forsooth! our dailies are to answer
for a dead literature.
One may argue that were those about who might
equal the masters and great captains of a literary past,
one would hear from them; and that despite any wet-

GMNtUS Is SELF-BLIND. 245
blanketing of good pay on the part of the daily papers.
The trouble lies here: your genius who should do these
deeds is never made aware of himself. He has no time;
and with his fat week's pay in his Saturday's purse
from the papers, he lacks the reason to make his own
discovery. Genius has no self-knowledge. The " mute
inglorious Milton " is as ignorantiy unaware that he
is an untapped geyser of poesy as are his neighbors;
the " Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood " never
knows that he is a quiescent volcano of revolution; both
go graveward unidentified by others and unknown of
themselves. Even when the fact of genius has demonstration its
possessor is the last to learn and the first to doubt its
existence. Scott could not believe in his own great
ness; and Thackeray, in spite of " Pendennis " and
" Vanity Fair," was quietly convinced of himself as a
fellow of dull, undiligent weakness to the last closing
of his eyes. Ifs the same in other trades. Clara
Morris, the genius of the Emotional, is first a ballet
girl and acts only by accident; while Mrs. Gilbert, un
surpassed of any stage-age as an " Old Woman," does
not speak a line until the frosts and wrinkles of oncom
ing years drive her from those jigs and clog-dancings
wherewith she lives. The Scotch seers could not
foretell their own fortunes, for they could never " see "
themselves. It is the same with genius. Even Dis
raeli's famous threat, when Parliament hooted the
failure of his maiden speech, " They shall yet listen
to me! " was rather the retort of anger, and of vanity
with a wound, than the uttered calm prophecy of
genius weighing itself. The great dailies, like a weevil,
have eaten the germ and destroyed the seed of our

246 RICHARD CROKER.
literature; they have that charge to reply to and be
convicted of, whether they are to suffer for it or no.
The deliquium of our literature is the editorial of the
daily paper.
And while we be about a literature dead and
buried in the dailies, there is another subject near
one's soul. As a taste-disgrace of the times, one is
made ever to see — I had almost said to read— through
the mediation of our dailies (though sometimes it's
our magazines), a procession of uncurried and clumsily
considered articles and essays on every and any topic,
made by folk who, wanting a literary ability beyond
what might encompass the production of a postal card,
have no better license for their poor writing than that
they are ex-Presidents, or ex-Speakers, or ex-Candi
dates, or present Senators, or some such urgent com
modity. Why should he regard himself equal to litera
ture, the most difficult of the trades, merely for that
through some fortuitous conjunction of geography,
politics, and luck he once was execrable as a President,
or disastrous as a Speaker, or defeated as a Candidate,
or is presently imperfect as a nation's Senator? Is any
of these a reason why he should rival Macaulay, or lift
a leaf from Hume?
And these difficult ones as they hideously confect
their bad English, or wax pompous with some thread
bare phrase, should reflect on the cause of their em
ployment, and, in the name of what we'll call their self-
respect, eschew it and put it aside. Do not they under
stand that what they do could not last for one moment
by its own merit, whether of thought, substance, or
style? Do not they know that they and their lucubra
tions are designed for the curiosity of the reader, and

DEFEAT THE PEN-GOTHS. 241
not his taste nor intelligence? The anxiety that col
lects them collects also the Bearded Lady, the Fat
Woman, the What-is-It, and the Waltzing Bear.
And such being the event, why are they so foolish as
to confine their splendors to literature? Why not
pierce the drama with their gleaming presence? There,
indeed, should be the true, rich theater of their gifts'
display. Prize fighters have had a stage success; why
not the politicians? Prithee! put their scribblings
away and have them this better platform! Let the ex-
President be " Sir John Bmte "; the ex-Speaker, " Fal-
staff "; the ex-Candidate, " Jack Cade "; while our
young and burning Senator — who has photographs with
hair pawed over eyes, face wearing looks of stern
yet haggard introspection, and as it were, a He-sibyl in
the fury of prophecy — might surely find some character
in the ample range between " Romeo " and Etheridge's
" Sir Fopling Flutter " to which his banyan genius
might let down a root to its green and profitable nour
ishment. The daily papers may be defended, perhaps,
in their destruction of a literature on the plea that
they need the literati in their destinies. But there can
be no excuse for an employment of these ex-Some
things, who, with no reason for scribbling save an un
fortunate notoriety, would be as well and, probably, as
congenially engaged were they perched on drygoods
boxes in some deserving side-show and sold their photo
graphs. At least this last would protect literature
from the pen-forays of these barbarians, which would
be completely a solution of present fears in that behalf.
Thoreau had his views on newspapers, and writes in
" Walden " thus peevishly: "And I am sure that I never
read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read

248 RICHARD CROKER.
of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident,
or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one
steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the rail
road, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers
in the winter — we never need read of another. One is
enough. If you are acquainted with the principle,
what do you care for a million instances and applica
tions? To a philosopher all 'news,' as it is called, is
gossip; and they who edit and read it are old women
over their tea. Yet not a few are greedy after this
gossip. There was a rush I hear the other day to learn
the foreign news by the last arrival, . . . news which I
seriously think a ready wit might write a twelvemonth
or twelve years beforehand. As for Spain, for instance,
if you know how to throw in Don Carlos, and the In
fanta, and Don Pedro, and Seville, and Granada at the
right time, and in the right proportions, and serve up
a bullfight when other entertainments fail, it will be
true to the letter. . . And as for England, the last sig
nificant scrap of news from that quarter was the revolu
tion of 1649."
While one is willing to stand between the press and
the critics on an indictment of sensationalism, or for
an aid and comfort rendered Money on its march of
commercial aggression, there is that other charge of
snobbery for which, in the case of more than one paper,
it well deserves the whipping-post, the pillory, and the
stocks. It is one thing to defend Money, for it has
its rights and should have its day like any other dog.
But to fulsomely flatter Money and bow adoringly be
fore it is decidedly another goods. And there's a
present as well as a future serious harm to lurk in such
slavish incense. Money has a weak mind; its head may

PRESS SNOBBERY. 249
be turned; and parasitism is as much a deliriant as
opium. Yet sundry of our dailies keep it up — one wonders
why. Every rich man becomes and is the patron before
whom these Jenkinses of print forever bow and bend.
It is these snobs of the press who are rapidly construct
ing of the word " millionaire " a title of American no
bility. In their eyes and columns, a man of wealth is
all-important in his citizenship. A poor man may be
wise and brave and true; he may live respected and die
defending the flag. Yet he will gain neither the space,
position, nor illustration, in these dailies that went re
cently to one of our junior millionaires for a no-greater
public service than running over a bicycle.
It is all snobbery. And it is pernicious, and deplor
ably un-American. These imprints will pat poverty on
the back; descant feelingly on the heroism of labor.
They will call Money every hard and churlish name.
They invent the epithets " masses " and " classes," and
assume to champion the first against the last. Despite
all this, however, they omit not to sedulously fawn
about the knees of Wealth. They find their fellow
in the old-time parasite of Greece; discover their voca
tion in abject adulation of the very rich. Anybody,
everybody, who has attained the mark of the million, is
the subject of never-sleeping solicitude to these jour
nals. He may not so much as sneeze but " artists " and
" reporters," not to mention an occasional " commis
sioner," are dispatched to picture and report the sacred
ceremony. It's this that promotes Money, disrates
Manhood, and makes it possible for Wealth by merest
political interference to set a goose to guarding Rome
and give a toga to a fool.

250 RICHARD CROKER.
John Kelly died June 1, 1886, at the age of sixty-five.
And there has been and will be none to better deserve
the hearts of Tammany Hall. Were he to want an
epitaph, it might be graven: His Faults were the Faults
of Honesty: he was more an American than a Politi
cian, more a Man than an American.

Arthur Pue Gorman,

XV.
AN EX-PEESIDENT.
This is a lecturer so skilled in policy
That (no disparagement to Satan's cunning)
He well might read a lesson to the devil.
And teach the old seducer new temptations. —Old Play.
"Why doesn't Richard Croker hold office? " While
one may not answer as to the reason, one may reply
decisively as to the fact. The future will never find
him an officeholder. Nor may one blame him. There is
little honor and still less of ease in officeholding. And
as for the profit? why, one might better hold a baby or
a horse. Most folk may reap more by merely holding
their tongues; albeit, there be a-many of us to never
grow rich that gait. Croker will never again hold office.
It is his word for it. Croker touched on the busi
ness tersely, yet with a clear vigor, one day at dinner.
He was carving a fowl at the time; and with a blade of
blunt unservice made but wretched work of it. It was
conflict rather than carving, and reminded one of noth
ing so much as St. George and the Dragon. In the
conversation of the four or five at table, the suggestion
was made that, upon certain possible contingencies,
Croker should be chosen a Senator of the United States.
Croker looked keenly up.
" While I live I'll never hold another office," he said;
" and so you may tell any who is interested, however
and whenever and wherever the question comes up."
351

262 RICHARD CROKER.
Richard Croker has filled office. Which possibly
may be that weaning reason why he has no now ambi
tions of that kind. Croker was an alderman in 1870;
and being inimical to Tweed was legislated by that un
worthy into private life. He was afterwards marshal
to collect arrears of taxes, and put previous records to
the blush by gathering in a half-million of dollars de
linquent in four months. For this good work Croker
was publicly complimented by Havemeyer, then mayor.
In 1873 Croker was elected coroner, an office of moment
and importance. Later he was again chosen alderman
and resigned to become fire commissioner. Croker's
last office was in 1879, when he took oath as chamber
lain of the city, a place of highest repute and dignity.
Already, however, was Croker growing to his present
temper of non-officeholding, and he resigned his trust
as chamberlain within the year. This was his last
place. Following Kelly's death, Richard Croker was called
to be the chief of Tammany Hall. He did not seek
this elevation, and strove against it. John Scannell it
was who, in the face of Croker's protest, made a cam
paign among the " leaders " and wrought out the se
lection of Croker.
Before that day of Kelly's demise, a dozen prior
years indeed, a blow, shrewdly villainous, was aimed at
Richard Croker. It was in 1874. Croker, thirty-one
years of age, was serving his term as coroner. His
office, however, is aside from the mark and has no part
of the story.
It was Croker most of all who had brought Kelly to
the leadership of Tammany. And of those about him,
Kelly relied weightily on Croker and trusted to him,

KELLY'S BEST MAN. 253
Croker was cool and wise and of a good craft in council;
thorough and clean as an executive. Kelly could have
found none better to be his supplement. Your natural
soldier has the same power to obey as to command; and
Croker was your natural soldier. Thus it came — dis
cussion ended and consideration of conditions closed, —
that, when commands were issued, Croker took the
field, swift, exact, and utter in their carrying out.
For which virtues of execution Croker stood highest in
Kelly's thoughts, as he would in those of Napoleon, had
he been with him in his day. Croker, for his proper
gifts of courage, silence, and a quick, military decisive
ness, was the war-marshal of Tammany Hall. While
Kelly ruled in council, Croker commanded in the field;
it was as if, Tammany being the country, the one was
Lincoln while the last was Grant.
It was on election day, the 3d of November, 1874;
Hewitt was the Tammany-Kelly candidate for Con
gress. Against Hewitt ran one O'Brien, the idol of the
mob, and more remembered for violence and lack of
conscience than for virtues useful to the state. The
O'Brien element were by no means an untested quan
tity in the practical labor of elections. They were
famous as repeaters and plug-uglies; and if the ballot
offended them, capable of throwing the boxes into the
river; and if the judges offended them, of making those
dignitaries follow the boxes before jettisoned. Alto
gether the O'Brien contingent were a highly lively
tribe, whose overpowering passion for victory oft
carried them to extremes.
Thus it befell, during the Congressional contest of
Hewitt against O'Brien, that the latter's adherents,
moved and instigated of Satan and to that King-

254 RICHARD CROKER.
demon's infinite relish and delight, went from poll
to poll like unto roaring lions, assaulting, threatening,
and terrorizing the Hewitt workers and driving that
candidate's votes into the wilderness. This must be
recovered; or right would be defeated and crime
succeed. Richard Croker was asked by Kelly to take charge of
the situation. Croker at once proceeded to the
scenes of violence, and at a polling place where wrong
was rampant and right was cowed, came upon the
dread O'Brien himself. This personage was heavily
accompanied of his warriors, some glisk of whom may
be gained from the fact that the least desperately puis
sant among them was known as " Strong- Arm Mike."
Croker had with him a trio of quiet, yet resolute, fol
lowers; he with these was confronted by O'Brien and
a furious score.
Brief was the parley. Croker never yet counted an
enemy until after the fray. He was ready and fear
less. " You must send these thieves out of the dis
trict," observed Croker to O'Brien; "they don't live
here and have no right here. These scoundrels must
get out." The " thieves " and " scoundrels " adverted
to included and were of the worthy class with Strong-
Arm Mike. Since the retreat thus ordered of the
thieves there present meant, if consented to, the
election of Hewitt and defeat of O'Brien, that
latter volatile person made no more ado, but struck
at Croker. This was bad judgment on O'Brien's
reckless part; a fact that broke over him like
a tempest when Croker instantly retorted in muscular
kind. There was an altercation wherein O'Brien lost
blood and reputation with his followers, who had held

THE KILLING OF MCRENNA. 256
him to be invincible and found that he was not. Dur
ing the mglee, which waxed general, pistols were pro
duced and a dozen shots were fired. None, however,
by Richard Croker, who never owned nor carried
weapon. At the close of hostilities, which last was brought
about by police, who interfered when O'Brien was being
worsted, it was discovered that one McKenna lay on
the ground, bullet-slain. In a trice it occurred to those
most criminal of the O'Brien faction — all late minions
of the Tweed Ring — that here was an opening to he
both revenged and rid of their arch-enemy Richard
Croker at one swoop. They would charge him with the
killing of McKenna; a little diligent perjury would do
the rest.
Thus was it determined. And because O'Brien was
not without a malignant potency in certain places,
which for a decency of justice should have been beyond
his touch of thumb, Richard Croker was indicted and
brought to trial for the McKenna taking-off. It could
not be accounted a vast peril. Three years earlier in a
black heyday of Tweed one might have told another
story. As it was, the truth shone through the
rickety perjury of the prosecution like sunlight through
a lattice; and while the jury disagreed, for two
there were of the panel who, being part of the con
spiracy, stood with bad stubbornness for conviction,
the indictment was instantly dismissed on motion of
the State's attorney himself. It made no bottomless
difference. The decision arrived at by the public in the
beginning was that Richard Croker was innocent, and
neither the trial nor its termination served other pur
pose than the confirmation of this view.

256 RICHARD CROKER.
There was one lurid, distrustful element of this trial
which wins comment to this day. That was the position
of the judge who presided, and his charge to the jury.
One will hear from time to time, as echoes of litigation
grinding reach one's ears, of charges " favorable " and
charges " unfavorable " to defendants. These ad
jectives, descriptive of an ermined attitude, are of am
biguity and may mean much or little, as the case may
be. On this Croker occasion the charge was " unfavor
able," and with such a fervor of unfavor, too, that it
staggered all who listened, and was like nothing so
much as the bench-efforts of a Scroggs or a Jeffreys in
his most untrammeled day. But truth is mighty; right
prevailed and wrong fell back, and Croker came forth
from the furnace of that trial without the smell of fire
about his garments.
It is curious to note that he who presided with such
bias at this trial of Croker is still judge; holding
now by grace and selection of Croker himself. And
this goes in demonstration of Croker's profound
self-control, and displays how completely he declines
the voice of private feeling when passing on questions
of party expediency or policy. Years later — for these
jurists have terms of fourteen years — the lease of office
of this judge ran out. Croker, free and powerful, was
the Attila of party — the leader of a victorious Tam
many. The judge in danger came not near Croker; he
craved no favors and looked only for defeat. Nor did
Croker seek the judge; dumb as the other, he also made
no sign. None of those near Croker's elbow in the dis
cussions of Tammany said aught of a renomination for
this judge, whose term was waning to a close. Folk
political were aware of Croker's little reason for pre-

ABRAM S HEWITT. 267
ferring the retention of this judge, and looked for the
latter's letting out. The time arrived; and when Croker
turned in the list to his executive committee, embody
ing his thoughts of a ticket, it had the name of that
judge at the top. It was wisdom and the heart of policy.
And it was peculiarly the earmark of that cautious
sagacity without which Croker's autocracy of sixteen
years would have been impossible. Your common
leader would have smote that jurist hip and thigh,
and made a boast thereof, and a feast upon it. But
Croker is the man uncommon. Silent, wordless, want
ing hint or suggestion, Croker renamed and re-elected
him. Hewitt was sent to Congress in that struggle, and
O'Brien was given to defeat. One of the papers, writ
ing of a meeting following the election, said: " Hewitt
was the next speaker. He spoke in strong terms of the
recent election outrage. He said that the man
O'Brien, who had nominated 'himself as his opponent,
had boasted that he would be returned by a majority of
ten thousand, and he felt assured that if murder
would have served his opponent's purpose it would
have been done. It was the last thought of his
mind that such a contest would have been forced
upon him. Hewitt, having stated that he had given
word to the police of an apprehended attack upon
his political supporters, and that the police failed to
appear and discharge their duty, said, much as he
regretted the unhappy occurrence that took place on
election day, he believed that if it had not occurred,
O'Brien would have been returned in place of himself,
and there would have been thus returned to the
National Council the representative of the mob. He,

258 RICHARD CROKER.
Hewitt, took some pains to get at the facts in this case,
and from disinterested witnesses he was able to say
that it would be shown [the trial was not yet had] that
the attack on that occasion was made by O'Brien and
not by Coroner Croker. Coroner Croker had no pistol
and never drew one. Hewitt said that he knew Croker
drew no pistol, and that when pistols were drawn they
were drawn by the opposite side. He did not under
estimate the difficulty of the contest. He went into no
grog shops and treated no crowds of hired ruffians. He
used no money to buy votes, but what he did was to
protect the honest voter in his right to deposit his bal
lot, whether it was for or against him. Croker was not
an aggressor. What he did was done with a view to
protect the ballot box. Hewitt said that the evidence
on this point was overwhelming, and he believed that,
but for the firmness and courage of Richard Croker,
O'Brien would have got the certificate of election."
Another memorable event of the days of Kelly, and
one wherein Richard Croker had a prime suggesting
portion, was the discovery and elevation of Grover
Cleveland, first to be Governor and next to be Presi
dent of the United States. Cleveland had made some
noise as the " veto mayor " of Buffalo. Croker spoke
of Cleveland — while in preliminary and privy council
— to Kelly as a possible good candidate for the post of
Governor. The thought engaged Kelly; and in the
end, and by the convention votes of Tammany Hall,
Cleveland was named.
It is in my mind to give here some charcoal sketch
ings of this heavy late President. My knowledge of
him is sure and to the color. And Cleveland's portrait
is properly parcel of Croker's career, for, more than any

GROVER CLEVELAND. 259
other, it was Croker's hand to plant the stalk of him.
Had there been no Croker there would have been no
Cleveland, in a national sense at least; and while that
fact may not be looked on as to the Croker credit, its
relation is none the less in line. This is the life story,
in compress, of Grover Cleveland.
There has been ever error in recounts of Cleveland.
They were either weak with the flattery of some ful
some place-yearning Mugwump, or wrong as the assault
of a foe who attacked by any method. What follows
will be the thrice-pruned truth. It will be bom, too,
in that spirit of white indifference which should
characterize precise history.
It is pity that the whole American public can't go to
Washington and remain three months in twelve. It
would be worth the nation's while to give every man a
point-blank look at Government, and the watchmen on
the walls thereof. One may take the commonest clod;
let it be vicious as vile; low in its instincts, black in its
past. And does one elect it, for example, to a Presi
dency, its apotheosis begins. Its halo comes with its
inauguration oath; and ever thereafter that clod to the
general eye will seem, not the clay it is, but the precious
gold it ought to be. For all of which weakness of pub
lic sight and judgment, a weakness to grow with popu
lation, it is profitable to sit coldly down and read
about one's rulers.
Cleveland, a Jerseyman, was born in March, 1837.
He was forty-eight when first he came as President to
Washington. Cleveland represented in his successes
the victory of accident. He had what groping folk
feeling for answer in the dark, call "luck." Like
Napoleon, Cleveland named it " destiny." Let that go.

260 RICHARD CROKER.
It's not of moment what one calls it, so that it be
understood. Cleveland as a youth was taught little of book sort.
Coming from school he could not name you twenty au
thors; had not read a dozen books; didn't know Robin
Hood from Thomas, poet of that style, and wotted
little of polite letters. At seventeen, after performing
briefly, his biographer says, as " teacher " in a blind
asylum — and he might have taught the blind — Cleve
land went to Buffalo. This was in 1855. By the good
ness of an uncle he lived and studied law. He was ad
mitted in 1859. Later he held a slight office for three
years, and was defeated in his strivings to reach
another. By one sign one may know that Cleveland was not a
learned sage of law. He became sheriff of Erie County
in 1879. No lawyer of high blood will consent to this
place. There are other and more professional channels
of ambition. He will be the public's attorney, or
judge; but, mark you! never sheriff. That office, with
its hangman's work, its processes, its evictions, its
levies and distraints, goes to another class.
And yet even this law ignorance shows its fortunate
side in the climbing case of Cleveland. He became
sheriff and kept the jail; and next, having, one may
assume, made an excellent record, losing none of his
keys nor his captives, he is seized on, made Mayor, and
instead of the county cells keeps the City Hall.
It was John Kelly with Croker who made Cleveland
Governor. It was a war: Tammany against anti-Tam
many; city against country. " Let's take this fellow
from Buffalo, who's been Mayor there," said Kelly.
" Let's nominate him for Governor. He doesn't be-

TAMMANY NAMES CLEVELAND. 261
long to either side." The Convention did as Kelly
said; and then Conkling fought Garfield, and almost the
Republican party stayed at home on election day, and
Cleveland won over Folger by a shadow short of two
hundred thousand.
Following Cleveland's Governorship, he was selected
for the Presidential race. Gorman as manager elected
him, landing him winner by a throat-latch, and was
barred from the White House for it within a month
after the inauguration.
Thus one beholds the lifting up of Cleveland from
sheriff to President. This story is much quoted by
some as proof of the sterling worth of America's free
institutions. With the thoughtful, however, its mid
day value in that behalf is denied.
Jones of Nevada once told that of all whom he had
met in high places Cleveland was mentally the most
abundantly dark. When he came to be President, he
had not read the Constitution of the country. Still,
one is at liberty to select one's authors as well as one's
literature; we may not, perhaps, complain.
There were two matters appurtenant of the White
House of which Cleveland had heard; two powers to
which he willingly tumed. These were the veto and
the patronage. Within a year from March 4, 1885, his
first inaugural, Cleveland vetoed more measures than
had all the Presidents who preceded him. What a study
in egotism is this! What a misconception of duty!
Washington, the scholarly Jefferson, men who rocked
the cradle of the Constitution; the virile Jackson,
whom neither man nor god might bind; Lincoln, with
all his care; and the silent Grant, who lived in war's
red front, while Cleveland's haunt was safety — the veto

262 RICHARD CROKER.
example of these was no guide to him. They fought
and founded, and fought again and re-founded the Gov
ernment. They alternated pen with sword, gave wis
dom and valor both to the upbringing and defense of
the country. Cleveland had done nothing. Yet in one
year, playing with this tremendous power of veto like
a child with a toy, he dealt death to more measures
than had all those heroes in the hundred years which
went before.
To understand Cleveland as a President — for he
changed mightily, and those who knew him a dozen
years before wouldn't have known him then — one must
remember the influence of money-getting upon him.
He was poor, without a dollar, when first he came
White-House seeking. When he left in 1897 he was
rich to the point of millions. And Money had re-shaped,
and molded, and added to, and taken from, and made
him anew. Cleveland had not made a dollar; natu
rally, he didn't know how. It was like calling on a
horse to make a dollar. He had grown to forty-eight,
and came to Washington without so much silver as
might serve to keep the fiends from dancing in his
pocket. But he met wise men; men who saw in him
those latent money-wonders which lie dormant in every
President, and who were willing to work them out to
his and their advantage. Probably that tribe saw afore
time the money-chances which slept in other Presidents.
But as one after another, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe,
Jackson, down to one's own time, they left the
White House, some abject paupers, all leaner than they
came, it would seem that those others lacked that thrift
to permit their development. It was not until Cleve
land's day that the White House became lucrative; and

MONEY WAS KING. 263
he retired — he who was dollarless at forty-eight — with
the record of being the first President who went forth
richer than he arrived. Coming poor, he departed with
the wealth of dreams. And to the quiet of his con
science, it is to be doubted if he could have told one
word of how that glittering, pleasing marvel came
about. He had millions; and he didn't know how.
Yet the riddle was not difficult. As President he
held that lamp of magic which one had only to rub, to
make all about him rich.
It skills nothing to go over the long and tangled
trail of Cleveland's money-getting, with all its windings,
twists, and curious turns. And whether, in the heap
ing and sweeping together, it came from Red Top or
Gray Gables; from bonds or stock deals or traction com
panies; or woodpulp patents; or Nova Scotia coal; or
Cuban iron; or whatever its thousand sources, it was
an enormous sum for one to have from a capital of
money-ignorance and nothing in twelve years; and it
failed not to impress Cleveland and affect him. In his
last reign his great reverence was for money; his respect
was kept for those who possessed it. Poverty was
synonymous with ignorance; wisdom went only with
wealth. In his day one might come afoot to Washing
ton; and if one did, one couldn't see him. Come in a
private car, and one could. One's honesty, one's worth,
the goodness of one's purpose, or the justice of one's
cause would not avail! People were nothing to Cleve
land; property was everything. He would turn from a
man in a moment. Spill down a niillion of gold, and
the sight would suspend and hold him spellbound — cast
him into a trance of riches.
Cleveland was not book-learned; neither had he been

264 RICHARD CROKER.
taught of travel. He knew nothing west of Buffalo,
nor south of the North Pennsylvania line. He had>
most of all, no imagination. He had heard of a West,
he had heard of a South; but the terms told no tales to
Cleveland. What the West and South were; their
wants, their rights, their aims, their strengths, loomed
but vaguely, lost in that mighty fog of no imagination
and what he didn't know. Cleveland's was a small
mind, but hard as jadestone and retentive. After its
manner it had a narrow strength, and while he learned
slowly he remembered; not always, however, with profit.
He had no mental finenesses; no taste for art nor music.
He knew no pleasant difference between a Murillo and
a three-sheet poster. He would have had no prefer
ence for one of Schubert's serenades over " The
Arkansaw Traveler." He would rather talk than read,
eat than talk, fish than eat, drink than fish.
Cleveland was a creature of impulse rather than of
thought-born decision. Would one teach him any
thing, one must teach him through the eye. What he
saw he knew; what he heard — unless it were to some
one's disadvantage — made slight impression. Cleve
land turned credulous, ready ear to slander. When he
was President the commonest blackleg of party, one
whose plaudit could not aid one, might tear down good
repute with a word. Nor might the affirmations of
honest men stand against the malice and mendacity
of that one blackleg.
Flattery was the most potent lever in the case of
Cleveland. Those thrived best who flattered best. He
was amenable to the tickle of the sycophant as ever
was swine to cob. One might have stuck bills on him
so it were done with "soft soap." As a result, those who

THE SYCOPHANT'S HEYDAY. 265
stood close to Cleveland were either cunning or servile.
They chanted his praises; and they never contradicted
nor bid him pause. Some were crafty and fawned upon
him to use him to their ends. Others were mere crin
gers. But honest natures, strong, open, frank men
who would tell to him the truth, were soon brought
to stay away. He wanted none such near him.
Cleveland delighted in the little, and would labor
pantingly at the windlass of small things. It was this
bent of the infinitesimal that led him to put in hours
darkly arranging a reason to shatter some old woman's
pension with the bludgeon of his veto.
Cleveland was by nature a Tory. He had no innate
conception of republicanism; no knowledge, native or
acquired, of the school to which free America belongs.
Had he lived in that furnace hour of Bunker Hill, his
substitute would have worn a red coat, and fought at
the foot of that renowned eminence against Warren
and the others at the top. His trend was monarchical.
Three times within three years he aligned himself with
a throne; in Samoa, Hawaii, and last in Brazil. He
succeeded in Samoa; and this country, with England
and Germany, upheld a king in those far islands. He
failed in Hawaii with his clumsy king-making, and pub
lic opinion frightened him away from " Queen Lil."
Mendonca scared him backward with a laugh and a
sneer in the case of Brazil. His ever-Toryism was at
the brakes! With Cuba bleeding at our gate, with a
people and a Congress demanding her relief, Cleveland
to the last refused.
Men called Cleveland ungrateful. Those who helped
him most were most roundly rebuffed. The flatterer,
the sycophant, the boneless Mugwump waxed rich by

266 RICHARD CROKER.
his favor; the friend who built him went without re
ward; the laborer of party without his hire.
To egotism and a coarse greed Cleveland added the
heart of a hare. None was more flightdy timid in a
physical way. Perhaps it was this that kept him from
the war when the nation fought for its life in the six
ties, and Cleveland, aged twenty-three, in perfect
health without wife to weep or wean to stay him, took
heed he didn't go. What a Curtius! How Rome
would have reared a column to him! When Cleveland
aforetime left Washington for Buzzard's Bay or
" ducks," he skulked secretly from town. His coming
back, as to its date, was earnestly covered from a
world's knowledge. When once he returned from Buz
zard's Bay, I chanced to be at the station. The rabble,
whereof I was a unit, knew nothing of Cleveland's com
ing. The train drew up. Cleveland descended and ap
proached the gate. There were only a few to be
pleased and to cheer. As he came near, twenty Secret
Service spies, there for that brave work, stepped from
their listening, peeping places among the feared and
common herd, and cordoned that President and " pro
tected him " to his carriage. It was a pride-flattering
pageant! During the last three years of Cleveland a ring
of sentry boxes rose up about the White House.
The Presidential police force was recruited to twenty-
six men. Each night a trio of those guardsmen pervaded
the White House corridors. More were in the grounds.
Then the President could sleep. It cost eighty dollars
a day, which made it high-priced slumber. When
Cleveland would ride, an armed, booted, spurred de
tective, with a foolish revolver on his foolish hip.

MEASURELESS EGOTISM. 267
swung to his foolish saddle and clattered foolishly
behind. In the luxuriance of a measureless egotism, Cleve
land was wont to hold that he elected the party. His
courtiers, as they fanned and fawned and flattered,
assured him of this, and he believed them. Every de
feat the Democracy suffered after 1892 served as proof
to him. It warmed him with mild pleasure as he saw
reflected in the hopeless returns his popularity. " See
what happens when I'm not running! " he argued, and
drew a glow from party defeat like an inspiration. It
was this that taught him that the patronage was his
and not the party's. And he used it to please himself;
to push his way with Congress, and as jewels wherewith
to deck his flatterers and spaniels of politics.
One offshoot of this egotism, partly born of timidity,
was Cleveland's secrecy. While President, he locked
every door, turned down every light, gagged every
mouth, hid everything he might. There are but two
keys to go with government; one is to the Treasury,
the other to the jail. But Cleveland's whole thought
was for chains and padlocks. He hated questions, he
hated newspapers, he hated lights.
Cleveland held that a President was a guardian.
Bayard was mirror to Cleveland when he said that the
American people were a turbulent and unruly brood,
and required " a strong ruler " like Cleveland to keep
them in check. Mark the word "ruler." That was
the Cleveland idea. A President " rules " the country;
the people are his subjects. That was the song his
courtiers sang.
In his egotism, Cleveland, given a White House,
played the tyrant. He frowned down suggestion,

268 RICHARD CROKER.
and he ignored the people. He would turn Congress
men from his door until they wearied of coming. No
claim was strong enough to gain entrance to him
against his whim. Within three days after the repeal
of the Sherman law, wherein Voorhees and Mills both
lost their political lives to do his will, he refused to see
them. Millions were made by the coterie about the White
House in those last four years of Cleveland; made when
an extra session ballooned the market; made with
bond deals; made with tariff. Cleveland would ring
out in tariff. The administration was doing all it
might to put the Havemeyer schedule on sugar. And
when Gorman wouldn't, Cleveland refused to sign the
bill, and for ten days gave the longest possible limit of
law to the Trust to bring in sugar free. That ten-day
" pout " cost the Treasury ten million dollars and the
people ten times more.
Cleveland called an extra session; to the advantage
of Benedict and the then White House circle of fa
vorites. Congress came; and he threw his patronage
right and left and pulled on the ropes and worked at
legislation like a common sailor. " Repeal the pur
chasing clause of the Sherman law! " he said, " and the
business sun will shine, the business grass will grow,
and a deep and lush prosperity will be ours again."
His prophecies fell flat with a great failure. It was
the same in the tariff instance. It was the same with
bonds. It was ever " do this " and " do that," and
time and the tide will turn and good come riding in!
From first to last he was a false prophet. No one had
the blessings of which he preached save the tariffites
and the bondites and the ones about the throne. The

AND BONDS CAME. 269
backstairs Cabinet and the pool with White House
passkeys prospered mightily. The public interest went
lank and worn and hungry.
When Cleveland came in 1893 he found the Treasury
on the rocks. He kept it there. He pounded a hole
in the bottom and stuffed the leak with two hundred
and forty million dollars' worth of bonds. He sold
these at 104; and the next day they brought 120, and
bring it as this is read. Had a Mayor of New York so
indulged himself, a special Grand Jury would have
been on his ready trail with horn of law and hound of
inquiry. But bonds were to go and go and go again;
and as a byplay, and just to show the sympathy which
dwells between our millionaires, Carnegie's two hun
dred and forty thousand dollars' fine, imposed for
rotten armor plates, was to be remitted. There was
none of this during Harrison's term. Cold he was,
unsocial he was, an unlovely soul at best; but honest
was Harrison, and as lucid-pure as ice.
When Cleveland came in, the bond-wolves began to
howl and snarl about the gold. Carlisle planned in
the early summer of ninety-three to do as Manning did
in eighty-five. Cleveland took his pronunciamento
from him, wrote it over, crossed out silver, and made
Carlisle say that he would pay gold — nothing but gold
— while a dollar shimmered in his till.^ That was what
the bondites wanted. They bled three bond issues
from the people.
But these were the big weeds of Cleveland's govern
ment. The little ones flourished as rankly strong.
The lighthouse-tender example was not wasted. The
Dolphin, — unpaid for to the dead John Roach — ^became
a department yacht. One assistant" secretary of the

270 RICHARD CROKER.
Treasury would junket in one revenue cutter to Alaska,
while another assistant secretary ordered another
revenue cutter from her station at Baltimore around
to Fortress Monroe, for purely picnic purposes. The
Commissioner of Immigration, — who reported fewer
than three thousand paupers turned back in a year at
an expense of two hundred and twenty-six thousand
dollars, — not to be outdone, would take a learned assist
ant and plunge across Europe, from the Shetlands to
the Dardanelles, for the " instruction of the Govern
ment in immigration "; while the Fish Commission
went about its useful work by dispersing itself through
out the Maine lakes, where, with naphtha launches and
much goods in bottles, it propagated fish. In this day
Crime robs the Government with a gun — the rough and
lusty method of the footpad. In that day it was bleed
and embezzle and larcenize by indirection, while the
public looked the other way. They drove Williams from
Grant's Cabinet because his wife rode in a landaulet at
the expense of the government. Williams lived too soon.
Well! have done. The above exhibits a few of the
easy high'places in the Cleveland career. His adminis
tration was failure. Moreover, it was of revenge, of
treason to the party, of wrong to public weal. At home
the country was thrown to Wall Street; abroad it was
made the laugh of Europe. Only one thing was right —
the Venezuela utterance. And the dead Gresham did
that. Still, one must be fair. Cleveland, as well as every
President, has partial excuse for his delinquencies,
whether they be ones overt or of omission. The office
is tremendously bigger than the man. The office con
trols the occupant and drives him like a horse in bar-

THE BUILDERS WERE RIGHT. 271
ness. The President can't half help himself, and in
more than most of his action does as he's commanded,
goes where he's compelled. The detail of Presidential
effort, and as well its broader marks, are much predes
tined. It's as if one were made President of an ice
berg, or a glacier, or the Hudson River. The drift
ing of the one, the slow marching of the second down
its glen, and the solemn sweep of the last, have each
its simile in the journeying of a great nation along its
lines of fate. No chance-created pygmy of a President
may bridle or direct. One were as wise who strove to
stanch the Mississippi with a wisp of straw.
Cleveland's second elevation — and his rule from 1892
to 1896 was worse than revolution — should last a cen
tury as a lesson to the people. It was the public, and
not the " politicians," who demanded him. The poli
ticians objected, Tammany objected; but the people
demanded, and the people had their way. The archi
tects and builders of party declined Cleveland; the
people interfered and took him up. The stone which
the builders rejected was made the cornerstone of the
temple, and the subsequent history of that edifice
showed that the builders were right.

XVI.
SNOBS, MY masters!
It is a hard matter to save that country where a fish sells for more
than an ox.^Cato.
He who lives without cynicism lives without safety,
and hate is but the other side of love. And what has
that to do with us? Nothing, nothing, your worships;
wherefore let us say no more about it.
That one more loathly thing than work is idleness.
These are the Scylla and Charybdis of existence; eter
nally are we destroyed in the whirlpool-suck of her
with the dogs, or leaped upon and lost to the six dart
ing and hungry heads of that sister monster across the
straits. Let us in such dilemma refuse our tasks; let
us throw down the sculls of effort while the boat goes
where she may. So shall we have motion without
labor; something will gain accomplishment while noth
ing is done. This may be the middle course Ulysses
tried for; the happy medium sought for by the sage.
Let us go, then, with the currents. There is more and
wider water down-stream than up, and as a ceremony
it is far easier — while quite as graceful — to drift all
day than pull an oar an hour.
It is in one's mind to be cynical. And why not?
These be days to make one bilious, and bile is the
parent of cynicism. Idleness in purple, industry in
homespun! Honesty at hard labor, wliile crime wears
272

THAT BEDLAM LARGESSE. 273
the crown! Ah, well; it has been so in all the ages!
True worth was ever a peasant and tilled the soil, and
scum comes surely to the top. Futility is the fashion
and Fashion is the king. Let us crowd to the throne-
room. What fools we mortals be! Also, what snobs! One
multimillionaire becomes benevolent with books. And
all the sycophants are burning incense to him as if
the incense bore insurance. That multimillionaire
may found libraries, or rear spires, or place alms in
tlie thin and claw-like hand of Want. Yet the gold of
his charity shall wear the stain of the blood and the
mire in which it was gathered. There's nothing novel,
naught to shout over, in what this rich one is about.
It has been done by sinful Wealth when, fear-threat
ened of Futurity, the Unknown of beyond-the-grave
had it under cow in every age. And now, because it
trembles before what will be and tires of what soddenly
is, and starts on some crusade of Bedlam largesse, this
Wealth won in wickedness is to have present halo and
take its austere reverend stand among the saints.
Well; and why not canonize it? It is only a hand
ful of years since a band of worshipful clergy gathered
— a muster of surpliced Tories — and "sainted" Charles
the First. " He died a martyr for his faith," they
sobbed, and wrote his name on the holy list. It is a
proud thought with some that sundry of their ancestors
were busy when Charles was chopped, doing all they
might to promote the " martyrdom " of our royal can
didate for saintship.
What snobs we be! Even our colleges are poisoned
of it, and one young billionaire is made the object of
some college ballot honors for his "peerless social

274 RICHARD CROKER.
genius." Yes, in good fact! our great schools are smit
ten of snobbery. " Seminaries of learning " — wrote
John Quincy Adams in his diary — " seminaries of
learning have been timeservers and sycophants in all
ages." Adams would write more stingingly, were he
here to-day. And themselves snobs, is it wonder the
colleges suckle snobbery? Perhaps this last is to be
traced to parents rather than the schools. Sure it is
that herds of young ones are sent collegeward by the
hope, not that they'll learn anything from lecture or
from book, but rather that they may make the ac
quaintance of future rich weaklings, to become here
after in equal parts their patrons and their prey.
What snobs we be! The clergy and the colleges lead
while the journals beat the drum! The clergy? Yes,
my friend! Is it a wedding of wealth? or a billion-
dollar baptism? or a funeral where great riches remain?
Then to altar or font or bier the certain clergy come
darting like kites to a quarry. What snobs we be!
Do you know that folk love and wed and are born and
wearily die in Mott and Mulberry and Baxter and
Essex and Hester streets, every day in the year, and
that the last to be bothered by it is a bishop?
Thank Heaven for the Rocky Mountains! They
make at least one-third of the area of the United
States, and the very " lay of the land " puts snobbery
out of the question. The toady is topographically im
possible. Thank Heaven for the precipitous rudeness
of the Rockies! They shall yet serve as the home of a
strong and saving race — the American Swiss — who
are to be the backbone of the country, as their crags are
the backbone of the continent.
Snobbery begins to obtain in politics as well as take

AND THE TRUSTS COME. 275
a smirking hand in trade. The small bow before the
strong; the little fag for the powerful. In politics the
result is corruption; in commerce. Trusts. One is not
mad with any ardor of pessimism. One has no mood
to become of that group of ebb-tide patriots who deem
it impossible to rule with innocence, and hold that
every king must be a Catiline. One does not believe
that every hUl is a Calvary, every reward a Cross; and
that Truth is ever foundering, unsuccored, on shores it
sought to save. One is not victim of any slackwater
optimism, nor has one's hope been seized of a dyspepsia.
One is sustained by one's religion of politics, which
plants itself on the belief, as on a rock, that true repub
licanism is imperishable for that true republicanism is
God. Yet while one does not fear, one submits one is
not flattered of any present promise of the times. The
hands of the dial, pointing to trouble, point to Trusts.
It is a day of weakness and corruption in halls where
law is made. One should meet one's times boldly.
One should counsel war on what politically is. One is
not to be with opportunists who wealcly hesitate at dan
ger and would for peace be half a slave. One should
not follow a Rousseau, who, failing to teach France to
think, tamed himself to copy music that it might dance,
and so gained sordid bread. Such is to starve the
Man to feed the Beast.
Monopoly, fecund of Trust, spawns like a pike;
Priaciple, unmated of popular effort, lies in a barren
bed. The enemy strengthens himself while folk idle.
The march of the Trusts marks the march of Igno
rance; the sun of progress borders to an eclipse of
Money and another Dark Age may descend. Someone
once said that: " Law is the safest helmet." The value

276 RICHARD CROKER.
of the apothegm depends upon who wears this steel cap.
If it be Honesty, good! But if Monopoly go to Wash
ington and forge itself some headpiece of a statute the
story runs fearfully different. It is not always true
that a State has added to its safety when it has added
to its laws. As things are, one is all but free to say
that one despairs of virtuous legislation. In those law-
lists. Eight seems ever to go down before the shock of
Eiches. There should be change — change unusual and
change that reaches far.
'" It is better to be a poor fisherman than to meddle
with the government of men," said Danton. But the
Frenchman was in a tumbrel at the time and suffered
some coming confusion of the guillotine. Had he been
given freedom and a sober second thought, he would
have seen that the citizen is driven to "meddle with
government " to keep it from meddling villainously
with him. Therefore, let the public become intelli
gently meddlesome. Nor should it hesitate; nor go
halfway. There should come no blackmail of a
partial peace. It is the worst of oppression that
makes craven terms with tyranny. This is an era of
potato-bug politics. Monopoly devours what the
people rear. Some stand must he made, some near and
stubborn stand, or the century will witness us destroyed
and overrun. He will be wise of that day who, living
without fiag as without citizenship, carries his country
on the sole of his shoe.
It will be warfare hard and breathless; this stand
against Monopoly. These combines of rapacity and
capital which, as Lord Thurlow puts it, " Have neither
souls to lose nor bodies to kick," are the folk difficult.
Much of peril, too, comes from tho turned-'roimd con-

THE RED BRUTE-MAN. 277
dition of the common taste. There is too much luxury,
too much excess; too many for themselves, too few for
all, and Virtue plays a second violin. We have come
too far from a simplicity of the fathers which made
that middle safety between the politically too-little and
too-much. The edge of civic apprehension is lost.
One sees this in the absolute honesty of many of the
Trust-makers in their dishonesty. One sees it in that
stolid disregard which the public to be exploited be
stows upon them.
There is a coarse red Man who preaches Trusts as a
principle. He stands close to the American throne and
is its prop. He is no hypocrite; he believes what he pro
claims. It is only that his Titan interests are yoked of
an ignorance equally Titanic. Like some toad in
stone, he is become imbedded in his own affairs and
exists unreachable of any touch not having source in
self. Such malignants as this Man, by an imbecile in
tegrity, become a double danger. There's a sin that's
honest, just as there's a hate that declines a bribe as
soon as love. Even such rude and brutish aggressionists
as this Man, commerce-gorged and money-fat, may be
acting veraciously by their blurred lights, and so pass
guiltless of moral turpitude. What they do, like the
handless acts of a rattlesnake, may plead the defense of
nature. Indeed, one is inclined to this theory, for one has be
held the leaden wonder of this Man on a strike occa
sion when poor folk begged. He looked on them as if
happiness were a new idea, and common justice yet to
have invention. The swinishness of the Man could
conceive of no rule save the rule of desire; and in this
savage staring there shone a hideous humor, it would

S7§ RICHARD CROKM.
have been comedy had it not been tragedy, and were it
possible for murder to furnish fun.
For all that, while one may excuse of sin such as this
Man, as one holds blameless some dumb, unmindful
beast, they must still be met and dealt with. These
heathen of riches are in want of baptism anew.
Their times cry for that priest to say to them as spoke
the Church to the wild Clovis: " Bend thy neck, proud
Sicambrian; adore what thou hast burned, burn what
thou hast adored! "
But one should not wax over-weary; one's hurts are
doubtless part of the day's work. One might better
pause. Sisyphus should have occasional repose; and
Apollo can't always be bending his bow. Talk is tire
some alike to talker and him talked to. Also, to preach
danger to some timid ones is to shoot at a loon on a
lake. They dive at the first flash of phrase and are
under water before any bullet of argument or fact at
tains to them. Moreover, one's inspiration must be
rested and baited of a new Hope. There be tired times
when one loses faith in one's very self. One sees so
much of the unexpected cart-before-the-horse. It
daunts one's reason and bids it doubt itself. The mag
net lies still, the steel filings ramp and fasten; yet one
learns, before one is done, that it was the magnet that
furnished the impulse and the activities of the steel-
dust were compelled. And so it runs throughout, and
defeats the blushes of ardent young Conclusion. The
magnet attracts, the passive controls, the alkali has
kingdom over the acid, weakness is power, and one be
gins to know with the German that "the female
selects." And so one is taught to discount the
voice of Eeason. One even concludes that were

GREED AND MONOPOLY. 279
folk to take chart of deduction and compass of con
jecture, and, chucking both overboard, steer by
lights of fixed instinct, all would come 'better off.
It is by no means clear, since Monopoly holds the
torch, that existence is such laughter. Monopoly has
driven happiness from half the earth and cut down the
visible supply of joy by fifty per cent. One was ex
pected of Omnipotence to have a good time aboard this
rolling, weltering world of ours, plowing its blind
course through rimless ages. One was not sent to
suffer. But Greed and Monopoly, working in latter
times to produce the Trust, have seized on what was
meant as a craft of comfort and made a galley of her.
They have chained each to his oar, there to toil till his
heart breaks.
And there is a gap in the walls where enters a half
hopelessness. There be folk who agree to their bonds
as to the will of Fate and forget the freedom that be
longs to them. The capacities of these feebleized ones
are crippled. Mindless, unlighted as to their rights,
they also dwell in midnight concerning their responsi
bilities. They are, roundly, bad citizens. They com
prise that wrong, respectable lot who hesitate over a
consequence rather than an act. Their moral thought
is all ajar. They shrink from a capture, not a felony;
they have forgotten what Mme. Eoland remembered
— that shame is not of the scaffold, but of the crime.
With such code, and with the further conviction that
Money is the only nobleman, given safety for their per
sons and their " reputations," these gentry, of no color,
abide abjectly docile to Money's word and rein.
Still these spaniel people — these weak ones in good
clothes, who crouch before the upraised thong of

280 RICHARD CROKER.
Money — are not the virile ones. And some day there'll
come grief. Some particular outrage will set the
brand to the growing long-grass of a public resentment,
and woe will spread like a prairie fire. And with the
horizon of coming time more than half consented to as
filled with the dark topsails of trouble on its way,
what do the "parties" do? What do our great con
tending armies of politics offer to the day's defense?
Democracy proffers nothing and does less. The Ee
publican remedy is to swell the Army and poke the fire
with a sword.
We sit too much in the shadows; we are too much
ridden of a superstition of Money. We are too apt at
hat-doffing and to remove our shoes and fall on our
knees before a million dollars. In older Europe and
an elder day, the noble kicked the peasant, the king
kicked the noble, and the Church kicked the king.
That wasn't so bad as now and here, when Money
alone does the kicking — kicks the public with that
threefold force which aforetime found triangular di
version and distribution. That's a prime malady of
our hour; we enthrone Eiches. We are taught this by
papers which rave over a billion-dollar babe, or swoon at
the spectacle of a millionaire in a " common jury box."
The world should be too manly and too wise to tolerate
such tutelage. As if a babe in an ivory crib, with
swan's-down swathings, sucking milk from cut glass,
were any more a babe! As though a millionaire in a jury
box were other than any highly muddled gentleman in
like position! It is at this pinch that correction should
seize humanity by its truckling collar and straighten
it up. If one bows one's self at the seat of Money, why

THE SYSTEM OF THE BEAR. 281
shouldn't Money set foot on one's neck? If one pro
claim one's self serf, why shouldn't Money proclaim its
mastery? Stand up, man! brush the dust off your
knees, scuffle into your shoes, get your hat on, and
assume some self-respecting virtue though you have it
not. If it's money you want, be something more than
slave, and you may win some. Crouch, and it's sure
you'll have naught save cuffs and crumbs. Never hesi
tate; face Money. Then it is harmless; it couldn't
reach one in a round of ages. Fear not to look a mil
lion doUars in the eye; it will tum and skulk the other
way like any other brute.
Time was when I sprawled about the Eocky Moun
tains; I waxed conversant of rattlesnakes and was a
student of bears. Also I took a course of Indian.
These taught me that the systems of savagery are mas
ters of the systems of civilization; that the primitive
has power over the modern, and that money doesn't
count with a bear. Encounter a savage and he forces
his method upon you. Our troops can't compel the
Indians to fight their fashion; the savages force our
soldiery to fight their fashion. One may be the best
boxer, the best wrestler, the best debater, or the best
thinker; and yet should one become entangled of a
bear, he'll make one fight bear-fashion. He won't box,
nor wrestle, nor talk, nor think; and he won't let you.
That hear will hunt or hug or maul or crunch or dally
with a millionaire as if the victim didn't have a dol
lar. And the latter's millions will have with the bear
no more of current avail than an Irish billet of ex
change. The right American, in the political presence
of Money, should adopt the sturdy system of the bear.
If you meet a man and he has a million — and many a

282 RICHARD CROKER.
good man has — respect the man and don't mind the
money. If you discover a man and he hasn't a mil
lion — if he be even moneyless — respect the man and
don't let the absence of that million discourage you.
That is what a bear would do; and if you will but emu
late this bear-example, the rule of riches will be broken,
and Money, from the high places which your parasite
sort has permitted it, will falter and fall away.
And in reaching for a remedy, oh, American beset!
one should fail not, with all the rest, to address the
President. One has but to reach and teach him, to
accomplish most in mendment of an hour. He is the
man at the wheel; affect a President, and one affects a
course. One should be firm and plain and cool and
make one's self apparent. One should appeal, for
specimen, like this:
Your Excellency: There is no impulse of insult in
this. There is also little hope. You present the
dampening question of unknown incapacity. You are
a cavern of a man; hollow, dark, and with little to
tempt to exploration. You do not say much; yet your
wordlessness offers nothing to confidence. Cowley,
the Englishman, remarked of a lesser Napoleon: "He
never speaks and always lies." And by this light
there's that of parallel between folk one wots of and
the Frenchman.
While you are but little relied on, you have still at
tained to the Presidency. You have scaled the highest
peak of the Alps of politics. And whether as Presi
dent you be the offspring of accident or evil coldly
planned, you should yet have a pride of perch and yearn
to leave a name half worth a shaft at least. And this
you might well do. You know the sickness of the

Meeting Room of the Executive Committee of Tammany Hall.

PLAY THE PATRIOT. 283
times. We are cankered serfs of Monopoly. The
Trusts have us in chains. Cfesar boasted that he found
Eome brick and left her marble. You may have a
prouder word. You may write of your regime: "I
found Eome slave and left her free."
Why not play what's termed the " patriot " ? Why
wouldn't it be, personally and politically, wise and good
to stand for the many and against the few? Hayes, a
predecessor who left the Presidency to promote a
poultry hastening to decay — once stated: "He serves
best his party who serves the public best." And Hayes
was right. Defend the common weal. You will
thereby sustain your to-day while making certain your
to-morrow of renown. This is within your ready
swing. Think, man! One may look to one's future,
while one secures and makes sure one's present; so
order one's existence as to be ready to die at once or
live one hundred years. And thus may you do.
Honesty and a championship of the people would bring
encomium now and shape your fame forever.
It is beating against wind and tide to talk to you.
And yet, even with the small hope of landing, one must
press on. He who teaches a king, if it be no more than
one right syllable, befriends a people; one should not
surrender, therefore, without a struggle the chance of
touching you. As the hour trends. Monopoly is to have
finally all. And in that devoured day we will as a
nation present a lonely case of "naught but green
fields, a shepherd and a dog"; with Money the shep
herd, and Government the dog to herd and drive the
people to the shearing-sheds. You, in the White
House, could avert this and change the currents of
calamity. He would be thrice a felon who should fail,

284 RICHARD CROKER.
Do you cavil at a turgidity of phrase? You need
not. This is but a poor occasion to insist on any rose
water of words. An order in that scented behalf would
go unheeded. Thiers complained of Bismarck, as they
bickered diplomatically over terms of peace, that the
Iron Chancellor spoke German instead of French.
"Do I?" responded Bismarck. "That cannot be
helped, my friend. When I confer with one, and
mean that he shall have his way, I speak his language.
When I intend to have my way, I speak my own." One
does not presume to any Bismarckian power of coer
cion. But, for somewhat a Prussian reason, one pre
fers to be explicit in one's native tongue and way.
One will not, oh. Excellency! rehearse to your con
fusion any abandonment of the platform on which you
placed yourself to ask for votes. Platforms are the
humbug of politics. They are the bell-ringing before
the auction; their purpose is to call a crowd, not make
a price. In this experienced day, he who is misled by
them is deeply dense. The voter should ignore a plat
form to look hard at a candidate. He should put the
man above the argument in his consideration; it is the
horse and not the harness that pulls the load, or kicks,
or bolts, or balks, or runs away. One is not shocked
because you turned your elected back on the platform.
Nor does one declaim against partisanship in your
appointments. You would be weak, indeed, when
charged with the responsibility of the day, did you call
any to a guard-tower of government not of your own
and trusted clan. But the right to be partisan does not
mean the right to betray a principle. And as a pilot
you are bound to faithfulness and to remember and
mind your marks.

A GORILLA OF GOLD. 285
However, it is not concerning such as platforms and
partisanship that one is in present earnest. One is
but warm to have you to the warpath against Mo
nopoly. As an earlier, necessary step you should rid
yourself of management. Management belittles you
by its mere existence. True! it was management which
named you and elected you at the polls. Yet it fought
for its own hand. You owe naught of debt to manage
ment, either as candidate or President. And if you
did, you would still have small right to give it a White
House for four years. You should begin your fame-
hunt and your quest of public good by turning it away.
While management has you in its vulgar fingers, you
will never teach history that you are of that timber to
make a President; still less of the marble from which
to carve a god.
Even if you were to politically rebel against its
masterful eye, management could not destroy you.
And if it could? " No man," saith the Spartan, " can
be truly free who fears to die." And this, if rightly
looked at, points to management and applies to you.
Put management from you at all hazard, and as a
brave preliminary to being great.
Think of the turnspit littleness of the attitude
management forces you to keep. You are made to
dance attendance on its word. It packs you with that
puppetry which is to amuse and please its vacation.
What a prideless destiny is this! You, a President, to
deck the ignorant leisure of a mere gorilla of gold!
Can a winnowing future, seeking wheat from chaff,
deem well of you on these lacking terms? Therefore
make yourself glorious by revolt, and grant yourself a
serious recrudescence as President and man. You

286 RICHARD CROKER.
must revive in rebellion against management or hope
of fame is gone.
You say that as a country we are making money?
And if it be so, is that the whole of liberty and the last
best word of life? We are rich, yes; that is, rich in a
certain way of dismal disproportion. It were better
were we not so rich. Of what advantage are a few more
feathers and a few more gems that but wave and glisten
to breed vanity in a foolish few, and envy in a foolish
many? Rich, yes. Too often, however, in that gam
bling, workless, sudden fashion of treasure trove. To
tumble to great fortune is seldom good, even for that
envied one who tumbles. It is an unsettling disaster
to all who look on. Let us call ourselves rich, then,
and make swaggering sentences concerning it. And
while we do, our taxes are growing, our debts are
growing, our army is growing, our rights are
going, and Money has more and men have daily
less to say. Is that a burnished story? And yet, you
might change all with a blow and take your place with
the Immortals. Do you find no trumpet-blown induce
ment in such chance? Suppose your present right-
journeying would mean challenge to management, and
through that frame disappointment to a list of leeches?
There is a money-itching tribe that bear the relation
to government that wolves do to sheep-culture. They
do not add to general profit, though they roll in fat
themselves. Such gnawing folk are worthy no regard.
Their good means public loss; a stab at them is to re
new ourselves in liberty.
This is a call to duty and these be oaken words.
They smell of midnight and the wick; and you should
weigh them. The times grant naturalization to the

THE RADIANT WRONG. 287
devil and make a citizen of him. He puts money in the
bank and leads in politics. Right crawls in tatters
to its kennel; Wrong, at pleasant ease, goes radiant of
its gold. As affairs turn, the Revolution was fought
too soon; Bunker Hill was premature; Valley Forge was
failure and Yorktown a mistake.

XVII.
HILL AND GORMAN.
In the distracted times when each man dreads
The bloody stratagems of busy heads.
— Otway.
"Tammany Hall," observed Richard Croker,
" could gain no mounting good from a White House,
however much the latter might be friendly or inclined
to give it aid. The organization is entirely local in
its domain of toil. It must, of course, be regular;
and, therefore, Tammany must work its best in a
national campaign for the general ticket, and it ever
does. But the New York City vote is peculiar. There
are hundreds here who are against us nationally, while
locally they are with us. And so, as the conffict shifts
from city to country, our friends are frequently our
foes; later, when the war returns to the town, they
become our friends again. It is such conditions which
make a national campaign nothing save a season of
peril for Tammany Hall. Should the party succeed,
the best we could have would amount to no more than
a minimum of good to the organization; the most that
we commonly hope is to escape without getting hurt."
Croker does not hunger to have prominent part in
any President-making. In such crackling enter
prises it ever has been that Tammany's lot in the
melodrama was the blistering role of catspaw. Still,
Croker bears steadily his burden with Tammany in

TWO PRESIDENTIAL PRAYERS. 289
the national debate. Nor does he shrink nor seek to
evade what he believes to be a duty. He is ever sin
cere, ever squarely aggressive; indeed, in the contest
of 1900, he stood alone representative of about all the
" management " the general Democracy received.
Following Kelly, when Croker took supreme com
mand of Tammany Hall, there were two of the party
to be prominent in national politics — and each had a
Presidential prayer — ^with whom he was brought into
close and sudden relations. These were David Bennett
HUl and Arthur Pue Gorman. Croker, who is quick in
his regards, liked the latter while he distrusted the first.
When Croker was given the baton, Cleveland abode
in the White House, while Hill, promoted from a Lieu
tenant-Governorship by Cleveland's departure to a
Presidency, ruled at Albany. Hill was eager to suc
ceed himself as a Governor regularly named and
elected. It was a crisis in the fortunes of Hill. If he
were not set to lead the State's ticket in the next
campaign, he would go to the bottom like an anvil;
the waters of a lost opportunity would close forever
over his drowned head. Thus was Hill placed; and his
fate was in the hands of Croker.
There were those of power in Tammany who advised
against him; they wanted none of Hill. Croker stood
alone; yet he had his will. Croker decided for Hill,
and Hill it was. Both the records of the convention,
as well as the count of ballots at the polls, display that
Hill became Governor because of Croker's support.
There is some shimmer of a thought, too, that Gorman,
then in the Senate from Maryland, late manager of
the Cleveland campaign, close friend of Croker, and
with his own plans of a White House residence for

290 RICHARD CROKER.
himself, had somewhat to do with Croker's choice of
Hill. Be that as it may, the lapse and changes of
time have rendered the event more curious than im
portant. Hill studied for politics as some study for orders in a
church. His school was hard as emerald in its lesson-
list. It taught the art of alliance, the science of com
bination; and it overlooked the humanities of politics.
No inference of money-badness should adhere to Hill.
No one, whether friend or closest foe, in maddest
flights, ever fancied Hill in any dubious connection
with a dollar.
Hill is unpleasant to the eye; more unpleasant when
come in contact with. His atmosphere is bright but
cold, as if the sun glanced on an ice field. Nor are his
manners of the school which charms; he has no polish.
Force seldom means polish; and Hill is force. Hill is
not a general, he's an overseer; he never leads, he
drives. He commands, true; but always from the
rear. It is not cowardice; Hill feels the necessity of
making his people fight beneath sweep of eye.
This last is because of Hill's strong instinct of lone
liness. Hill knows he has no friend. He has allies,
has confederates; they are such to-day and foes to-mor
row; but Hill is never loved. No one will sacrifice for
Hill; none die for him. Hill is no Napoleon to inspire
affection in those who come about him. At the best,
Hill is but a guerrilla of party — some Quantrell of
politics. Hill is honest with his adherents. Let them but
conquer; each shall take his share of booty. The
scales of distribution are held justly in the hands of
Hill. One of Hill's tenets is " spoils." And in this

THE SPOILS SYSTEM. 291
applause of the spoils system. Hill is sincere. He is
not like Cleveland; to beg for men's aid, to turn his
back on them in victory. HiU, while places last, gives
to his followers without stint. Whatever is conquered,
whatever comes as captive of his sword, is apportioned
among them.
Hill had such training as the hard class-room of his
time could give him. He was taught that no flower
of sentiment swayed its perfumed head in politics. He
learned to face his foe hardily, fight grimly to the end,
and, if needs must, die in silence — mute as fox among
the hounds. When he won, he was to take everything
that might strengthen himself or comfort his people.
Mentally, Hill is rough and rugged; he looks a fact
in the face. His plans run ever and always to a fight.
This is in contrast to Gorman. That statesman seeks
to attain the object direct. Hill plans to a fight; if
he wins the fight, he gains the object.
Yet Hill is, after all, the creature of his contracted
school. He is essentially a State politician. His poli
cies are not national. Through every method the
ward-lines show too plainly. And with this weakness of
the provincial. Hill couples a lamentable failure to
know men. He would quit his seat in the Senate, re
pair to O'Ferrall's committee room in the House, to
bidly that Virginian against his conscience in the
Rockwell contest case. HUl had not met O'Ferrall;
didn't know whether he were hazel or oak, craven or
brave, a priest of peace or some fray-fed berserk. And
yet in this darkness as to the character of him he was
to meet, with a full-blown Presidential hope to risk.
Hill went. It was a move that many a born fool would
have known enough to avoid engaging himself about.

292 RICHARD CROKER.
Hill had sorrow and pain as his guerdon. O'Ferrall
denounced and defied him; he promised him, had the
interview befallen but five years before when the
O'Ferrall blood was quicker, that he, O'Ferrall, would
have threshed him like a shock of grain.
Had Hill been nationally wise, in the height of his
White House reachings of 1892, he would not have
gone southward on a special car to upbuild fences.
He could have done nothing to sooner fire a Southern
distrust of him, nor breed against him a Southern
opposition. Hill in person is well fashioned. He is of height;
of good breadth of shoulder. One gets the impression
of physical strength from HUl; almost of physical
ferocity. With black eyes and black hair — what fringe
there is to hold its desperate ground behind his ears —
and black coat. Hill offers a somber effect. And, with a
face pale to sallowness, finishing below on a shirtfront
of dead white, this sombemess becomes sinister.
These, added to a lawlessness of soul which lurks in
the man, confer an outlaw atmosphere that repels.
What is most admirable in Hill is his forensic courage;
what most wonderful is his intellect. He thinks with
the openness of noon. Yet, his mind is of the earth.
It spreads no wings of fancy. Hill will never soar;
never move one's soul with eloquence, nor write a
poem. Despite his black hair and bilious skin, when one has
studied Hill, it will claim one as a thought that there
is much of the old Dane about him. What a viking
he would have made! How he would have worshiped
Thor, held his horse festivals, and drunk from the
skull of his enemy! This Norse thought may come

A MENTAL PANTHER. 293
from the fact that Hill is destructive rather than con
structive in his talents. Destruction is an easy work;
a laborer of roughest sort can throw down more
masonry than two hundred skilled workmen in equal
time can rear. But destruction is none the less
majestic and engaging. Also there is something in
nately popular in destruction; it tends to equalization.
WhUe Hill's intellect dwells on the ground, it is
ever swift and darting. It proceeds with the accurate
power of a panther. Hill springs on conclusion, and
is seldom wrong. HUl for selfish cause goes often
against his beliefs. Within himself, in 1896, Hill was
for Silver; for an income tax — that measure he fought
so long and jealously. He was brought in opposition
to these by stress of money-folk. One knows not the
bond between them; one does know that the men-of-
money have many times controlled the direction,
though not the detail, of Hill's course. It was not
money in the coarser sense; Hill is not a money-lover.
Money for money's single sake is secondary. He seeks
it, spends it as incident to life; and that is all. He
neither keeps nor cares for money. And yet it is
Money that guides Hill. And it has more often than
once carried him into the wastes of political mistake.
Napoleon conceded that Providence took a part in
battle, and determined its close. But Napoleon added
that Providence fought ever for those who owned the
heaviest artillery. Hill may remember Napoleon in
his strifes of politics. Avoiding a trap of what seems
temporary success, HUl, doubtless, clings to that flag
with money in the belief, long run or short mn, that
Providence flghts ultimately for that party which has
the heaviest bank accounts. But Hill trips himself with

294 RICHARD CROKER.
error. In his never-ending arrangement of the present
to bring a future personal advantage. Hill makes mis
takes. There have been too many of these. HUl's
end is on its way. It will come, and none will mourn
him; his funeral will be as lonesome as his life.
In politics Hill is sincere without being bravely
honest in the honest sense. That is the Hill fiaw.
Hill's conception of men is artificial; he deems each an
office-hunter. He cannot be taught of that army of
folk who neither hope nor hunt for place, and the
sole purpose of whose voting is to promote right
government among men. The great world — however
unsteadUy — aims at good government; Hill aims at
power through the holding of high office. With each,
politics is a method; but the object sought is not the
same. And Hill cannot understand that probity of
motive on the world's part which does not exist with
himself. And so he falls wrong; and thus he ever plays
and makes his game too fine. That is the truth at the
bottom of the troubled well of Hill. He does not
know mankind; doesn't apprehend the race in its sim
plicity. And so Hill fails to be with the general march;
he turns ever wrong to perish in some wilderness of
neglect and lack of confidence.
HUl has no true idea of a popularity. One may
know this by his wifeless state. Folk will not trust
your bachelor publicist. Politics is with the mass the
merest condition of sentiment and the approval of a
personality. Folk talk of the issue, but they vote for
the man. And as a first concession to sentiment, they
demand that he to whom they trust great office come
with the indorsement of some woman who loves
and clings to him. The bachelor at fifty is a political

THE POLITICAL SUSPECT. 295
suspect. The world doubts him, declines him, wagging
its sage head. It loves him not. Hill, with all his
sleight for caucus, primary, and convention, does not
know these merest rudiments of his art of votes. No
mate has borne him altarward. He has suffered for it
in his career. Hill has aversion to women. The
Senate, while he was there, was guarded by his order
to bring him in no word from them. He would not
meet with women, would not talk with them. At the
most, they might see him by proxy; they might send a
man. WhUe Hill is in retreat before woman — not the
amiable rout of one bashful, but the retreat that
skulks backward, shows its teeth and bristles — ^he will
face men like a lion. And he is frank to talk. He
has no confidants; none dwell so near him as that; but
he will talk with a fierce indifference as to what he
says that borders on the reckless. He comes readily
to his portal at any summons, does Hill.
"What do you want?" asks Hill.
Propound; and he replies with directness, where
others, who assume a freer air, double and deceive.
HUl is apt to speak the truth. Not from aught of
moral thought; but at the worst he prefers to tell the
truth and fight. His political courage is of proof. He
will cast his glove in the face of triple odds.
" Hill " — said the late Senator Coke, with his queer
lisp and a look of sober ingenuousness — " Hill is a won
derful man. He's bigger than we thought when he
first came to the Senate. And he'll not only fight, but
by nature he's a desperado. If HUl had been brought
up in Texas, I reckon he'd 'a' kUled a dozen men by
now."

296 RICHARD CROKER.
Coke was in earnest, and Coke was right. One
might observe Hill from the Senate gallery. A love
and lust for combat laired in the heart of Hill.
He would engage with careless liberality against Harris
and Morgan and MiUs. As if the odds were still
unequal to his thirst for rough collision. Hill would
abruptly turn and with harshest taunt enroll Gray
among his adversaries. And, more marvelous. Hill
would quarrel this quartette to a standstill; absolutely
defeat them into silence.
It was these Senate joustings against numbers that
told much. One cannot drive Hill from a subject. He'll
no more take his eyes off the casus belli than wUl a
gazehound off the hare he follows. Hill sticks to the
business at bay. The war itself may wander, the battle
stagger to new fields; Hill will not lose sight of the
issue, nor forget what called him to his arms. If a
moveless courage could always attain the subject con
tended for, peace would ever discover HUl in its
possession. Hill's assaults forensic have no furtivities
of execution. He slays his rival directly in hot blood;
carries forward his slaughter with all the noise and din
which belong to it.
By nature HUl is a knife-fighter. The courage of a
race may be read in the length of its weapons. And
what is true of races is as true of men. The Roman
short sword and the American bowie knife mark the
highest type of fighting courage. He who wields either
looks to go close in and expects to come back covered
with blood. He considers not his own safety so much
as the destruction of his enemy. And such is Hill.
When he debates, he makes curious figure-eight move
ments, with his extended right hand. These are the

ARTHUR PUE GORMAN. 297
veriest fence of the bowie knife. As Hill scores a
point, he thrusts his hand straight forward like the
head of a rattlesnake. It is at such times he pierces
his opponent. But HUl has an integrity in his ferocity.
He is Anglo-Dane, for all his hair and eyes. He makes
no ambushments; he poisons no water-holes; sets no
traps nor snap-haunches.
Hill does now and then the unaccountable. He will
wage a ten-year war with Cleveland, and next, for no
reason one may wot of. Hill goes to a White House
dinner, and then submits to subsequent Senate stulti
fication by defending the worst measures of the Ad
ministration. Hill is not always to be understood. He
has courage, he has wisdom; moreover, he is the man
practical and lives unhampered of a past. Tradition
is nothing to him, precedent but dust. He has no
reverence, he is not cautious, and he'll clash with one
or all who, for love or heavier cause, would take to the
lists with him. And yet, with so much that is excellent
as against the little that is not. Hill is not beloved of
men. They who follow him gain no sense of loyalty
to Hill. And it was written, for these reasons of no
love, that Hill must fall. He will come finally to be a
lone hermit of politics, a beggar-man of party, telling
his beads in unanswered prayers for power. And none
will visit while he lives his cell, nor when he dies his
shrine. Gorman is a different picture. With his monk's face,
his repose, his quiet eyes, his chaste dignity, Gorman
fills the vision pleasantly enough. Nowhere in appear
ance does Gorman jar on one. Physically he is neither
big nor little; mentally he is much the same. Politics
with Gorman is an accident and not a creed. He is a

298 RICHARD CROKER.
good thinker in a way of egotism; with himself at stake,
his impulse acts powerfully as auxiliary to his reason.
In temper Gorman is timid and shy. But, ambitious
as a Bonaparte and as egotistical, his purpose is often
elevated and the game he hunts is big. Wherefore,
much that he does seems daring. What one takes to be
daring, however, is naught save the expression of a
hunger to have, which, now and then, overrunning
itself, carries him into peril.
Gorman has tact, is diplomatic — an apostle of the
indirect. He is as crafty as a coyote and as lurking.
And like your coyote he never faces danger. As far
and as fast as he may, he flies. If overtaken or cor
nered, he will snap. And his jaws cut like razors. But
even this snapping is defensive and ceases the moment
the pressure is removed. There is the sharpest of
antithesis between Gorman and HUl. Where Hill has
valor, Gorman has strategy; where Hill is Dane, Gor
man is Hindoo; where Hill becomes berserk, Gorman
turns Borgia, empoisons a bunch of forget-me-not and
sends it to his enemy with a love-note full of heart-
regard and warmth. If it were the old days in Rome,
and Gorman and Hill were made to fight in the arena.
Hill would pick up the buckler and the short sword.
Nor would he lay emphasis on the buckler; it would
hang on his left arm more as a matter of form. Gor
man would take net and trident, crouch as he faced
his foe, and attack retreating. Gorman, as written
before, is the Hindoo. And just as the Hindoo with
his crafts, his opiums, his hypnotisms, his cords of
silk, and his assassin's creese as crooked as his tongue,
is more to be feared than some bugle-blowing cham
pion who makes tenderly sure the enemy is wide-awake

GORMAN'S BEGINNING. 299
and in array, so is Gorman more dangerous than
HUl. Where does Gorman get this trick to set snares and
dig pits and hide when he hears one coming? It is due
in part to an environment, in part to breed. Gorman's
father was a Peter Gorman. The elder Gorman had
fame about the lobbies of congresses long dead.
When Gorman was twelve, his father, who was of the
Republicans, — for with him, as with the present Gor
man, politics came to be merely a lane to a field which
one meant to sow and reap, — put him page to the
Senate. For seventeen years, enrolled in posts ranging
from page to postmaster, Gorman obeyed the Senate
and did its errands.
In a day which stewed in its own corruption, and
among men many of whom esteemed chicane, subter
fuge, and direct mendacity as virtues beyond price,
Gorman passed his boyhood. At an age when character
is formed, and the lessons of one's life are taught and
learned, Gorman had every day to fiy and hide and
supple himself to be preserved. No matter the op
pression, all the boy Gorman could do was run. Run
and keep running. Run from the shadow as well as
the substance; from the true as well as the false; from
the right as from the wrong — run from everything.
And if pursued and overtaken, stave off execution until
opportunity opened to run again. That was the boyish
destiny of Gorman; the destiny of a daily fugitive. Is
it wonder that he came from such school with -less
courage than craft, and less conscience than courage?
Gorman has no profession, no trade, and some edu
cation. His calling is politics, his purpose to hold
office, his object to be rich. He has had success. He

300 RICHARD CROKER.
was Senator from Maryland, and he is worth two
millions of dollars. Gorman made politics pay.
That Gorman has his ways of power is shown by his
passing a tariff measure and making it law in the teeth
of the House and the White House. He made the
Wilson-Gorman tariff with a majority of one. He
had three by count; but he began by thrusting Hill —
once his tool, then inveterate with mutiny against him
— overboard. Gorman debarred Hill even from the
party caucus. That he is master of a wool-foot cun
ning appears from his winning the tariff without noise,
or fury, or the disclosure of his own convictions on
that point of cardinal politics. No one knows, nor
does his record show, whether Gorman is for pro
tection, a tariff for revenue, or free trade. Also, Hill
and a dozen others nearly burned themselves alive
trying to smoke Gorman out.
That Gorman will snap when cornered was indicated
in his Senate speech assailing Cleveland. And that he
lacks a common courage is told when he talks with
Cleveland for half an hour on the morning of the day
the speech is delivered, and does not mention its ap
proach to that President most interested.
Before he came to the Senate Gorman was limited
to Maryland. Until his Senate promotion he had
busied himself, vine-like, in overcreeping the Maryland
Democracy, and succeeded in covering it, trunk
and bough and smallest twig. Gorman was not de
lightful to the aristocracy of Maryland — the Carrolls,
the Worthingtons, and the Pinckney- Whytes. But their
systems were antique, Gorman's modern. He used
telephones, telegraphs, and steam; they plodded
with the old-fashioned school of horseback, saddle-

A MARYLAND MONARCH. 301
bag politics. And Gorman defeated them, walked over
them, and was monarch of Maryland. Then he
came to the Senate. And then it was he resolved
in sUence to become President. From that hour
when he took his oath as Senator back in the late
seventies, he held a White House in his eye.
As Gorman stood in the Senate he burned secretly
to become national in repute. But wary, careful, a
soul of shadows and concealments, he said nothing
and abode his time. It came when, with Garfield's
election to the Presidency, the fortunes of the Senate
Democracy were made to tremble. Cameron nego
tiated a treaty with Mahone. The latter was to bring
the Republicans his vote towards Senate reorganiza
tion. The Senate was in the hands of the Democrats.
Mahone, for a reorganization, was to be with the Re
publicans; and for that work Mahone was to name
Riddleberger, afterwards a Senator, to be sergeant-
at-arms. Conkling would lead the Republicans in their
struggle for possession.
And save for Gorman the Republicans would have
conquered. With Mahone voting with Conkling the
Senate would stand tie between the parties. Conkling
and Cameron relied on Arthur as President of the Sen
ate to cast the vote of decision. It was Gorman who re
solved on objection. The other Democratic Senators
were disposed to let the day go by default. Gorman
urged that Arthur, as President of the Senate, could
vote only where tie occurred on a legislative question;
that he could not interpose where the question was
one of Senate organization. Gorman, then young as a
Senator, submitted this view to leading Democrats.
They saw nothing in it. He took it to Ben Hill. The

302 RICHARD CROKER.
Georgian encouraged the Maryland Beaconsfield.
They arranged to oppose Conkling and Cameron.
Then began a conflict which, lasting several weeks,
was terminated by the resignations of Conkling and
Piatt as result of quarrel with Garfield. This double
stepping down and out left the Senate Republicans
hamstrung; they crippled down at once and their fight
was lost. Gorman gained fame in this melee; he
exulted while he thought of it as a step towards the
Presidency. But such is the irony of life that this triumph of
Gorman was to have much to do in promoting that one
of all who for years stood in Gorman's path. Over in
Buffalo, Cleveland as Mayor had backed ignorantiy
into a contest for the right, and won. John Kelly and
Richard Croker reached out for Buffalo's Mayor, then
brilliant with advertisement, as a candidate for
Governor. Civil contentions, which racked the Re
publicans as corollary of the Conkling-Garfield trouble,
weighed in for Cleveland to a degree which made the
majority by which he was elected over Folger seem
almost foolish. And at this point, Cleveland, Governor
at Albany, and Gorman, with his new laurels in the
Senate, began to make one another's acquaintance.
Gorman feared Cleveland from the first. None
knew sooner than Gorman that the wave which bore
Cleveland into Albany would land him high as the next
nominee of the party for the Presidency. As this was
secretly the Gorman ambition, it is not hard to infer
that his heart did not yearn over Cleveland. But he
dissembled, gave his hope a recess, and with a sigh
turned in, in 1884, to name Cleveland, and by victory
or defeat dispose of him and dismiss him from the

BLAINE AND CLEVELAND. 303
programmes of politics as soon as ever it might he
done. Cleveland was nominated for the Presidency.
Gorman, who had fame for dexterity in practical poli
tics, — with the face of a prelate and the heart of a
privateersman, — was put in front of the forces of the
party. The Republicans, however, were not disheart
ened by the Conkling-Garfield dissensions of the years
before. They proposed Blaine, their best and greatest,
and went behind their guns with the cool valor of
buccaneers. And they all but won.
Blaine lost New York — the White House key in
1884 — by fewer than two thousand. And that leader
who defeated Blaine was Gorman. The Maryland man
ager turned the currents in the last hours of the
conffict. He saw the trouble; he called on Baltimore
for money; he got it to a sum without a name.
Thus equipped, Gorman poured that balm the wounded
hour called for into the lower wards of New York City;
and when the mists of doubt were blown aside success
was his. Gorman had made Cleveland President.
When one cannot be a king, one should be a War
wick. There are grace, luster, and riches in the part.
If one cannot be the throne, be the power behind the
throne. Gorman, after victory, made no doubt of his
influence with Cleveland. He was the Scipio who
had commanded success; he had fiddled it out of the
fire; he was entitled to a White House latchkey. It
should be his voice in the closet, his whisper on the
backstair. Gorman craved three things. And they were denied.
Cleveland refused Gorman; and was so roughly plain,
withal, that the situation, assenting to no obligation.

S04 RICHARD CROKER.
admitted of no hope. Gorman made no more requests.
True to his education, Gorman was patient under in
sult, meek under the whip. His hates did not foam;
his resentments were without a tongue. When friend
or flatterer condoled, he shrugged his shoulders, spread
his hands, talked benignantly of party welfare, and
stood as model for the Magnanimous. He foresaw
that Cleveland would be renamed in 1888, and as far as
he might, and wear a dignity, he assumed to favor it.
He busied himself for the common good.
Cleveland was candidate a second time, and Gorman
helped. It was Gorman, when Silver had captured the
Committee on Resolutions at St. Louis, and the Com
mittee's people were on the borders of a report de
claring for " Free Silver, Sixteen to One," who sat
quietly down and talked them out of it. Smooth as
honey, suave as cream, Gorman laid the cold finger of
his policy on Silver's adherents, and they yielded.
They would have rebelled against one less softly deft.
Gorman purred them to a standstill; it was Mesmer in
politics. Cleveland and defeat agreed in 1888. Long before,
however, Gorman had begun to construct Hill. Not
for the good of that vigorous person, but for Gorman's.
He proposed to take New York from Cleveland with
Hill. He worked on Hill and builded him, brick by
brick. Hill was not strong with Tammany, he had
cheated Croker and the organization; there was no
pipe-line of concord or confidence between them;
nothing but dislike. Gorman, on the other hand, while
running the first Cleveland campaign, gained a hold
with Tammany and Croker which few could master.
Gorman made Hill believe that he was to follow Cleve-

GORMAN'S STALKING HORSE. 305
land in the White House. There was no moment when
Gorman planned anything of the kind. Gorman pri
vately proposed himself for the White House; HUl was
to be his stalking horse.
After the defeat of the party in 1888, Gorman be
gan collecting power. The Force Bill came along to
give him a lift. The mad Republicans all but made his
fortunes with that measure of black sin. Gorman, fol
lowing 1888, saw that Cleveland was as feverishly
for a third nomination as he had been for a first and
second. At this, he went in with Hill more deeply;
he double-moored New York to their ambitions, bow
and stern; he did not leave Cleveland so much
as a cobweb of influence with the party in his own
State. To have Hill more at his whisper and beneath his
eye, it was Gorman who told Hill to come to the
Senate. From 1888 to 1892 it was Gorman, not HiU
nor Cleveland, who was potent with the New York
City Democracy. It was Gorman who invented " snap-
perism " ; not Hill. There was the Richelieu! " Snap-
perism " would defeat Cleveland of his State's dele
gation, while it destroyed Hill with the country at
large. Two birds, one stone!
Propagating power wherever chance opened a way,
it was Gorman who made Crisp Speaker in 1891. Mills
was the Cleveland selection. Gorman brought Hill,
Tammany, Maryland — every factor he could call his
own — to the help of Crisp. Gorman made Crisp
Speaker just as in 1884 he had made Cleveland Presi
dent. Is it not strange that Gorman can so triumph
for others and so fail for himself? It is because Gor-
mad has perfect courage where another takes the risk.

306 RICHARD CROKER.
It is when he must hazard personally the pain and
shock of dovmfall that Gorman wavers. It is when
he must go in person with the rush, and chance lance-
thrust and saber-work, that his lips whiten, his eye
falters, and his heart faints. It is then that he hasn't
that sandstone courage to call down the last grand
general charge required by success.
There was a ludicrous incident which happened
during Gorman's plotting for a Presidency. His tac
tics — and they were native with him — were to make
the nomination seem to " seek " him. He would not
confess himself a candidate. The Senate was a Gor
man hotbed; Hill had no adherents there.
But a change was about to be forced on Gorman.
Brice, Morgan, Cockrell, Pugh, Vest, and others of sim
ilar pinion, all for Gorman, all inveighing against Cleve
land, demanded that Gorman be announced and appear
obviously a candidate. They insisted that he openly
accept the situation. They argued that Hill could
not withstand Cleveland in the country, while Gorman
could. But they needed the Gorman consent as well
as the Gorman name. With the mass of Senate Dem
ocrats the cry was: "Anything to beat Cleveland!"
They compelled Gorman's acquiescence. To save his
sensibilities they arranged to " force " a candidacy
upon him; they would shove him from shore against
his will.
It was a well-known orator of the middle West who
was to launch the Gorman boom. He was not of the
Senate. Gorman was to give a dinner in honor of this
orator. His Senate supporters would be present. There
was to be none not a Senator, save the guest of honor
— who was to declare for Gorman in an impassioned

A GORMAN DINNER. 307
speech, to which others would offer oratorical addenda
full of fire — Crisp of Georgia and the Speakership,
and Compton of Maryland.
It was a splendid conception, with a dinner and a
possible President in it. On the evening arranged the
guests drew together full of appetite and hope; that
is, all except the guest of honor. He was missing, and
his absence spread a chill. The others waited; at last
they sat down without him. As they battened gloomUy
and silently, a carriage drove to the Gorman gate. No
one got out. A search party — a fashion of steering
committee — developed the guest of honor inside, in a
state of abstraction. The guest of honor was brought
forth and filed away on a sofa. The banquet proceeded
drearily. No one volunteered to make the speech of
the unconscious one; no one demanded Gorman as a
candidate; no Presidential plausibilities were un
packed. While Gorman was chagrined at this outcome of a
feast from which so much had been hoped, his sly
spirit felt, with it all, not a little relieved. In silence
he could now go forward with his sapping and his min
ing and his tunneling and his Hill pretenses; and that
was more to his taste. Gorman multiplied his efforts
to clutch the nomination. He persistently refused,
however, to become an open candidate for convention
favor; he never failed, to the public, to deny his ambi
tions in that behalf. Hunting it as game never was
hunted before, Gorman still sought to preserve the
appearance of a nomination hunting him.
Gorman went to the Chicago convention of 1892, a
full-fledged candidate, but undeclared. Hill's coming
defeat was already apparent. Gorman's friends took

308 RICHARD CROKER.
with them twenty thousand Gorman badges, silk and
gold, great and little. These were to be flaunted op
portunely and explode enthusiasm. They were
drowned in Lake Michigan, and never got out of their
boxes. " If the New York delegation," said Richard Croker,
" could have gotten away from its instructions and
dropped Hill, we would have beaten Cleveland and
named Gorman. But Hill insisted on the delegation
wasting itself on him. It was Hill who nominated
Cleveland." Whitney, as cunning as a Mazarin, was there for
Cleveland; and the wide-flung sentiment of the country
was for him. This unfortunate popular last fact be
came patent more and more. Someone suggested a
quiet " count of delegates." This was three days be
fore the convention came together. Each State head
quarters was visited. There was a covert, but
thorough, poll. It disclosed that Cleveland did not
have the imperative two-thirds; and that Gorman was
stronger than Hill. And still the cry was, " Anything
to beat Cleveland! "
It was Gorman who broke. Gorman, losing heart,
made his decision for Cleveland. But in its first
stage Gorman kept his Cleveland mood to himself.
Following the " count," Gorman disappeared. No one
found him for two days. On convention morning,
Whitney — who was Reynard the Fox for that conven
tion — was out in an interview, saying that " Gorman
was for Cleveland, always had been for Cleveland,"
and expressing amiable contempt for dullards who
had believed anything else. Contemporaneously Gor
man appeared at Whitney's elbow, pegging away for

GORMAN! IS GREAT. 300
the ex-President. Cleveland was named on the first
ballot, with Hill sticking to the end.
Gorman, in his way, at sightless midnight and by the
left hand, is great. He has done wonders of politics
and legislation of the fog and spun-glass kind. How
does Gorman work these marvels? By a craft like unto
that of Mephistopheles; by a talent for diagonalism — a
genius of the indirect; by a faultless capacity for mak
ing one believe that one's own best interest lies the
Gorman way. Gorman is weak and wonderful at once.
Gorman is as the vampire bat, which, wanting strength
and courage and power for war, still inhabits earth
and air and night and day, sucking gentle blood with
safe indifference from lion and from lamb alike.

XVIII.
BRYAN AND A PRESIDENCY.
Be brave then ;
For your captain is brave, and vows reformation.
There shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny.
The three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops, ,
And I wiU make it felony to drink small beer,
All the realm shall be in common, and in Cheapside shall my palfrey
go to grass. — Jack Cade.
There are more good lives lived than written, com
plains Carlyle in effect, and then goes forward to be
labor a German person of bad luck who has offended
him with an unhappy biography of Jean Paul Richter.
What Carlyle writes is highly the truth. The Scot
might have pushed forward another rood or two and
said that, compared with lives as lived, no good life
will nor ever can be written. What is here set forth
is not in defense of the present, which, making no
pretense to a granite gravity, is a study, rather than
a story, of Richard Croker. But to take up again the
crabbed line laid down by Carlyle: It does not conform
with the possible that between the charged and
crowded covers of a book aught liberally better than
glimpses of an individual is to be obtained. If one's
whole true life were printed down, with all one felt
and meant and lost and won and did and failed to do,
each day would claim a volume to its record. Every
sigh would own its paragraph, every tear take up a
chapter in its telling.

JEAN PA UL RICHTER. 3 1 1
Johnson once said, in an earlier day of that worthy's
siege of his society, that did he believe Boswell in
tended to write his Life, he would assuredly prevent
the outrage by taking Boswell's. The dour Carlyle
almost laughs at this, and intimates some aid to
biographic literature had great men acted on Johnson's
epigram and butchered their historians before the lat
ter got to work. Carlyle selected his own Life-writer,
and gave to Froude, in advance of his demise, what
ever of those bricks and mortar he would want as ma
terial for his building. And at that, it's to be mis
doubted if Carlyle would not wring his hands in a
very protest of agony, were he here to regard and pass
upon the finished work.
In his assaults on the crimiaal German aforesaid,
assaults which were to be the excuse for himself writ
ing a sketch of Richter, Carlyle set forth with fine,
though inferential, scorn the method which the
caitiff Rhinelander, telling of Richter, pursued. From
some Index of Great Names he culled the date of
Richter's birth, and from the newspapers fixed his
death. Then he fought through ranks and double
ranks of books, and clipped unsparingly each para
graph which carried Richter's name or made a least of
reference to him. These were then jumbled together
in a hodgepodge of glomerate confusion, to have that
place in literature which in architecture is occupied by
Stonehenge. The German has no notion of per
spective, and grants space equal and alike to a two-
weeks' jaunt into the country and a sickness of fifteen
years. Also, he is abrupt in his transitions, and in a
paragraph confers on Richter a wife and a trio of
weans. In the next, or nearly the next, Richter dies; a

312 RICHARD CROKER.
sentence gapes unexpectedly beneath him like a trap
door in the " Vision of Mirza," and Richter is gone.
Only for the moment, however; like Harlequin in the
pantomimes, he but descends beneath the stage to re
turn plungingly through a clock-face the moment
after. Carlyle does not like this, and fingers the poor
German with epithetical severity.
It is by no means sure that the scheme followed by
the German, and over which Carlyle pouts so ran-
corously, would not produce a sterling story of its
man. Once I looked over a "Life of Jesus Christ,"
constructed by Thomas Jefferson on precisely that
plan of clip-and-paste. It was made of excerpts from
the literature of a half score of countries, and dis
played the Galilean in English, French, German,
Spanish, Italian, Russian, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and
Arabic. By those who could read it, the word was
unanimous that this mosaic of Jefferson's offered the
best biography of the Saviour yet extant. And there
wasn't an original line by Jefferson.
Carlyle in his grumblings is not to be minded too
much. Carlyle was an oak tree with the stomach ache.
There was something innately wrong with Carlyle and
his machinery, for he lived to be eighty-six and stUl
never witnessed a day pain-free and whole in its hap
piness. His capacity for gloomy contradiction appears
in his daily forebodes of nearing death. Ever dying in
thought, he lives on and on, full sixteen years beyond
the given limit.
And Carlyle might have been more cheerful. Bi
ography, for all he says, becomes better — or has during
the last century — much faster than the individual.
When the progress of humanity is considered, it does

FOUR HUNDRED YEARS. 313
not impress one by its extent. Steam? and telegraph?
and telephone? say you. That is not progress, it's dis
covery. Or should you insist, call it a progress of the
physical. In astronomy, geology, electricity, mechan
ics, chemistry, medicine — arenas of discovery these —
we have progressed. But on the moral-mental side — the
side of ethics and of the abstract — we have ever been
much at a stop. The mental-moral eye is dim; the
bodUy vision keen; daily we discern more and still more
of the physical, though little, if any more, of the
psychical. How long is it since man first tried to pick the lock
of futurity and make purchase of the tales to come?
And yet after centuries of peering, spying, and fore
seeing, one can't certainly foretell one's own story for
those sixty seconds next beyond. One knows no more
of God, nor is one nearer God, than were those other
ones an age of eons gone. Is the finite to know the
Infinite, and is a foot-rule to measure space? And our
theology is not more sure than was that of our slant-
skulled forefather who went clothed of a sheepskin
and a club, ate his meat raw, and saved his fire to
pray to.
Seize on the last four hundred years; compare the
progress of the physical with the march- -if march
there has been, and not a stolid squatting on its
haunches — of the moral-mental. Give a short regard
to medicine, an ensample of the physical, and measure
its oncomings.
"If to-day" — said a New York City physician, of
abundant patients and sufficient fame — "if to-day I
were to practice my profession as I did a score of years
ago, I would be jailed for malpractice. And a score

314 RICHARD CROKER.
of years ago had I practiced my profession as I do to
day, I'd have been jailed for malpractice. So much
has the world of surgery and medicine turned over in
twenty years."
Consider what is done with drugs, and temperatures,
and surgeons' knives and needles and antiseptics.
Compare the present with remedies sovereign in the
time of that great Galenist, Gervase Markham, who
was in his pride three centuries ago. His was a prac
tice wherein folk drank sand in wine for dyspepsia
and called it "pebble posset." The Water of Life,
which if one took " he might walk safely from danger
by the leave of God," was compounded of twenty-nine
garden herbs, to which were added " a fleshy running
capon, the loins and legs of an old coney, the red
flesh of the sinews of a leg of mutton, four young
chickens, twelve larks, the yolks of twelve eggs, and a
loaf of white sugar all to be distilled in white wine."
A powder of pearls, amber, and coral was given for
consumption; while others, for the same malady, pre
ferred " cock-water, the cock being to be chased or
beaten before he was killed, or else plucked alive," and
then distilled. A cordial based on garden snails and
earthworms, "about a peck," was used for dropsy;
and aches of the sinews and griefs by sprains were re
duced with " oil of swallows " obtained " by pounding
twenty live swallows in a mortar," with as many roots.
For epilepsy " a mole . . . dried in an oven whole
as taken out of the earth and administered as a pow
der " was the remedy; deafness gave way before an oil,
the result of " a grey eel with a white belly inclosed
in an earthen pot " and buried alive for fourteen days.
" For a stitch in the side," prescribed the scientific

Grover Cleveland.

GERVASE MARKHAM. 315
Markham, one might " look when you see a swine rub
himself, and there upon the same place rub a slick-
stone, and then with it slick all the swelling and it will
cure it." Csesar was bald and bewailed it. The con
queror might have grown hair like a Sutherland had
he but fallen in with Markham, and learned that all
one had to do was grease one's depilitated poll with an
ointment conf ected of " garden snails plucked out of
their houses and pounded with horse-leeches, bees,
wasps, and salt an equal quantity of each " ; or, if that
were not to please him, then a potent hair balm might
be gained by " drowning in a pint of wine as many
green frogs as it will cover, setting the pot forty days
in the sun." Such was medicine in a day of Shaks
pere. Lay it by the side of present practice and de
cide how far we've come.
And, having done so much for physical progress,
place beside Bacon, Raleigh, Sidney, Shakspere, Beau
mont, Lyly, Spenser, Jonson, and More, the best
thought of poet, moralist, publicist, and philosopher
of now, and show wherein the moral-mental has ad
vanced. Since the Roman builded Watling Street,
and the Saxon inhabitants of Britain, with bodies
hand-painted a beauteous blue with the dyes of woad,
stood watching, the race 'ihas traveled far in the
sciences of communication, transportation, and dress.
Also, the Atlantic liners are a great tree to grow from
such an acorn as that pitched and wattled coble, big
enough for one, of coastwise England, ago two thou
sand years. Those are great strides; but they mark
nothing save a progress of the physical. Not that one
grieves thereat. One is simply trying to reach a fact,
not find a fault. The physical is first, the moral-

316 RICHARD CROKER.
mental second; if we cannot progress on both lines,
but only one, then, for comfort and the race's sake,
let it be as it is — ^the physical.
Do you say our laws and schemes of government have
progressed? And now we've but added another to im
provements physical. Our laws, which are but the
uttered detail of our government, were, in abstract,
thought and talked and written and dwelt upon in
every age of which we know the story. The theory of
a republic is as old as the hills; indeed, there have been
ever republics back, back, back in the dimmest dis
tances of time. It is only the practice that with us is
new. And whatever of progress is told by it, like medi
cine, like railroads, like boat-bulding, it is a progress
of the physical. Improvement in law — a betterment
of government — does not declare a moral or mental
advancement. There exists ever a tacit resistance to
oppression, and the birth of a republic means no more
— even though it be the better government — than that
through some accident of crowned weakness, or may
hap some power of geography, as was the case in our
own Revolution, the republicans asserted, conquered,
and afterwards sustained themselves. England and
Germany are monarchies; France and America repub
lics. Yet it would be difficult to show, speaking of
the mental-moral, wherein the standards of the two
latter are higher than those of the others. Mexico is a
republic; and in thought, morals, and the spiritual,
she cannot contest with those monarchies named.
And Germany comes almost to be a tyranny at that.
Take the immorality of drunkenness. Folk are as
drunken now as in the time of Hengist. Alcohol is
ever suicide, partial or complete as one drinks less or

THE MORAL STAGNATION. 317
more. No one doubts this; least of all the one who
sells and he who buys and drinks the poison. We make
laws thereat; but one may not uproot a habit with a
rule nor fell a tree of appetite with any ax of statute.
There is, in an item of drunkenness, no progress of the
moral-ethical. Nor is there like to be. It is the
age of avarice; of commercialism and a mania of
money. Where there are a buyer and a profit, there also
will be a seller and a sale. And so the traffic in hell-
water goes on; and its litter — whereof the pedigree
should read, " out of Alcohol, by Apollyon " — of crime
and misery and degeneracy, is daUy brought forth in
our midst. Does such promise a progress of the moral?
"Wine makes a man pleased with himself, which is
no small matter," said Johnson to Boswell, as the
two defended tippling. Johnson was a false donkey;
he might have said as much of insanity in more than
three-fourths of its expression.
What is the trouble? It is the hour of commercial
ism, an age benumbed of commerce. Deadly to the
moral-mental withal, it is still no mark of genius, and
hardly one of commonest wit, this making of huge
money. Such feats of riches come rather from a red-
squirrel bent to hoard. The red squirrel, with a
brain not to fill a thimble, will hoard you away each
autumn enough of nuts to save a dozen red squirrels
through a dozen winters. The wolf, sagacious, strong,
and a menace, too, lays nothing by; he pulls down each
day's beef each day. And yet is the red squirrel wiser
than the wolf because of a bushel of acorns?
Commercialism sways the scepter, and your modern
Alexander is the " business man." How may one know
him? By his coarse complacency of face, with its

318 RICHARD CROKER.
prim trimmed beard of mutton-chop; by a spirit like
unto the spirit of pork; by a soul the height of his
counter. There is the Produce Exchange — a body of
immortal hucksters; there is the Stock Exchange — a
body of immortal gamesters; there is the Chamber of
Commerce — a body of immortal Tories, who give
Anglican dinners and drink " God save the King " ;
these be all, all " business men." The term " business
man " is become a first potency in education, theology,
politics, society, where you will. All must hear, and
all obey the " business man." It is decidedly a Dog
berry instance of "when I do ope my mouth let no
dogs bark."
There is but one fellow to the " business man." In
the Eastern Faraway lies dreamy India; hot, dark-eyed,
and inert. The native is timid and retreatingly weak.
His courage is as dusky as his skin. In the groves
about the native villages dwell colonies of grave gray
apes. They come whence and go whither they list;
they enter the huts of the villagers and help them
selves. They take as they please; and no Hindoo may
club nor chide, nor thwart them, nor call to see the color
of their apeships' money, for, lo! these apes be sacred.
These are the " business men " of India; and they bear
resemblance to their brothers over-seas. Commercial
ism and the " business man " are foes to enthusiasm,
to imagination, to art, to poetry, to literature, to every
thing but commerce. They dam all streams save
streams of trade. They make a commodity of the
sensibilities, and feel gratitude by the gallon, and are
torn with love by the yard.
One shudders to remember what a critic will say
who has read this work thus far. One may hear him

THE FEARSOME CRITIC. 3 19
curse behind his beard and demand what have these
meanderings to do with the story of Richard Croker?
Let him growl and grind. When one goes grouse-
shooting, one goes for the feel of the grass underfoot,
the quick taste of the air, the greenery of the woods,
the tree-talk of bough against bough overhead, the
blue of the sky, the bosk and the gum-smells of the
thickets, the lipping and chafing of the brook against
its banks, as much as ever one goes for grouse. And
what care we for critics! What is a critic? A critic
is he who finds fault with you for doing something he
could not do in a way he would not do it if he could.
Am I clear? " Clear as mud," say you. Thanks! my
spirit wraps itself in your assurances as in the very
silks and satins of satisfaction. One is safe who holds
of critics as Sterne wrote of them.
" ' Their heads, sir ' — quoth the author of Uncle
Toby — ' their heads, sir, are stuck so full of rules and
compasses, and have that eternal propensity to apply
them on all occasions, that a work of genius had better
go to the devil at once, than stand to be prick'd and
tortured to death by 'em.'
" ' And how did Garrick speak the soliloquy last
night?' " ' Oh, against all rule, my lord — most ungrammati
cally betwixt substantive and the adjective, which
should agree together in number, case, and gender,
he made a breach, thus — stopping as if the point
wanted settling; — and betwixt the nominative case,
which your lordship knows should govern the verb, he
suspended his voice in the epilogue a dozen times,
three seconds and three-fifths by a stop-watch, my
lord, each time.'

320 RICHARD CrOKeR.
" ' Admirable grammarian! . . . Was the eye
silent? Did you look? '
" ' I looked only at the stop-watch, my lord.'
" ' Excellent observer! And what of this new
book?' " ' Oh, 'tis out of all plumb, my lord, — quite an
irregular thing! — not one of the angles of the four
comers was a right angle. I had my rule and com
passes, my lord, in my pocket.'
"'Excellent critick! . . . Grant me patience,
oh. Heaven! — Of all the cants which are canted in this
canting world — though the cant of hypocrites may be
worst — the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!
I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a horse
worth riding on, to kiss the hand of that man whose
generous heart will give up the reins of his imagina
tion into his author's hands — ^be pleased he knows not
why, and cares he knows not wherefore.' "
What is the balking trouble with this chapter?
Why does it not get on? or why refuse a destiny and
avoid its work? Wherefore does it dawdle, and delay,
and wax vociferous over nothings like some hare-brain
canine barking at a knot? The key to the entire
worry lies in the fact that my intelligence isn't halter-
broken; it won't lead.
When I sat me down on the doorsill of this chapter
I first had Bryan in my mind. Then my thoughts
took unexpected wing and covered what of this chap
ter has already gone before. Then my conjecturings
turned again to Bryan; only for a moment. From the
Nebraskan they roved to Hill — Hill who was sedulous
to hide his light beneath a bushel of jealousy in 1896,
to let it shine again in 1900 because reflection

SOME HILL THOUGHTS. 321
warned him that he was but four years distant from
1904. Next, my idle thoughts began to circle and saU above
Hill's lack of gratitude to Croker, and the eyeless,
bat-like characteristics thus betrayed. Croker gave Hill
his nomination for Governor, and then gave him his
majority at the poUs. And yet from the day Croker
made of him a Governor, Hill did what he privately
might to discourage, divide, and disperse the power of
Croker and break down Tammany Hall. This was
green and hateful ingratitude; and with nothing for
its parent save a cheap envy of Croker — for no in
terests, political, or otherwise, of Croker and HUl
could have possible collision — it had, as a sentiment,
no least sustenance of common sense. Also it pointed
the poor judgment of Hill. Had he been skill
ful of men, he would have known the formidable
character of Croker, and passed him by with his in
trigues. Croker made Hill Governor; later he sent
him to the Senate; and one may suspect for no other
reason than, as much as he might, to be rid of Hill in
New York.
Thus, I say, did the eddies of my thought swirl touch
ing Hill. Then, of a sudden, they slipped away anew;
they deserted the contemplation of Hill's fatuous in
gratitude, to reflect on his personal appearance. My
thoughts dwelt, I recall, on Hill's mustache and scheme
of face as shown in his shaving. Then they moved to a
general survey of faces and beards, and with the coun
sel of experience made wondrous deduction. My
thoughts — ^they had won beyond any rule of mine — in
sisted that the manner of one's beard, and the clip
and style of one's apparel, were signboards of char-

322 RICHARD CROKER.
acter; that externals told the story of internals, and
garb and make-up were outward indications of an
inner man. Do you discover a gentleman with a
red hat-band? Be sure there is another inside of his
head. Are his clothes extravagant of color, kind, or
cut? Some garish excess that lives within is pointed
to. Are garments slop-shop, and trousers of ill fit?
They prove the soul inside to be a sloven, and tell of
morals baggy at the knee.
And next my rambling cogitations picked up this
subject of beards again. They whirled and tossed it
for their own amusement. There are but two human
faces in Nature; one is smooth and one is full of
beard. When one, with shears and blade, betakes one's
self to an improvement — for so one deems it — of one's
natural visage, results will ever speak the secret of
one's self. The full beard betokens manhood, honesty,
simplicity, and withal an uncleanness that misfits with
modern times. Given manhood, honesty, and sim
plicity; with a white fineness of fiber added, the man
mows his whole face smooth. The mustache has
manhood and a spirit to be military behind it. The
mustache was born of a day of armor when helmets
denied accommodation to the beard. It is the disaster
of the mustache that it is common behind every rum
counter of the land. Your mustache, found in convoy
of a full, long, and abundant sidewhisker, argues a
weakling vanity, no stubbornness of manhood, and a
fervor for the feminine which is never deeply returned.
Those little broom-beards to cover the chin, while the
cheeks are shaved, when linked with a mustache,
promise selfishness, craft, cunning, and no fine loyalty
to friend or principle. It is the instinct of conceal-

BEARDS AND THEIR STORIES. 323
ment which frames and cultivates this beard; it is an
ambush behind which the wearer's words may lurk
and hide. The broom-beard, unaccompanied of the
mustache, proves a steady, pains-taking avarice which
will follow a dollar to the prison door. There it will
pause. The broom-beard of either kind recounted is
never worn save by folk of commonest clay — it voices
an unflneness. Its wearers, however, will generally
be " respectable," because they will always be discreet.
The business " mutton chop " has had a prior mention,
and there need be here no addenda to former words
thereon. Then there is the fop's face, which finds
assertion in the tenderly clipped Van Dyke, or else
those wee, waxed mustaches to go with the heroes of
hectic romance. One might write days without end
on beards. Those imitative beards, snipped in patterns
of a Prince of Wales; or those mustaches, turned up
and flanged like a buzzard's wing because a Kaiser does
it, would keep one's pencil to the laborous tread
mill of a month in descant on that sterile brain which
prompts them. It was thus my thoughts gamboled and
rioted, and would not be driven in the legitimate
service of this book.
Following the settlement of all things earthly con
cerning beards and raiment, my conjecturings next
gave way to a half-melancholy doubt. They re
proached me with a willingness to lay a too-much im
portance on outward signs and symbols. As though
they, my vagrant thoughts, were not the ones guilty,
and had not done the whole without consulting me!
They warned me not to repose in judgment on a bare
appearance. They spoke of whited sepulchers; and
even recalled me to that beautiful trumpet flower of

324 RICHARD CROKER.
the tropics that closes on, imprisons, and devours by
ghoulish suction the humming bird which visits within
its vampire cup. I must not, said my thoughts, — which
having renounced my guardianship of them, were
now to pose as guardian to me, — I must not let simple
appearance carry me too far. My theory of a story
told by looks was an inantherate; abortive, sterile,
with no chance of a descendant honest chUd. My
thoughts went so far as to attaint me of a point of
view. You are disturbed and discouraged by a gorilla,
and do not like his looks, said my thoughts. And yet
that is because of your point of view. Without ques
tion your gorilla is a fine character, if taken purely on
a jungle basis. One never hears of your gorUla
swindling and cheating and oppressing his fellow
gorillas. Also, he exhibits his gothic manhood when
after supper he sends his wife and children into the
topmost branches of the ancestral tree to pass the
night in safety, while he with his club slumbers
doughtily at the foot, ready for any or all who shall
threaten his household.
Next, my thoughts declared that no one may make
a rule which will fit mankind. Humanity, if crack
and crevice go no further, at least parts into a duo
of classes, just as do animals; one being wild and the
other domestic. There are, urged my thoughts, people
of two kinds, the sheep people and the wolf people.
One class drifts in flocks and lives in comfort; it is first
sheared, and then eaten, and always owned. The wild
or wolf class lives hard and free; its member dies de
fiantly and alone, none knows when nor how nor where;
and no one owns him. With such a variance in the
plain natures of men, it is the limit of risk, so said my

FOLLOWING KELLY. 325
thoughts, to attempt conclusions as to Jones because
of discoveries touching Brown. One might be wolf,
and the other sheep; one a flesh-eater while the other
dined on grass; one be a slayer and the other a slain.
And this while, mind you! I was trying to coax my
errant intelligence, together with its thought-foals,
into the harness, to the end that these pages be right
fully plowed and planted. My thoughts seemed to
weary down a bit following that hyperbole of wolf-
and-sheep, and I all but had them by the forelocks.
And, indeed, it was not long thereafter when I did
squarely herd them into the fence-corner of a fact or
two, and effect their capture. Probably I will have
blame for this mental runaway. I ought not; I
couldn't prevent it. The disaster wasn't even pre
ventable. Good folk, honest folk, will exonerate me
in the business. Only madmen and " reformers " de
mand the impossible and abuse one when it isn't
produced. When Richard Croker was given charge of Tammany
Hall following Kelly, not a member of the organiza
tion held an office. Tammany was " out " in the
absolute sense of the word; the dominant powers of the
party (local) were inimical to the Tiger's people. Croker
met this opposition with conciliation. And beneath
the conciliation dwelt a sure cunning. Croker's flrst
move was a surprise. He got up one early morning
and named the best man of his opponents to be the
head of the Tammany ticket. This action shook up
the faculties of the enemy; it amazed and dismayed
him. In four years Croker, by arts of conciliation
backed by a velvet force, had brought the dis
cordant elements of the Democracy together under

326 RICHARD CROKER.
one banner — the banner of Tammany Hall. The
Irving Hall and the County Democracies, and what
others there were, disappeared; exhaled beneath the
rays of Croker's rising policy and were taken up and
absorbed by the older organization. Under Croker's
chiefship the Democracy carried for eight years the
city and did not lose it once. The first stumble was
in 1894; Tammany was routed and its enemies had
possession of the town. The year before this disaster,
however, Croker had laid down his leadership and re
tired to quieter fields. Not for a quartette of years —
not until 1897 — did Croker resume any active Tam
many command.
Cleveland went to the White House for the second
time in 1892. For the four ensuing years, had he been
guided to his work by the very demon of the Republi
cans, he could not have more completely wrought the
dismemberment of the Democracy. At the close of
his term the national convention of the party, repre
senting in its vast majority a hatred of Cleveland and
all his ways, gathered itself together. In this con
vention there were no managers, for the party had
cast off those who, in the traditions of politics, should
have been its captains.
It was at this moment that the star of William
Jennings Bryan showed over the horizon, and began
to climb and burn in the party heavens. Bryan was
chosen by the almost unanimous voice of this conven
tion to lead in the campaign for a Presidency. Bryan
created himself with a speech. Hill, too, had gone to
the convention with a harangue in his pocket and a
hanker in his heart. But HUl, with a usual infelicity,
maneuvered himself into early disrepute; his chance, if

WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN. 327
he had one, was lost. Bryan, more dexterous, and the
abler, better man, succeeded. Bryan also had his
oration and he delivered it. The convention was in
flammable. Bryan touched it with the torch of his
" Crown of Thorns " and " Cross of Gold," and for
reward was fairly conflagrated into nomination.
It is worth observe that those who now read Bryan's
speech on that fire-swept occasion wonder at its lame
ness and fustian character of commonplace. Amaze
ment arouses, and asks how an effort, so obviously
mediocre, could so blaze in its results. The answer is
ready and valid enough. Oratory is of the audience
rather than the orator. Take a cold bar of iron. Lay
it on an anvil, and smite it — hammer it as you will.
The off-come is clamor — a clangorous horror of up
roar. But heat the bar white-hot. Lay it again on
that same anvil, and with the same hammer strike that
selfsame blow. Instead of clangor, the result beautiful
is a fire-shower. And on the hot and spitting iron re
mains the deep mark of your effort. And so with
oratory; with the bar as audience while the hammer
is the speech. And so with Bryan and that Presi
dential nomination. It was your pat occasion when
man and hour meet. The convention was at white-
heat. Bryan laid it on the anvil of opportunity; struck
it with the hammer of his rhetoric, and the rest is
known to all. And yet, as said before, it was the
audience, not the orator, that furnished the eloquence.
Bryan's career, impossible in any other land, offers
all that is sharp, ardent, and eventful. Bryan began
his public work in 1891; five years later six and one-
half millions of voters sought at the ballot-box to
make him president. During the Fifty-second Con-

328 RICHARD CROKER.
gress the tariff affairs of the Democracy went stagger
ing. The " popgun " bills that Springer framed had
neither dignity nor tone. They were sneered at by
Democrats and scoffed at by Republicans in every
high and open place. It was not until Bryan made
his first tariff speech in the House that the Democracy
took heart and regarded life worth living. On this
tariff occasion the Republicans, with the cynical Reed,
were there to carp, and say sharp things, and ask sharp
questions, and make evil interruptions. One after
another the orators of the Democracy, some of them
old in conffict of the forum, were riddled by Reed's
sarcasm and made to fly. Crisp, in the chair,
was in despair. At last, Bryan was sent into the thick
of House storm. He came with the advantages of a
musical voice, a bright eye, and a pleasing personality.
Nor did he talk long before he developed that he was
not alone fair of his English, but had therewith such
command of the subject as belongs only to ones who
have burned the lights of studious preparation.
Bryan's speech was the event of the session. Every
thrust of Eeed was parried; every blow was stopped
and countered. Time and again the "Big Man from
Maine " was made to draw back, discomfiture in his
face, while the House howled. For a new man — a
young man, one who had not talked five minutes in
the House before — the feat was as a feat of wizards.
At the close. Crisp and the fathers of the forum con
gratulated Bryan; and even opponents, while disa
greeing, came across and shook him by the hand. That
speech saved the House Democracy, and fixed forever
Bryan's standing as a master of forensic fence. What
WAS to be applauded most was the stability of the man;

BRYAN'S RECORD. 329
no more to be stampeded than a stone wall; no more
to be put to flight than a tree. In the Fifty-second
and the Fifty-third Congresses Bryan was in the fore
front of party movement. In his second Congress,
while still a member of the Ways and Means, with
Wilson at the head, he not only made the leading
speech for the Wilson bill, but a speech so elaborately
complete for Silver, that Culbertson of Texas, himself
the gray, wise Nestor of the House, said: " That
exhausts the subject. It's the best possible setting
forth that the cause of SUver can have." During his
Congressional life Bryan led up the forces for low
tariff, SUver, fought to repeal the National Bank acts,
and consistently aided Hatch to pass his Anti-Option.
On appropriations Bryan was against extravagance
and lived the persistent champion of economy. With
his own people he was always a leader, and the Nebraska
Senators came often to the House to gain his views.
Bryan was a Presbyterian in religion. He was fre
quently in the pulpit as a lecturer. Politically, he
refused no call to speak. He once addressed a con-
coiLTse of preachers, and then talked politics from a
rum-shop bar on the same day. When the house held
a Sunday session, Bryan left his seat for an hour to
lecture on the divinity of Christ in a church on Capitol
Hill. Bryan in habit was decorous and well within
the moral line. He had no redeeming vices. Bryan
prepared a speech with care. He wrote it, pruned,
pared, and rehearsed it. He said once that he would
no more speak without preparation than he'd plunge
wingless into an abyss. Bryan's life was quiet, except
so far as he disturbed it with pUgrimages of politics.
He bad no circle of friends, made and received no

330 RICHARD CROKER.
social visits. He was in no sense a lady's man. He
was not a rose of society. In dress Bryan could not
have been called a fop. Neither would he have excited
the cartoonist with any Greeleyan degeneracies of rai
ment. His garb was modest and of dark reserve. Bryan
would have won no notice for the clothes he wore.
In epitome, Bryan was the West. His life was simple;
he made up existence meeting men, reading books,
making speeches to further his political ends. Bryan
served two terms in Congress without a mark to his
discredit; and failed of re-election through an over-pro
duction of Cleveland. He was not a Mugwump, not a
Populist; but a Democrat who got his inspirations in
a party past. No one need blush for Bryan. He was
as good a Democrat and as true an American as any
who ever bought a bond or owned a bank. Bryan was
in person of middle height, strongly and stockily built.
His shoulders were broad enough to excite the approval
of a Vrestler; his chest was as deep as that of a race
horse. Nor was he overabundant about the waist. He
looked what he was — a man of health and perfect
physical power. Mounted on Bryan's square shoulders
was a square head. His hair, black and recalcitrant
rather than docile, defied brush and comb, and tumbled
and tossed with a spirit of its own. This wayward
black hair, coarse as a pony's, would have given Bryan
a shaggy effect were it not for the relief he brought
the situation by completely shaving his face. No
beard, no mustache, had the freedom of Bryan's
countenance. Every trace was mowed away with the
light of each new day, and when the world saw him,
he was as smooth as a curate. There was nothing soft,
nor yielding, nor effeminate in Bryan; nothing of the

BRYAN'S CHARACTER. 331
flower. His eye was dark, his complexion swarthy, with
the British, not the Spanish, swarthiness; his nose an
eagle curve, his mouth well widened and firm, and the
whole based on a jaw, the seat of strength, and
as square-hewn as if cut from Devon rock. Bryan's
instinct was conservative. He went not easily to the
new. Like all well-balanced, well-built men, Bryan
was a creature of his environment. He was for a low
tariff; yes. He was for free silver; yes. Because they
were as naturally a Western product of principle as
was corn a natural product of the soil. There would
be neither truth nor justice in picturing Bryan as some
Danton, or some Robespierre, the apostle of disorder,
bound to cast all into chaos and then cement chaos
with blood. Bryan was not of that school. He was
wise, faithful to a trust, honest with the probity of the
sun, morally as well as physically brave, and as much
the patriot as any. It skills not, aids not, yields noth
ing to the safety nor glory of the gold or any cause to
belie this man. Give him his due, and tell of him the
truth, as one would had he come from the East instead
of the West, and been able to show a railroad or a
bank in his pedigree. His honesty, his patriotism,
were not to be impugned. What he asked for was
proper subject of debate, and perchance refusal; but the
man himself was no more to be corroded than gold, no
more corruptible than a diamond. Personally, Bryan
charmed all who approached him. None who knew
him refused him respect. Bryan was of the old party,
and in him the careful searcher would have found a
renaissance of the ancient Democracy. It was excel
lently in Bryan's favor that he was founded on him
self. No coterie controlled htm. All there was of

332 RICHARD CROKER.
Bryan was Bryan. Bryan was what folk call "mag
netic." Men liked him. He was pleasant to the eye,
to the ear, and soothed by his presence and never
troubled. No man saw him in a passion. He was cool
and of a cautious temper. No flush of irritation red
dened his cheek. He was of poise; and his emotions
sat steadily, as became those of one who, with care
for himself, ate thrice a day, laughed at dyspepsia,
and slept soundly of nights. Bryan was well, even
highly, educated. He had quarried books and tunneled
learning with any musty professor of them all. More
than books, he had studied men, and their lives were
his lessons. He had a memory like unto wax, and
what he heard or read or saw remained with him.
Bryan was not so profound as quick; and with an in
tellect, rather military than philosophical, he made
weapons of all he knew, and every scrap of learning
belonging to him was at hand to be defensive or
offensive, as his swift aptitude for combat might de
cide. It is not too much to say of Bryan that the
arena of politics presented no one of that day who,
with fuller information, more pleasing address, more
ready eloquence, and a quicker wit, could cope with
and overcome him. Bryan was these things exceUent.
Also, Bryan was defeated, which is not so good. Bryan,
in 1896, should have won. He was beaten by a lack
of party discipline; by a plentiful want of wisdom at
the headquarters of party. There was too much of the
camp meeting, too little of the military, in Democratic
management. Like a mob the party went to the elec
tion; like a mob it was met and routed.

XIX.
the eefokmees.
One might live without raiment, and live without food;
And live without evil, and live without good.
One might live without laughing, and live without sighing —
One almost had said, one might live without dying —
But who is the man who could live without lying?
— Queries of the Practical.
Let us go backward a pace. Cleveland, following
1892, directly and indirectly fomented Mugwumpery
and anti-Democracy in the City of New York. In a
personal sense, at least, your fault-finder should not
for this tilt with Cleveland and break lance of wrath
against him. Cleveland for that second White House
owed nothing to Tammany Hall. Wherefore, always
sour, ever personal, and never generous in either a
spirit of party or of public, Cleveland strove his dead
liest towards the destruction of Tammany and the New
York City Democracy as then was.
There is an element of politics, self-styled " reform."
It is opulent of numbers in this town. Its leadership
is much in the fingers of a parcel of outcasts of all
parties and politics, and a ranting circle of dominies,
crazy of notoriety. These trouble-makers, under the
warmth of Cleveland's favor — for he coddled them as
ones hateful of Tammany — ^began to stir and swell.
Also, in the accident of general feeling, the town met
your " reformers " halfway, — the grain stood ready
nodding to their sickles of lunacy and disappointment.
!)33

334 RICHARD CROKER.
The town was eager of " reform." That is, the public,
never careful of its nomenclature, called it " reform."
This sudden gush of goodness on a people's part is
a phenomenon frequent enough. Like those trade
cataclysms termed " business panics," it will fall out
about five or six times in a century. Both are seasons
of hysteria; one of commerce, the other of morals.
It chanced to this town as a community to have moral
hysteria in 1894. And being of this regenerate temper
— a temper which, to the discouragement of theories
as to an immediate near millennium, never lasts — the
public, as stated, met the " reformers " halfway.
To you who for any purpose may be a student of
communities, here is a sentence of advice: When a
town demands " reform," it does not mean reform.
It has only bungled with a term. It does not yearn
for moral change; it desires, rather, some mitigation
of immoral expression. It objects to refuse in the
street; privily, it does not object to refuse in the back
alley, where it never walks and seldom casts its eyes.
Towns are like drunkards: they encourage and request
some reason-limit of restraint; but, with the last word,
they no more want reform in fact than they want
burning at the stake.
" I would sooner part with my fortune than my
vices," said Colley Gibber; and cities and Gibbers are
much of a sort.
Your casual and not over-interested citizen is much
justified in discounting the true inwardness of that
reform which inhabits the mouths of professional and
incessant "reformers." Folk, whether they know it
or no, boast themselves, as a rule, for attributes and
feelings and resolutions whereof, compared with folk

THE HUMBUG OF BOASTS 335
voiceless touching the same, there are least of traces
in their breasts. Your brave man never names his
courage; your honest man is dumb as to his integrity.
And communities, in these habits of self-glorious
announcement, are exact with individuals. When you
invade a region which boasts of its hospitality, have a
care that your purse be well bestowed with money — you
will pay for what you get. Boston, now that slavery
is departed by edict of a Kentuckian born and bred
where slavery was an institution — Boston, now that
" Abolition " is an accomplished and a fashionable fact
— vaunts herself as the flrst cradle of black freedom in
this land. Within the eighteen months next prior to
Lincoln's election, however, the Concord clergy and
the town's " best men " besought Thoreau not to speak
in approval of John Brown or a palliation of his eccen
tric liberalisms; while in Boston, Wendell Philips was
being mobbed and his assassination conspired, for
preaching " Abolition," and Andrews, Governor, was,
in that peril, refusing Philips the common shield of
law. The Pilgrim Fathers and their now descendants
tell loudly of their love of liberty for all. Yet it
is none the less a truth that when the passenger traffic
in pilgrims ran low, the Mayflower was turned into a
slaver; and instead of Standishes and Bradfords, and
Winthrops and Aldens, brought over fettered and
screaming dusk cargoes to moan and toil and know
the name of freedom never more. Throughout the
North, one hundred years ago, slavery flourished. It
was put away; not for that it was some devil's sin, but
because it didn't pay. The immorality of slavery was
a Northern afterthought.
Take the New England otherside. That region was

336 RICHARD CROKER.
never known to brag the courage of its people. And
yet the Yankee is as dauntless as any who sailed
with Francis Drake. The Yankee will ransack the
Arctics for whale; he will rock for weeks on the
misty, wreck-sown Banks of Newfoundland for cod;
he will go anywhere, dare anything in hunt of
fortune or to have his way. And your Yankee goes
blithely to blood. Within weeks following the opening
gun of our Revolution, the British were driven from
New England; and for the seven troublous years to
ensue, never an Englishman was to make a track in
Yankee land. It was, with the exception of a British
ten minutes in a Connecticut port, to be the same in
the War of 1812. Does such immunity from English fire
and sword relate no story of the Yankee? And New
England was the sentimental as well as military point
at which England should have struck. New York City's
record is abject by the side of Boston's. This town
surrendered to every hostile body who came up the
bay. Any fishing smack of determined violence could
take the town, and did.
Twice England invaded seriously this country; and
both times of set plan of conquest. These schemes of
invasion were alike. The base was Canada; and the
line of English triumph was to lie through Champlain
and along the Hudson. It was easy and simple in
theory and on a map. It would have been in fact,
were it not for the Yankee. In the Revolution the
English died at Saratoga with Burgoyne; in the last
war they were sunk in Champlain; in each adventure
the folk who met them were four of flve the Yankees.
The New England man is a bold and desperate soldier.
The more so since his strifes have ever a fiscal

THE NEW ENGLAND MAN. 337
side. He takes a set of books to a battlefleld. As he
wheels a battery into position, he opens an account.
He charges himself with the powder burning, credits
himself with the enemies slain, and while the fight
pays three per cent, he keeps it up. New England
never boasts the courage of its people, and yet a
deathless courage is the overtowering attribute of the
entire tribe.
Folk who, in politics or private life, are wont to
exalt their virtue, may wisely be distrusted as ones
bankrupt of true virtue. Sometimes such are hypo
crites, sometimes only fools who fail themselves to
know. This is true of " reformers " and " reform."
Your clamorous reformer is seldom in public earnest,
and never a public good. Moreover, he is powerless
for any bleaching change. For reasons of a profit of
money there is to be no soon disappearance of vice. Vice
will continue until, commercially, vice, like slavery,
does not pay. There's a shrewd tribute in rents, and
in goods and wares purchased and consumed allowed
by vice to coffers of general trade. Commercialism —
that pastor to a flock of profit! — that religion of your
" business man " ! — will ever guard and shepherd vice
in favor of its rich and final fleece.
In 1894 the town fell foaming in a fit of sentiment;
it was pinched of a transient repentance. And it threw
itself, sobbing, into the laps of those " reformers,"
above described; and whom, like the poor, we have
always with us. The " reformers " took, and Tammany
lost, the town.
It was prior to this by about a twelve-month that
Richard Croker resigned his chieftancy of Tammany.
For thirty years he had stood in the storm for the

338 RICHARD CROKER.
organization. He was weary and craved rest. There
was, however, as he retired, the lamp of one determina
tion to glow in his resolves. Those friends who had
been as the power of his arm, and who were to xbe
left behind, must be preserved. They were not to be
hereafter crushed by the organization in new and per
haps jealous hands. That was Croker's compact with
himself. Croker pitched on one, Sheehan, to succeed him.
Sheehan was skilled in politics, albeit — though not
without a foxish strength of his own — weak, com
pared with Croker. This Sheehan choice of Croker's
was not popular. The " leaders " were against it. But
Croker insisted, and by a composite of cajolery and
compulsion, Croker, as usual, made his way. Sheehan
was decided on, vice Croker resigned; all answering
"Aye!" save the obdurate John Scannell, who, for
forty years, had been Pythias to Croker's Damon, and
who, in the face of Croker's pleading, voted " No " to
the last. Sheehan now at the helm, Croker sought
England, and an ease cum dignitate.
Croker was gone from the command of Tammany
Hall four years. His absence, however, in its true
effect might best be understood. There was not, dur
ing those years, a moment when the throttle and the
levers of complete leadership were not within his
reach. He had but to stretch his hands to have them.
And this, as one read before, was for the conservation
of those who had been his strength in peace and
tempest both, and not once faltered of their faith to
him. It was no fault of Sheehan that " reform " beat
down the town in 1894. Nor should the defeat of two

SHEEHAN WAS HELPLESS. 339
years later, when Bryan lost New York City by some
twenty thousand, be charged to Sheehan; Bryan
(locally) was fair impossible. Croker, had he been
to the fore, might have held the city situation; for his
personality — as exhibited in 1900, when with no better
Bryan and no worse McKinley reasons offered than
were shown four years before, Croker in the saddle
brought up the town for Bryan by near thirty thousand
— is worth a difference in favor of Democracy of
twenty-five thousand men, or fifty thousand in
majorities. Still, while honesty will not lay on Sheehan those
defeats which smote the Tammany Democracy in
1894 and the trio of years thereafter, it cannot but be
admitted that the Sheehan hold on Tammany was not
strengthened thereby, nor was any organization confi
dence in Sheehan's favor thereof generated. And thus
stood affairs in Taihmany, following the Bryan disaster
of 1896. The Wigwam entered upon 1897 with
Sheehan in command, but with his grasp of both men
and matters Democratic much shaken and enfeebled.
That Croker at this time was not far to call is beheld
in this: As early as February of that year, Croker was
on ship, to sail again for England. Sheehan sought
him and his counsel.
"Whom should it be for Mayor next autumn? " said
Sheehan. " Van Wyck," responded Croker; " Van Wyck is the
man you want. He has the three things that Tam
many most requires in this year's contest; brains, cour
age, and integrity. Name Van Wyck."
' In February Croker had already re-assumed in fact
the post of leader of the organization; an assumption

340 RICHARD CROKER.
which, because of Sheehan's later sly conspirings, was
nine months afterwards to become as obvious as it was
actual. Sheehan was too small a figure for the supreme seat
of Tammany Hall. He fell beneath the harrow of
events. Nevertheless, from any view of justice and
disinterest, Sheehan was not at fault and had no chance.
Deluged by defeats over whose causes he had no con
trol, torn by an ill fortune that belonged to the party
at that time and not to him, disliked and disobeyed by
the full one-half — at least eighteen — of Tammany's
" leaders," had Sheehan been Philip of Macedon, stUl
would he have been swept down.
Finding himself sinking, Sheehan made a mistake.
Instead of discerning the source of his weakness in
himself, and in the situation whereof he was the
arch's too-small keystone, he believed that Croker was
secretly pinching off his buds of power. Sheehan
should have had more wisdom. A half-sagacity would
have told him that Croker, strong enough to put him
where he was in the face of protest, was quite equal
to the mark of puffing him from the scene with any
breath. Sheehan believed that Croker worked against
him. Thereupon Sheehan began the transaction of
some milk-and-water chicanery against Croker.
These trivial small conspiracies of Sheehan evinced
themselves in coldness towards and interference
in disfavor of folk who had been of Croker's Life
Guards. The darkest might have foretold the out
come of such action. And Sheehan had had his warn
ing. At a dinner of the " leaders " on the last day of
Croker's active rule, and when he passed his baton to
Sheehan, Croker, after demanding of each present in

CROKER'S PROMiSM. 341
the name of what friendship he might hold for him
(Croker) to yield a best obedience to the new captain
and strengthen and uphold his hands, said:
" There is but one thing which will bring me back
to any active part in politics, and that is the safety of
my friends. Now that I put aside my command of
Tammany Hall, and step down into the ranks of the
organization, — now that I end my leadership in poli
tics and leave the field, — I leave behind me those
whose friendships, in every stress, and through every
strain and danger, have never failed me. Nor will I
whUe I live fail them. Whether it come in one year
or in ten, and though I should be at earth's most dis
tant end, so sure as one of these shall need my aid,
I'll come to help him. And so I say to you. And so I
say to this man," and Croker laid his hand on Sheehan's
shoulder where he sat at table next him, "whom you
have made your chief."
This is all of Sheehan; let him be dismissed. Nor
should judgment torture him; Sheehan is better than
his story. Therein, however, he is not alone. " The
evils which men do live after them." None is so bad
but he is better than his biography. Even one's best
friend never knows one's best nature; how, then, is he
to tell of it? The same is true of peoples and of
periods. All history, as written, comes to be naught
better than the gutter of time; the beautiful and the
best of an age are never found therein — only the age's
drainage. Richard Croker returned to power in 1897. It was
for his friends. He came from England in the sum
mer. There transpired then a curious show of the
tremendous hold of Croker with the men of Tammany

342 RICHARD CROKER.
Hall. No word preceded him; he asked none to meet
him. Debarking, he went to his hotel. There was no
syllable of suggestion, or request, or command, to issue
from him; nothing save days of silence.
With the coming of Croker, Tammany stagnated.
There was a profound halt with nothing certain but
uncertainty. Then twenty-two of the thirty-five
" leaders " together called on Croker.
" We want you to come back," they said.
"Are you here as my friends and acquaintances, or
as ' leaders ' of Tammany Hall? " demanded Croker.
" We come in our characters of ' leaders.' "
" There are twenty-two of you," observed Croker.
" Am I to understand that the thirteen other ' leaders '
object to your request? "
" No," they replied; " thirty-three of the thirty-five
want you to return to your old command of the organi
zation and take charge of this campaign."
" Tammany's wigwam is in Fourteenth Street," re
torted Croker, and his glance was hardened in rebuke.
"What have you, as 'leaders,' to do on Murray Hill?
Has the organization been put on wheels since I left,
that you trundle it about the town? Go back. I wUl
come on one condition. Your chief — ^who is not with
you — must write me asking my return."
Croker resumed the guiding staff of Tammany Hall.
His sway was more absolute even than before. The po
litical outlook demanded work. The " reformers " were
in the wheelhouse of local domination; they swarmed
in every comer of city mastery. But they were to be
beaten and scourged and driven from the temple.
Three years before they had gone to power with a
majority of seventy thousand; they were to suffer

TAMMANY RESTORED. 343
deposal by almost eighty thousand. Their reign,
wrenched and racked with wickedness, could be tracked
by that dripping corruption which attended its every
step. Deformation civic and not reformation had
been the harvest of them.
Croker adhered to his February thought and put up
Van Wyck. It was an inspiration. " Greater New
York " had had Republican construction. This, be
tween the parties, was to be the first duel for its ruler-
ship. Under all the circumstances, fighting on a new
and larger field, and with the untested machinery of
the just-built greater city to set in motion. Van Wyck
was a best nomination. And Van Wyck, with Croker's
hand on the tiller, came through to victory. Tam
many had been redeemed.
Van Wyck, as Mayor, is one in whom a people may
not only have a confidence, but take a pride. As Chief
Executive of the city he makes a safe and graceful
quantity. Van Wyck is not old; he lives still on the
sunny side of middle age. He is wise, ardent, indus
trious, and of severe integrity. Van Wyck hates a
rogue, loathes a Pecksniff, and has sc-nt patience with
a fool. His Democracy is rock-ribbed. There is noth
ing of the water-color in his politics; Van Wyck is a
partisan. For Republicans he has no agreement; for
Mugwumps no mercy. Jefferson would have adopted
him; Jackson taken his hand. He was one of the best
of jurists; he is better stUl as Mayor. The office will
wait long at the gates ere a wiser, braver comes to
fill it.
There is that which is exemplary in the manliness
of Van Wyck. He grows to a principle; welds himself
to a friend. He wUl stand by both to the last. In this

344 RICHARD CROKER.
busy, crowded hour, when egotism rules and every
man is his own North Star, few there be to wholly
know and appreciate Van Wyck. The city was new;
the charter was new. There were jealousy and no
love between the threescore and ten communities
which had been herded hastily together to become
" Greater New York." Van Wyck was the first of his
line. He had no predecessor whom he might follow;
no precedent whereby to walk. The charter, like his
office, smelled of the glue and varnish of yesterday's
construction. Yet, sans jolt, and friction, and loss,
the times have gone with a suave accuracy and a soft
and carded strength that most towns miss.
Van Wyck's administration has been a marvel of
city management. Not only was the town new; worse
— it was bankrupt. And yet, where has there been
loss? or failure? or falling away? or retrogression?
Every interest has been defended; every prospect
fostered; the town has not only held its ground, it
has gone forward. Criticism, hate-tipped, cannot
point to a disaster. Honest, stern for justice, stub
born for the good; it is of such Van Wyck wood a
world, when wise, makes Presidents.
However, he is worth most where he is. WUdly as
it may assail the ear as statement, a Mayor is of more
real and potent moment than a President. The world
is a fool misled by glitter, deluded of a noise. Rightly
viewed, from the grounds of immediate citizenship
and man's daily life, a City Hall is greater than a
White House. Ordinances are more cogent than gen
eral statutes, and the Mayor who vetoes or signs the
first, of an interest more intimate than that President
who vetoes or signs the others. By the same word! a

ONE'S REAL RULERS. 345
Congressman is of less concern than a Councilman who
legislates to your doorstep; a supreme judge of no such
weight as a Magistrate who fines you for not cleaning
your sidewalk, or a policeman who warns you against
obstructing the street. Your city rulers are your real
rulers; while a President is, in truth, as far away and
cloud-wrapped as the tyrant of some dream.
Following this contest of 1897, which had for its
end the avalanching of the Democracy upon its ene
mies, and a Tammany retaking of the town, Croker
seized a first occasion to be publicly heard. It was
by way of interview in a leading paper:
" We have just ended an election," he said, " and
the Democracy was successful. In face of reason, and
justice, and good sense, the opponents of Democracy
made me ' the issue.' Every untruth was told; every
epithet to which slander could lay the malice of its
tongue or bend its pen was flung against me. I said
nothing during the progress of the campaign; I have
lived in New York City for fifty years and was willing
to let reply to the injustice of my enemies be made
by the people at the polls. My vilifiers have been
confuted by a plurality of almost eighty thousand.
And now that the fight is done, and Democracy has
triumphed, there is a word for me to say. There
has never been a specific charge of wrongdoing to be
laid at my gate. Slander was ever general, and
never pretended to state a venal fact against me.
It will be seven weeks before the new Democratic
administration takes hold. Meanwhile, the opposi
tion, and particularly those folk who were most
active in their press and on their platforms in de
faming me, have all the public records in their

346 RICHARD CROKER.
possession, and hold every office — city, county, and
State. Let them dig in their records and hunt in their
offices. If I have wronged the public in any least de
gree, the records must show proofs and traces of it.
Let these people who have made these wrong charges
point them particularly out. Seven weeks is ample
time. They owe it to themselves, as well as to the
public whose money they draw as salaries and
have taken an oath to serve. They have all the
machinery of State and local government; the Gov
ernor, the Mayor, the sheriff, the district attorney, the
juries, the detectives, the police. They have the
comptroller's office and all the records. Let them
now show, in at least one instance, directly and specifi
cally, where the public has suffered so much as an
ounce of loss through me. Their failure shall mark
their tales as slanders and point to them as ones who
bear false witness."
In 1898 the Democracy, with Croker in conduct of
its energies, reswept the town against Roosevelt, justly
far and away the opposition's most darling figure.
Croker held the town by nearly ninety thousand. Save
for rogueries rural, and a worm-fence desertion of the
party, Croker would have carried the State. Roose
velt, with the fresh and smelling glory of San Juan
blood upon him, succeeded in the whole State by fewer
than nineteen thousand.
In 1899, under Croker, the Democracy again kept
New York County by seventy thousand; while in 1900
— ^with the dragging handicaps of Bryan and Silver
both — the party with Croker controlled the town by
twenty thousand.
It was Bryan and McKinley for a second time in

David B. Hill.

WILLIAM MCKINLEY. 347
1900. The latter, plastic, ductile, docile, safe, had
pleased his party's magnates well. He had been sweet
to management. He owed everything to Hanna, and
he paid in full. Reed was possessed of a precise
thought when, in response to query put just following
McKinley's first inaugural, he said:
"Hanna run for the Presidency in 1900? Why
should he snatch at the shadow when he has the
substance?" McKinley is the middle size of man. He is passive; he
is acted upon and does not act. He is prudent of him
self; nor over-sensitive. He strikes poses and becomes
a picture. He shrinks from the new. He sees nothing
that has not been seen, hears nothing that has not
been heard, finds nothing that has not been found,
says nothing that has not been said, thinks nothing
that has not been thought, knows nothing that has
not been known, does nothing that has not been done,
and would neither eat nor breathe were there not
precedent for each. He is a peg of a President on
which Money hangs its hat as it sits down to the con
duct of government — a snubbing post to which all
craft, pirate and merchantman, tie up alike. Is he
honest? — ^yes.
" There are different kinds of honesty," quoth Mor
rison, once of the Ways and Means. " There is this
man McKinley; he's honest. There was Randall; he
was honest. And, for myself, I reckon I'm honest.
But there is this difference. If I were to fall into
bankruptcy, no rich men would pay my debts. If I
were to die, no rich men would present my widow with
one hundred thousand doUars. I'U tell you why. My
sort of honesty never did that sort of fellow any good."

XX.
the TRUSTS.
For Falsehood now doth flow.
And subject's faith doth ebbe;
Which would not bee if Beason rul'd
Or Wisdom wove the webbe.
— Percy's Reliques.
Beyan was beaten in the second campaign as de
cisively as in the one before. The " business inter
ests " were afraid of him. Most men, and peculiarly
"business men," with that unintelligence to which
the mob seems grafted, think they are electing a god
rather than a President — a god whose power, like a
Gorgon's head, could, did he care to exercise it, turn
them into stone. They should ruminate a bit; the
President is not a legislative body. And, if he were,
one cannot enact " prosperity " by terms of law. The
world has " good times " and " bad times," and com
merce its tides to come and go. These are, so to say,
as an aspiration and an inspiration of trade, — a busi
ness breathing, if you wUl — and have no more to do
with politics than with the pastoral rite of sheep-
washing in Ettrick's distant dales. The President,
building the nest of his ambitions in the White House
to hatch the eggs of his little policies, is like a bird
similarly nest-building in the top of a tree; and one
has not more to do with any following " prosperity "
or its bankrupt absence, than has the other with that
year's crop of nuts. But " business men " don't know
these things. 348

CAMP-MEETING CAMPAIGNS. 349
That "management" of a national Democracy in
1900 was of the camp-meeting character of the prior
campaign. This did not make for loss, however,
as Democracy was doomed in advance. Bryan was
beaten by bad management in 1896; in 1900 Bryan
defeated himself. Bryan mislaid the issue.
In practical truth, and beyond a simplest campaign
purpose, issues do not count. Nobody in or out of
office heeds the issue after an election. One has war
rant for this: In 1892 a President was elected on a
tariff issue; and to please the banks he called an extra
session for finance. In 1896, a President was elected
on an issue of finance; and at the request of manu
facturers he called an extra session for tariff. And
thereat the peasantry seemed pleased; at least there
was no complaint; wherefore, as said before, one
may assume that after an election an issue doesn't
count. But before an election, and in the shock of parties,
issues are tremendously important. And Bryan
turned up the wrong lane. He struck for Silver; an
issue live and real in his first battle, but surrendered
and departed from by the masses in 1900. Bryan
planted himself on Silver. He should have had more
of the education of events.
Silver, finance, is (to use a colloquialism) a hard-luck
issue. It is a raft, or a breeches buoy; to be popular,
the public must first feel itself wrecked. The place to
look for an issue is not your pocket, nor the selfish plans.
of politicians hoping place; the issue is found in the
question of the people. Bryan didn't realize this; he
adhered to Silver and was buried with it — buried
Presjdentially for all coming time.

350 RICHARD CROKER.
Bryan's error was grown of a multiplied experience
of cheap men. He had met many men; but not the
right men. Bryan, for four years, met only those who
came to him. Such offer but a meager and misleading
course of study. One learns little or nothing of folk
who come to one. Emphatically is this true of those
about whom there has been much of talk and uproar.
By advertisement of their powers, or fortunes, politi
cal or otherwise, certain men become raised above the
rest. There they stand like lighthouses; and flagrate
with this oil of ink, they shine attractively to moral
bats, and all lunatic fowl of politics, and insects of
mental night. Thus it was with Bryan. Those who
came, and hung, and fluttered in his face, and whose
squeaking cheeps, and buzzings filled his ears, told
him no wisdom, endowed him with no thought. This
ruined Bryan; just as a similar siege of wittol admira
tion broke down Cleveland in his second reign. Bryan
did not meet, and talk, and mentally hug and wrestle
with the right folk. And thereby he missed the issue,
and the Presidency.
No man is original; none a law unto himself. There
is no such thing as a tub on its own bottom — it is ever
a borrowed bottom. To have ideas, a man must
scratch himself like a match against another man.
Sparks come only from sharp collision and brisk con
tact; never of themselves. Next to meeting men, read
books. Books for wisdom; men for collecting a flow,
a flash, a dash, a vividity of spirit. Were I called to
conference with youth ambitious of a greatest destiny,
I would talk like this : Meet men. Dress well. To mount
in life you must meet and deal with men; and you are
to rise or fall by men's impressions of you. A first im-

COUNSEL SARTORIAL. 351
pression is the impression important — it will wear and
last. And folk are reached most deeply through the
eye; the ear is but a poor avenue for one's approach.
Would you know the difference between the ear and
the eye as conduits of impression? Listen, then, to a
tale descriptive of one who has been run down and
crushed by a street car. You will feel the conventional
horror; then, in a moment, the picture has faded from
your mind. Be an eye-witness to some such grisly
catastrophe. You wUl faU sick, lose appetite, start in
your sleep for months. Dress weU as a method of
beneficial first impression, and to lure the favor of the
other's eye. Be certain of the definition of the phrase
" dress well."
"He was so well dressed," said Alvanley, "that
everybody turned to look at him."
" Then he was not well dressed," retorted Brummel.
And the Beau was right.
One will not sooner enlist the antagonism — aye! I
had almost said the hatred — of a stranger, than by
some bright extravagance of dress. It is an animalism;
but one should reflect that men are only animals; one
must be on the watch for animalisms. They are more
dangerous than intellectualities, and must be dodged.
Refuse all fantasticisms of costume. You may try
this on the dog. Select some sedate, common form of
dog. Walk him for a mile along the street. A dozen
dogs will see him and bestow upon him no violent at
tention. Tie a red handkerchief about his neck.
Those dozen dogs will assail him out of hand; they
will comment on and criticise him with their teeth.
They resent the red handkerchief. Once a friend re
fused a business transaction with a person, much a

552 RICHARD OROKER.
stranger to him, but of good repute. Both lost thou
sands by that negative. I asked my friend wherefore
he tumed his back on an arrangement so manifest of
profit. He said that he despised the other man. Pressed
for cause, he at last reluctantly confessed that his
antipathy was born of the fact that the first time
he saw the one in question the latter had a broad red
collar of silk about his neck, upholding, low on his
shirt front, a massive gold medallion, the badge of
some foolish order of American " nobility." My friend
had loathed him ever since; he preferred a loss of
thousands to the torture of a ten-day business con
junction with him.
When the sun has gone down wear dress-clothes.
Evening clothes are the most democratic of uniforms.
They are rigid, and put a limit on extravagance. They
are a palladium; they prevent the billionaire from blot
ting one out with an opulence of costume. They are a
best bulwark of Americanism.
Avoid clubs; join some good chophouse. Clubs are
clearing houses of inanity; seminaries where dullness
is taught as an art. You will find no giants there.
They are but shallow waters; clubs are not meant for
any swimming of big fish. Clubs are designed to ex
clude opinion, and by a spirit of social elimination
include " respectability." Go carefully with this last
term; it is a most determined cheat. Clubs offer but
two advantages, and these are such only to folk who
feel their want. They present a privUege of gambling
without fear of the constables; and offer the oppor
tunity of over-drink with a least risk of disrepute. They
never help and always hurt. Join some superlative
chophouse. One meets everybody in a chophouse; any-

THE WOMAN GOOD. 353
body in a club. The first is preferable; one gets more
for one's conversation.
Meet the best women. Women, beautiful and bril
liant, shape and polish men, and give them an air and
an edge. You can't see too many wise and beautiful
Hypatias. Men are quicker, braver, wittier, better, in
the presence of a woman, just as the male bird, in those
seasons when he seeks to engage the approval of the
female, takes on a livelier note, a brighter color, and a
bolder strut. Meet as many beautiful and brilliant
women as you can; seek for them as for lost treasure.
Each is an epigram. Marry one, if she will. You
will secure counsel and a dignity thereby. And you
wUl not become that moral, mental, physical quick
sand called a bachelor. There is no respect for
the bachelor; nothing save suspicion. He is a blow
aimed at the race. He has the place in society of a
fox in a barnyard. It has been ever so; it is human
nature. Dercyllidas was a brave soldier of Sparta; but
Dercyllidas was a bachelor. When a youth refused to
give him a seat, with the remark, " No child of yours
will ever make room for me," the youth had the ap
plause of the elders.
Have no vanities, exhibit none. Strive to understand
the word. Long hair on a man proves vanity. Short
hair on a woman, or a gown of ostentatious plainness,
and a bald pattern, as though designed to fit a billet of
wood, is evidence of vanity. Moreover, it tells of a
vulgar vanity — a vanity that almost crowds to im
morality. Greeley was, in his way, a fop; Diogenes,
in his tub, a prig. They were both slaves of vanity —
the conceit of the studied uncouth.
Vanity is various and wide-flung. One meets with

354 RICHARD CROKER.
vanities of all kinds. Once I descended upon Concord
where Yankee, when time was, met Briton in a first
discussion of the Revolution. I came not there in any
way of idleness; I was sent to write and to work. My
business was to engross what thoughts might come of
those literary great ones whose memories were as that
hamlet's halo. Of these ones of renown there had been
him to stand above the others. I had read his words.
They were heavy with a phrase-haze and a fog of
spirit, yet alight and thundrous of the thought, storm-
born. Titanic figures showed dimly in them, like
mountains in a mist. It was as though afar and be
yond and behind the horizon of his being there had
dwelt a world of mighty ideas, whereof a mirage was
again and again projected into his brain — the formida
ble shadows of majestic things; but, alas! like all
mirages, upside down. And he would describe these
visions. Multitudes read his writings; for while one
felt the confusion as of one standing on one's head,
yet they had their charm.
This pen-Thor was long dead before my time. But
his home of former days was there, appointed and fur
nished as he had left it. I would see this home;
it would T^aft me an inspiration. The spinster
daughter of our god departed occupied the house. She
was of years, and I fear me soured of a ferment of
time and too much singleness. I sent her a note, and
begged for five minutes of that house whenever she
should say. Also, as displaying faith, I disclosed my
mission of the magazine. That letter would have won
me audience of the Pope. For a later purpose of
initial, I will miscall the god " Oak "; and his de
scendant spinster, " Mistletoe." I had this reply:

VANITY ON STILTS. 355
" Miss M. must excuse herself from receiving any
call. Miss M. requests Mr. L. not to name her in his
Concord article, as she is a private person. Mr. O.'s
biography is in the public library and will tell all that
is necessary to know about him."
This was vanity, — a discouraging case of vanity on
the maiden's part, — a vanity which denied a plain right
of the public and of mine. Also, I had said naught of
mentioning " Miss M." in any article. The god, afore
said, had of his own choice kicked and pounded with
his pen-hammer at the front door of general notice
until a good-natured world unbarred and let him in.
The public clapped fame on bis crest, and gave him
wealth. This note of Miss Mistletoe was not a way
wherein to entertain the honest approach of a
curiosity which her parent god had personally planted
and nursed. I wrote the following rebuke, in which I
endeavored in my fashion to propose a question of much
fine personal right. It was my hope that the Concord
School of Philosophy might be trepanned into taking
it up in debate and so wreck itself as on a rock:
" Mr. L. re-presents his compliments to Miss M. and
thanks her for the note. Mr. L., in deference to Miss
M.'s request, will not name her in his Concord article.
Mr. L. is driven, however, to say that he holds Miss
M.'s request unjust. Miss M. has perfect right to her
existence, and to see or not see people as Miss M. may
be pleased to determine. But Miss M. has no more
rio-ht to the fact of her existence than has Miss M. to
the tracks, she made in yesterday's snow. It is any
body's, everybody's to remember, dwell on, mention.

356 RICHARD CROKER.
and revere in any proper way. Mr. L. will not
elaborate his theory and weary Miss M., but rest
content with its statement. Mr. L. is confident that
Miss M. will, in her thoughtful seclusion, one time
justify it; she may even conclude in the premises that
her request smacks of advertisement and the prayer
of the Pharisee. Mr. L. will still remain the servant
of Miss M. in his disappointment."
There was, to my note, no reply; I was treated with
merited contempt. Neither did the School of Philoso
phy break its discussional shins thereon. I still con
tend, however, that the barred and bolted attitude of
Miss M. was born of vanity and nothing else; and I
warn that youth with whom I now converse; and for
whose enlargement I have prevailed on myself to re
late this painful tale, not to unbend in any like poor
conduct with Miss M.'s, should he one day be similarly
placed. Miss M. is in the wrong. There she sits;
gnawing the nail of her vanity, blocking the way to a
shrine. Don't be ashamed to accept this counsel, oh, youth!
Jupiter, himself, was raised on goat's milk. Incline,
therefore, your further ear. Be a gentleman. One
speaks not now of that wasp-waisted gentility that
founds itself on golf, and polo, and automobiles, and
single-stickers, and four-in-hands, and which boasts as
best acquirement a graceful ability to pick up a lady's
fan, or that weird sagacity which knows the confusing
fish-fork from its fellows as our gentility sits down to
dine. That gentility demands as its foot-stone a dead
and hopeless middleness, moral and intellectual, which
it is to be thought you've missed. No; one points

THAT BEST GENTILITY. 357
rather to another gentility, flower of a much-wisdom,
a stalwart sympathy, and a kind probity of heart. One
piping critic — a callow creature this, of hollow chest
and hollow head and hollow heart, and of a man
hood as sallow as his cheek — one piping critic, I say,
complained to me that Croker was not, as he expressed
it, " a gentleman "; that is, he had no pink-tea graces
and would expand to nothing ornamental as an ele
ment of cotillions. Sappy was right; and yet should he
be instructed: Genius is never a "gentleman," as
Sappy struggles with the term. Cromwell was "no
gentleman " ; Napoleon was " no gentleman " ; our
own Grant adorned a line of battle rather than those
ranks of social tinsel styled " our best."
In matters of even a slightest concern, for one may
never foretell a final magnitude, approach decision with
caution. And never decide in the night. Plan in the
night as much as ever you please; but reserve conclu
sion for the day — resolve only when the sun is up.
The night is a season of impulse — a reckless time.
Darkness calls to the predatory in man's nature —
calls on his inner wolfishness to rouse itself. The
going down of the sun promotes the crime tendency
in man. Congress should never sit in the night. The
moral tone is at its lowest, charity is dimiaished, the
sentinels of one's better soul are heavy and somnolent,
and even Justice nods — in the night. The larger share
by three-fold of all the blood and horror and tragic
atrocity of the French revolution found decision in
the absence of the sun. Wherefore, though you may
consider in the night, conclude only in the face of day.
Shall you travel widely, do you ask? Travel is of
no such mad and boiling commandment as the example

358 RICHARD CROKER.
of idle rich ones, desperate of much wealth and run
ning from themselves, might teach one to believe. It
is better to read a book than see a city. There is a
regional sameness wherever you go. As ever it is hill
and vale and grass and tree and lake and river, with
the same sun swinging in the selfsame heavens over
head. He sees as much who bides at home. Old Whit
tier had it right:
I know not how in other lands
The changing seasons come and go ;
What splendors fall on Syrian sands,
What purple lights on Alpine snow I
Nor how the pomp of sunrise waits
On Venice at her watery gates ;
A dream alone to me is Arno's vale,
And the Alhambra's halls are but a traveler's tale.
Yet on life's current he who drifts
Is one with him who rows or sails ;
And he who wanders widest lifts
No more of beauty's jealous veils
Than he who from his doorway sees
The miracle of flowers and trees,
Feels the warm Orient in the noonday air,
And from cloud minarets hears the sunset call to
prayer !
The eye may well be glad that looks
Where Pharpar's fountains rise and fall ;
But he who sees his native brooks
Laugh in the sun has seen them all.
The marble palaces of Ind
Rise round him in the snow and wind ;
From his lone sweetbrier Persian Hafiz smiles,
And Rome's cathedral awe is in his woodland aisles,
Thoreau would not go to Paris, for he couldn't

THE ARMOR OF BOOKS. 359
spare the time from Concord and Walden Pond. The
Thoreau precedent of home-staying is not bad.
Never ride when you may walk; eat thrice a day;
sleep eight hours; and meet men. Also, carry a book
about you. Some storm may blow a fool upon you, and
the book shall be as a harbor and a haven where you
may ride safely out the tempest. Carry Lamb's "Elia,"
or Bacon's " Essays," or More's " Utopia," or Plato's
"Republic," or Bayard Taylor's "Echo Club," or
Thackeray's " Rose and Ring," or Virgil's " Eclogues,"
or Hazlitt's " Spirit of the Age," or Shaftesbury's
" Characteristics," or Gay's " Fables," or Heine's
" Ballads," or some such printed gear. These are all
to be had in baby volumes — little and light and fitted
to a pocket. Any one of them is a perfect bombproof
from the devastating fire of a fool. Some natures —
morbid, sensitive, haunted of ghosts — may shrink
from a ruthless going among men. There are such
shaken folk. Coleridge was one of these. He couldn't
bring himself to open a letter, and would let one lie
for untouched weeks as if it caged a cobra. Collins
fled from London, raved if he but heard men's voices
in an anthem, and went mad among rural graves.
These children of the morbid and De Quincey strain
are the ones of all who should mingle broadly with
men. There is a sanity in much meeting of men.
Only meet men enough, and one will gather to himself
a happiness, a soul-health, and a good fortune allowed
to dwell with none save the Hyperborean.
Bryan misunderstood the issue. Bryan fought for
Silver, and finance in 1900 was not the question. The
appeals of predatory wealth — the Black Sanctus of
Money praying to the devil — had been rewarded with

360 RICHARD CROKER.
the Trust. And the question of the Trust was in the
hearts and on the beating lips of common men; it was
Trusts they would have answered; Trusts were the
issue. And Trusts are like to be the issue these rolling
many care-trodden years to come.
Clisthenes invented ostracism for the Athenians.
He, of Athens, who by money or intrigue made him
self a common menace could be exiled by popular vote.
There should be a next amendment to the Constitu
tion arranging for an American ostracism. There are
one hundred folk of whom it might be said that were
they thrust forth from a residence, debarred our courts,
and stripped of right to property, the future of liberty
among this people would brighten by one-third.
If one were to bend one's self to Trusts, one might
better begin with that inquiry of Trust parentage sug
gested of Havemeyer, and study Protection. Protec
tion, as a shout of politics, was first loudly heard far
back in the twenties, when Jackson and Adams and
Clay and Crawford met in four-sided White House
contention. The tariff imposed to pay the expense of
the War of 1812 was found grateful by the manu
facturers of that day; gluttons then as gluttons now.
But in the twenties the debt was well towards being
met; the tariff reason was departing. So the manu
facturers, inventing the pretext of Protection,
clamored, squealing — as ever swine for swill — for tariff
continuation. It was Calhoun who first said: " Free raw ma
terials." This phrase he made while contending Dem
ocratically for a " tariff for revenue only," and the Pro
tection incident thereunto. " Free raw materials "
was a concession to manufacturers — a sort of sop to

THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 361
Cerberus — and meant for their mollification. Since
then, party readers, rather than party reasoners, have
repeated it as a tenet of Democracy, and withal holy.
Within our own time, Morrison — the first Democrat
to head the Ways and Means following Civil War — ac
cepted it. With Morrison, as with Calhoun, however,
" Free raw materials " was a concession, not a principle.
As an after contingency of Civil War, as in the days
to follow the last war with England, the American
manufacturer basked in the sunshine of a tariff that
bred riches in his favor like a growth of grass. And
he couldn't get it high enough, such was his money-
gluttony to gorge his pockets. Thus, in our own eaten
hour. Protection again became a war-shout of party.
And as the Whigs of the earlier part of the century
had it for their slogan, so also their Republican lega
tees, of the latter quarter, used it for theirs.
Protection is the name for that excess of tariff which
the country does not need to pay its bUls. And the
Supreme Court long ago declared it illegal. The
Supreme Court asserted that the nation's taxing or
tariff power could not legally be pushed beyond the
limit of public need. This did not deter the Protec
tionists, who never yet balked of a desire because of
its illicit sort. They waved the bloody shirt, aroused
Northern terrors with the picture of a malcontent and
scowling South, elected their Congresses, and did the
hungry will of the manufacturers.
Our Republicans gave the manufacturers Protec
tion. Also, for their own defense, they did another
thing. They piled, and piled, and piled up public
expense. This was to do away with the use of Pro
tection as a phrase- It was, as a commandment of

362 RICHARD CROKER.
Republicanism, alarming to the public, and, therefore,
perilous to party. But the fact of Protection could
not be surrendered, for the swinish voracity of manu
facturers — who furnished the campaign funds of Re
publicanism — demanded it. The easy settlement was
to increase public expense. Even a Democrat could
not object to " a tariff for revenue only." Therefore,
pile up expense; and thereby pile up the want of reve
nue to a figure where the tariff built to meet it would
cover the last call of the manufacturers, and still
avoid the distinctive and dangerous title of Pro
tection. Within the decade Republican Congresses have done
their most to inflate appropriations and waste the peo
ple's money. And all for no reason, beyond the bare
first fact of direct loot, ever agreeable to your true
Protectionist in place, than to base thereon a tariff,
which should add to the fortunes — ^blood-garnered and
criminal in many instances — of that whole long muster
of wolves who, for the past quarter of a century, have
worn sheep's clothing and marauded the fair flocks of
common weal. A glance — hit or miss — at the expense
history of this country will show what Protectionists
have done. In Monroe's time, the over-all expense of
government was eight and one-half millions; in Jack
son's bold hour, thirteen millions; as late as Buchanan's
regime, the year before Lincoln came to the White
House, it was under fifty-six millions. To-day, the an
nual expense of government is over nine hundred mil
lions. " Tariff for revenue only! " is good enough. No
one shall run the chance of shouting " Protection! "
Meanwhile, the favored manufacturers fill their pockets
with both hands. How have the Protectionists swelled

The Tammany Monument at Gettysburg.

THE SCIENCE OF PLUNDER. 363
the expense of government? In a thousand somber
fashions. Direct fraud, pensions, contracts, place-
making — the larcenous story would hardly have an
end. Be assured of this: The nation, now costing
more than nine hundred yearly millions, can run for
one hundred millions; and be. at that as much a world's
force as in that thirteen-million-dollar day of the
grand Jackson, when he ordered his fleets into the
Mediterranean — the Constitution at the head of the
column — and forced France to give up seven and one-
half millions at the mouth of the gun.
Your sole " reason " of Protection is private
rapacity; there was never the public argument for its
invention. Protection said " infant industries! "
An industry so unnatural to the soil that it requires a
subsidy — in short. Protection — should be allowed to
die. Because some harebrain would raise lemons in
Vermont, must some highboard fence of tariff against
the coming of lemons to these lands be built for his
protection? And yet that is the reductio ad absurdum
of the argument of " infant industries." The Protec
tionists said we should continue — by Protection — to
foster " home industries," until we could fulfill our
every want. There are one thousand necessities, from
sardines to cinnamon, camel's hair to quinine, which
we will never supply by any product of home, however
hotbedded or hothoused of Protection. It was urged
that Protection was a mantlet wherewith to make se
cure the American workman from arrowish " competi
tion with pauper labor over-seas." Its effect, direct,
was to bring him into that pennUess competition. Pro
tection drove off foreign competition; it left less for
the foreigner to do. The " foreign pauper workman "

364 RICHARD CROKER.
thereupon took steerage passage for America. In two
weeks he was " competing " with the American work
man — this "foreign pauper workman " whose work had
been lost, because his foreign employer lost, through
Protection, the American market. They said Protec
tion would promote the wage of the American work
man. There are guilds which Protection can never
reach. There are doctors, and blacksmiths, and law
yers, and farmers, and teachers, and carpenters, and
preachers, and bricklayers, and a brigade of trades be
sides. No Protection, however craftily devised or hon
estly dealt forth, could touch pleasantly one of these.
And yet of the twenty-eight mUlions of work-folk in
America they make twenty-three and one-half mUlions.
Only four and one-half millions toil for " protected
industries." And by the same tariff thought of Pro
tection cheat and swindle! the wages paid folk who
work for " protected industries " are lower than those
of unprotected and unprotectable trades. Witness the
five-dollar a week wage of the Fall River mills; the
eight-dollars a week, for five months in the year, at
the coal holes; the fifty-five-dollar a month which the
friendly Congressional Committee, headed by Gates,
reported as the highest average wage paid by Carnegie,
when the cut was made that called down the blood and
murder of the Homestead strike. The collection of
proofs to show a Protection mendacity might be
lengthened indefinitely. No; Protection, based on
lies, to enable the few to deplete the many, has
been publicly a bloodsucker and privately a blight.
It has made a huddle of millionaires and a horde of
vagrants. It has also taught this civic truth: Never
take your President from a manufacturing State.

WHEREUPON THE TRUST. 365
Take him from the regions of agriculture; from the
kingdom of farms.
And because sundry millionaires have made more
millions, they call the country prosperous. Mere wealth
in a country doesn't mean prosperity. It is the distri
bution of wealth. A community of one thousand souls,
and each with fifty thousand dollars, would be an
aggregate of fifty million dollars; and it would be a
tale to tell of a people prosperous and well content. But
a community of one thousand souls, where one had
fifty million dollars, and nine hundred and ninety-nine
not one dollar among them, would be a den where all
the serpents of slavery, ignorance, misery, and degrada
tion would coil and hiss and strike.
Protection has had but one beneficiary: the pro
tected manufacturer. It took from others and it gave
to him. Protection has had but one purpose: to beat
down foreign competition and give to the protected
manufacturer the American market, uncontested, as
his own. Foreign manufacturers have been driven
away. That's why our papers are each year able to
chronicle an excess of exports over imports; and so
witlessly gratulate themselves and us on the "pros
perity " thus expressed.
It is at this mile-post that the rede of Havemeyer
is overtaken. "Protection is the mother of Tmsts!"
The latter had logical suggestion from the first. Pro
tection struck down competition from abroad. Trusts
would strike down competition at home. Add Trusts
to Protection — or, with expenses fraud-bloated and
dropsied of much crime, a " tariff for revenue only " —
and competition completely disappears. Also, with
Trusts, much of the cost of production fades away.

366 RICHARD CROKER.
Salesmen are sent adrift, work-folk laid off, mills shut
down, production pinched to the market minimum.
Your transcendent Trust works both ways. It hires
fewer men, and so cuts down expense. It kills off
competition, and leaves an open path to higher price.
Trusts put down the cost price and put up the sell
ing price; swell the intake while restricting the
outgo. There is a law called the Sherman Anti-Trust Law.
By its sure terms every Trust is outlaw — a wolf's-head;
and that, despite the paid-for word of a Trustbred
Attorney General, who, with a Trust conscience, holds
a Trust commission as a Cabineteer. The Trusts are
felons by word of law. Republicanism insists that they
are the people's friends. The Trusts condemn workiag-
folk to idleness and low wage. Republicanism declares
them to be beneficent. The Trusts, having silenced
competition among their members, and protected by a
breakwater tariff against European competition, have,
in one year, while cutting down expenses, boosted
prices from fifty to one hundred and fifty per cent,
And, as usual, a doltish public pays the penalty. And,
equally as usual — for such is its benign notion of the
beautiful — Republicanism declares that Trusts are
heaven-sent blessings from Above. Such is the Trust-
owned Republicanism of to-day. It isn't the Repub
licanism of Lincoln's honored time. Lincoln's Re
publicanism made for the slave freedom. Present Re
publicanism pays twenty millions of dollars for a realm
where slavery flourishes, and approves that bondage
by direct and patronizing recognition. ' Lincoln's Re
publicanism spoke from his seat in the House against
an American throne. Present Republicanism has its

OPHIDIAN COMMERCE. 367
satrap in the Orient and keeps a Sultan on its salary
list. There one has a weak and half-told story of the
Trusts. They are veriest vines of rapacity clambering
on the people's needs. This is the age of a saurian
business — the age of the mammoth frog and giant
lizard of commerce— the age of an ophidian trade.
But the flood comes! The glaciers make themselves
prepared! In the raving madness of this money-rush,
honor, conscience, justice, wisdom, all are trodden un
derfoot. Men go on and on: they gather one million!
five millions! ten millions! fifty millions! one hundred
millions! two hundred millions! aye! three hundred
millions! and still they press crazily forward! There is
no frontier to their voracity, no limit to their senseless
heat for gold. They have gone beyond lines of
necessity, of comfort, of luxury, and pushed into
regions where dwell only Anxiety and Danger, and
where no good thing ever walks. Verily! there is an
insanity of avarice that takes without want and seizes
beyond power to enjoy! It is insanity — as much as
that which yells in any padded cell to-night. And the
public question becomes: Are we to let these maniacs
of millions desolate a nation and lay waste the last
prospect of popular right?
Look where one will, one's eyes rest on a Trust.
Flour, coal, beef, leather, oU, milk, iron, steel, sugar —
there isn't an item, except a stunted few directly farm-
born, that isn't dominated of a Trust. Competition
is dead — Trust-slain. The buyer is thrall to the seller.
The consumer's last shUling is subject to Trust whistle
and must come at Trust call. Nor has the end been
reached. There is yet to be a little and stUl a little

368 RICHARD CROKER.
more of Trust preparation. Then will these corps of a
lupine Money move upon the people. There will be
three of these armies of darkness: There will be the
Money Trust direct; a combination of the Banks. This
is to be the guardian of the country, and rule at
once its currency and credit. There will be the Manu
facturing Trust, including the coal holes. Last, and
yet not vilely least, there will be the Transportation
Trust; and the railroads will act as one. These legions
of greed have but one purpose — to devour the people.
They will agree among themselves; certainly they
connive such ignoble harmony. The public is to be
stripped of every groat — of its last robe. Then the
spoilers — the Bank Trust, the Railroad Trust, and the
Manufacturing Trust — will cast lots among themselves
in division of the garments.
One is fain to yawn disgustedly as one gazes down
the coming public years. And, betimes, one longs for
that simple hour of the fathers, when every man could
say a prayer and shoot a gun — and did. Does it come
to you who read, that, save in Civil War, never
until 1877 at Pittsburg, was the soldier brought to
fix bayonet against the citizen? For one hundred
years, except in the Whisky Insurrection of a day of
Washington, when no blood flowed and the question of
labor had no part, nothing of that deadly sort was
called for to maintain American folk in civic order.
Those hundred years were free of any foulness of a
Republican Protection. Is it coincidence? or is it
cause and effect? For a century no Federal bayonet
nor bullet was demanded in the fortunes of manufac
turing. For the last quarter of a century — an age of
Protection to find its criminal climax in the Trust —

THE FUTILE BAYONET. 369
the Federal soldiery have had constant calling out to
police strikes and put down riots. And, by the casual
way, does it occur to you that folk don't strike for fun?
and that a riot has a reason? Bad, truly! but still a
reason; and one not possible of bayonet removal. A
score of times since 1877 the Federal troops have been
summoned to a campaign against labor. And whatever
timidity, or vacuity, or servility may say or think,
those bayonets were each time prying and digging at
the corner stone of freedom.
What is to happen? During two years, Trusts
formed and — stock and bonds — created six billion dol
lars of new credit. Over sixty per cent, of the amount
was water — a falsity! a hope! a hunger! a trap! In the
same two years only one hundred and thirty million
dollars, new money, were added to the circulation. And
these proportions of Trust and currency construction
are still observed. What should be the story? What is
credit? It's a wolf — a mouth that howls for money. The
banks are gorged with Trust securities. They wait for
money — for lenders and buyers. For every dollar that
exists there are twenty demands. The Trust-mongers
want to sell, at least, the water in those six billions.
Then let the storm break how and when it will.
And so they crowd and jostle and struggle for customers
for those Trust " securities "! It is all the banks may
do to preserve order in this hungry herd and stave off
slaughter. Folk talk of Prosperity. Man! it's the Prosperity
of drunkenness! the Prosperity that speculates but
doesn't earn — that forays but doesn't work! Trust
" securities " to the siren song of billions have been
new-hatched. They are hunting money. And of those

370 RICHARD CROKER.
billions of " securities," more than one-half reposes on
nothing but appetite and fraud. To lure customers
for these " securities " the Trusts put up prices of com
modities. They must show a dividend on those billions'
worth of " securities." Then they may find buyers —
hoodwink fools into parting with tll-<fti"hioney for those
false " securities." Your Trusts are rigged to rob in
all directions. They pillage the consumer with higher
prices, and delude investors with unbased, watered
"securities." It is a brave game, this Trust game! It
is the swindling offspring of the swindle. Protection.
Both do credit to the party which created them — a
party which has not drawn one breath of patriotism
since the days of Grant.
Boldly, your lesson of the Trust is the thought com
mercial. And as apparent as a lemon-squeezer! And
as crushingly effectual! Wages are cut, employment is
cut, and men are made idle. The idle men compete
with those at work, and wages are thereby pared still
more. Competition being dead, the consumer is
searched and re-searched for his final dime. It's a
flourishing system; albeit, pushed to its last expression,
the system that kills the goose that lays the golden
egg! But the Banks may be expected to attend to
that. They will supervise the intemperance of the
other Trusts, and interpose to sustain the goose with
just enough of life to " lay."
Since Chaos wedded Nyx, and the hideous slumbers
of Disorder and Darkness dwelt together in their ebon
bed, posterity has lain under no such danger as to-day's.
Money — ^the Trust — drags down the hours as wolves
drag down the deer. Money should beware. Money
should take exceeding heed lest it dig a pit for its

BEWARE THE ANGLO-DANE! 371
own feet. It deals with the Anglo-Dane. No feeble
race is this; though of that hard and sullen patience
slow to be commoved. Revolution is the lesson of this
race. It has crushed thrones beneath the heel of its
hates; kings have not waited to look it between the
eyes in the hou^ c its anger. I write as one of most
indifference. The world is my tent, and where ink
and paper flnd each other there shall I live.
There will be those to cavil for that I print of
Richard Croker while he lives. Of stich I ask, is a man
the better subject for being dead? Or rather, is he no
subject untU the clods have covered him? We should
all be sextons on such terms. I write of Richard
Croker as he was and is; his epicedium is yet to be
chaunted. As I look backward on what I have told in
this book, I am content. I have spoken some decent
truths of him most lied upon of his place and day.
And I have admitted well of the " machine " for reason
readily declared. Were a theory of politics, to include
the "machine," presented for my sanction, I would
say " no " ; just as I would tum a negative on a theory
of social existence which included the rum shop and
the brothel. But the trail of my experience has not
been traveled in vain; I have not now to learn that
difference between the theoretical and the practical
which all who live this life of ours must account for
and accommodate. In theory I might not applaud
the " machine." For a precise and kindred reason of
theory I would not indorse an army. In the abstract
I might see faults in what, by Richard Croker, is done
and left undone. But theories and abstractions fall
before the practical. Richard Croker deals with con
ditions and with men as they are. The town is not

372 RICHARD CROKER.
his handiwork; the " machine " is not his child. The
error of all errors is the dark error of defeat. Richard
Croker will not disavow the practical to follow a theory
to destruction. He receives, of necessity, a situation
of politics ready-made; and he does his best with it.
And I say again he is a worthiest influence of his town
and time. I have put down the truth of him. Also,
I have had, on subjects, various and several, the unpent
pleasure of saying what I thought and why I thought it.

THE END.

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