THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS, 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD E. HALE, 
 
 AUTHOR OP "HAMPTON," "MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS," "TEN 
 TIMES ONE is TEN," " IN His NAME," "A MAN 
 WITHOUT A COUNTRY," ETC., ETC. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 J. STILMAN SMITH & COMPANY. 
 
 1888.
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1888, by 
 
 J. STILMAN SMITH & COMPANY, 
 in tbe Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 IT is always interesting to see how rich men spend 
 their money. It often seems as if they took more 
 pleasure in earning it than in spending it. Sometimes 
 it seems as if they did not know how to spend it when 
 it was earned. 
 
 In the best days of Athens, and in some of the days 
 which were not the best, the rich men of that city 
 fairly vied with each other in showing how they could 
 expend large sums in its public service. Happily for 
 us, we see such people now, as when a man spends 
 largely to improve the music of a city, or a woman to 
 improve its schools. 
 
 I have thought that a man might, with as much in 
 terest, spend his money in securing good government for 
 his home, as in making sure that he had a good yacht, 
 or in maintaining a fine stable of fast horses. Men 
 spend money to secure their own election to public 
 office. It would be more agreeable to spend money 
 wisely, for making good government sure, without 
 spoiling the expenditure by the taint of corruption. 
 
 853571
 
 iy PREFACE. 
 
 "Mv FRIEND THE Boss," as he says himself, likes 
 good government, is willing to give his time to secure 
 it, and, with his time, his money. He does this in a 
 legitimate way, and he has his reward. 
 
 This little book was in type some years ago, but its 
 publication has been deferred by a series of accidents. 
 
 EDWARD E. HALE. 
 
 BOSTON, July 8, 1888.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I. John Fisher's Home 1 
 
 II. Breakfast and what Followed 7 
 
 III. A Morning Drive 12 
 
 IV. What does John Fisher do ? 14 
 
 V. Tim Flaherty's Wife 17 
 
 VI. A Party at Lunch 21 
 
 VII. An Out-Door Party 27 
 
 VIII. The Plan of Campaign 34 
 
 IX. Mrs. Grattan 48 
 
 X. The Reformed Covenanters 50 
 
 XI. A Temperance Meeting 57 
 
 XII. A Chapter Interpolated in Mr. Mullen's Memoirs . 06 
 
 XIII. Laying a Corner Stone 71 
 
 XIV. The Necklace 84 
 
 XV. The Saint's Rest and Morning Call 85 
 
 XVI. A Dinner Party 91 
 
 XVII. Captain Winborn's Story 102 
 
 XVIII. A Ratification Meeting 109 
 
 XIX. A Ride Home 124 
 
 XX. School Exhibition 127 
 
 XXI. Another Interpolated Chapter 136 
 
 XXII. Mr. Mellen Resumes the Pen . 146 
 
 XXIII. A Serenade 150 
 
 XXIV. What did He want of Me 1 160 
 
 XXV. The Fatal Tuesday 167 
 
 XXVI. What is the News ? 175 
 
 XXVII. The Surprise 188
 
 MY FRIEND .THE Boss. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 'T" V HE train was exactly on time. We rolled into a cheer 
 ful and comfortable station , perfectly lighted by electrici 
 ty, and, as I staggered from the car with bag, valise, shawl 
 and umbrella all in my hands, it was into noonday light 
 that I descended. 
 
 In a moment a natty groom took from me these impedi 
 ments, almost without asking leave, and in a moment more 
 I was shaking hands with his master. 
 
 " Know you?" said he, " I should think so ! Saw you 
 on the platform. There are not so many of your build, 
 and really your hair has stood test better than most of us." 
 So we walked to his comfortable carriage. My " traps " or 
 " plunder" were put in, Michael went back with the check for 
 my trunk, and John and I went on talking together, as we 
 had done thirty years before, and as if we had not parted for 
 a week. 
 
 In truth we had parted thirty years before, as I say, at 
 the corner of Hollis, at half-past four in the morning. Our 
 class supper had ended, perhaps half an hour before, and 
 John and I had stood there, talking, in the early dawn. 
 Street cars were just invented. He took the earliest car 
 into town that he might catch such lightning express for the 
 West as then existed. I went to bed. We shook hands 
 heartily, and he said, " God knows when we shall meet 
 again." Thirty years had sent us backward and forward
 
 2 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 over the world, in fun, and in fight, in good fortune and 
 bad, and at last we met, as I say, under the Arc-lights 
 in the station house at Tannvorth. 
 
 "When have you seen Gilman? And how is Flagg?" 
 Such questions, and a world of others like them, crowded our 
 little ride. 
 
 His house is a palace, and a large one at that. Many a 
 courier in Europe has dragged me to see many a palace of 
 this or that little King of Bavaria, or Wiirtcmberg, or Weiss- 
 nicht-Wo, in which no one would display such generous 
 hospitality as could John in this house in Waban Avenue. 
 On the other hand, the traditions of Waban, whoever he was, 
 still held here, and one had here also, the homely comforts 
 of a log cabin. There is but one other palace known to me, 
 of which one can say the same. The family had dined, 
 but after I had washed and dressed, my cheerful little din 
 ner was served, and John and his wife, and two or three 
 wide-awake boys and girls, gave me moral support and com 
 fort, as I ate it. In fifteen minutes more I was as much 
 at home with the children as if I had gone to chapel with 
 them for four years, as I had with their father, and had, with 
 them, prompted and been prompted through difficult passages 
 in ^Eschines and Isocrates. 
 
 As eight o'clock drew near, it proved that some of them 
 were going to the concert of the Jubal Club. Would I like to 
 hear the music, or would I rest in the library? 
 
 " Tired ! " I was not tired. How should I be tired after 
 seven hours in that comfortable Wagner palace? I have 
 been far more tired after three hours in my own study, with 
 Tom, Dick and Harry ; Miss A. , Miss B. and Miss C. ; Mrs. 
 X., Mrs. Y. and Mrs. Z., all just "looking in for a moment,"
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 6 
 
 and " so sorry to interrupt me, and knowing how busy I 
 was, but would I just be kind enough to grind their dull 
 axes for them ? " Now, in the Wagner, nobody calls on you, 
 there is no mail, the telegram cannot find you, you have one 
 or two good novels, and, if you want, you may write a chap 
 ter in your Serial, or a leader for the Daily Argus. You 
 have everything except a dead grandfather and a hornet's 
 nest to make you comfortable, and there is no man to terrify 
 or make afraid. 
 
 I was not at all tired, and so I joined the Jubal party. 
 Two carriages came to the door, and people appeared whom 
 I had not seen. They were not then explained to me, but I 
 came to know them well, and so will this reader, I hope. 
 
 The music was very good. But I believe I was more 
 taken by the house and by the orchestra. I said to myself, 
 for the hundredth time, that when, at the West, they do a thing, 
 they do it with the finest edge and the most perfect polish. I 
 had seen no such Opera House as this in Philadelphia or New 
 York. Far less had I seen any such audience in Munich, or 
 in Florence. Good-natured, easily pleased, yes, that is th 
 habit of people, in proportion as they are near a frontier. 
 They have not yet got over the habit of thanking God that they 
 have anything. They measure the concert against the howling 
 wilderness still, and do not compare it with some reminiscence 
 of what it was when Arion led the orchestra, and Orpheus 
 was the tenor. But this was not merely the good-natured 
 audience of Cheyenne or of Tombstone. I knew those audi 
 ences. These people knew what was good, and listened, and 
 were still, and applauded sympathetically. Regarding which 
 sympathy of theirs, I was to learn more. 
 
 " Tumble into any carriage," cried John to me, as I stood
 
 4 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 under the great porte-cochere with his daughter Nelly, after 
 all was over. " Do not stay on the order of your coming." 
 And I dimly made out, that in place of the two carriages 
 which had brought us, four or five were now receiving our 
 party, and that the party, somehow, had grown. And, when 
 we came back to Waban Avenue, this proved to be so. Into 
 the large drawing-room, come not the little- home party 
 only, but people whom I had not seen, and, among them, one 
 or two whom I was quite sure that I had seen on the stage. 
 A Mr. Ferguson, Avhose exquisite violin had brought back 
 the Ole Bull of my boyhood, and Mrs. Savage, one of the 
 soprano singers, with a voice which made you love her, rather 
 than admire her. Sure enough, we had with us the very 
 choicest of the musical authorities of the town. 
 
 We congratulated and we made our compliments. We 
 sank into tete-a-tete chairs and talked gravely about Wag 
 ner, and gladly about Mozart. I was listening to a very 
 curious story about something which happened behind the 
 scenes at La Scala, when a servant announced supper. 
 Every gentleman gave his arm to a lady, and I followed 
 with Miss Mary Bell, one of the inmates of the house, a 
 visitor like myself. We came into the large dining-room, 
 a beautiful room which I had not seen before, and here an 
 elegant supper was laid for a party, which must have num 
 bered four and twenty. 
 
 You would thank me, dear reader, if I could and would 
 write down, for you, every word of the jolly talk ; the funny 
 story-telling ; the grave discussion of the groups, which fell 
 into talk and even into song as the next two hours went by. 
 There was one very merry party around John at our end of 
 the table. There were six or eight others around his wife
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. O 
 
 at her end, with their own thread of discussion, their own 
 bursts of laughter, and, once or twice, they commanded 
 silence as they put up Mr. Dunning to a verse of a song. 
 Some four or five, on each side of the table, midway, gave 
 allegiance and attention to either of these groups, or had 
 their own talk across the table, where no high pyramid of 
 flowers cut off easy story-telling. And, often and often, all 
 voices but one were lulled, as in those songs of Dunning's, 
 or when some approved story-teller launched on some fact 
 or fiction, which by common consent, the rest chose to hear. 
 
 What was evident, from the first minute, was, that I was 
 the only person who was in the very least a stranger there. 
 The others, why one would say that they were there every 
 week in their lives. And, before I had done with this 
 household, I found that in fact they were. 
 
 I had chances for long, serious talk, and for much funny 
 chaff, with this Miss Bell, whom, almost by accident, I had 
 led out to supper. Yes, I liked her from the first, though 
 at first I was afraid of her. I did not understand her at 
 first. Perhaps I do not understand her now. It is so hard 
 to understand a person who does not wholly understand 
 herself. 
 
 She gave me some keys to the company with whom I was 
 to make this visit. For John Fisher himself, in whose 
 house we were, she had unmixed respect and a queer vein of 
 familiarity side by side with strange moods of reserve. I 
 did not in the least make it out that evening, but now I 
 think I understand it. Of Mrs. Fisher, she would abso 
 lutely say nothing. Once and again I led the conversation 
 that way, and, every time, I found it landed promptly on 
 some distant shore, and before I knew it, we were talking
 
 b MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 of Madame de S6vigne", or of Cetawayo, or of Julius Caesar. 
 When I found out, as I did before long, that Mrs. Fisher 
 was a fool, pure and simple, I saw why Miss Bell had been 
 thus unwilling to discuss her with a stranger. 
 
 As to herself, Miss Bell was tall, easy in manner, a little 
 shy in expressing herself. She was, clearly enough, used 
 to society, and, as I found afterwards, to society in all its 
 forms. Yet I thought then, and I know now, that if you 
 had put her for a month in a log cabin on an Adirondack 
 mountain, and had sent ravens to feed her, while the spring 
 supplied her drink, she would not have found her time hang 
 heavy. She seemed to take the society of those around her 
 as something which she was glad to have ; yet I fancied she 
 would not have walked two miles to seek it, if it had not 
 happened to be there. Pretty clearly, she had not solved 
 all her conundrums yet, and she thought some of them hard 
 to solve. But which conundrums these were, she would 
 not tell me, a stranger. She had not that fatal facility of 
 confidence. 
 
 We all fairly lounged over the supper table, and nobody 
 wanted to break the spell. It was long after midnight 
 when Mrs. Savage rose, and said, " We shall all be as 
 sleepy as bats to-morrow," and bade Mrs. Fisher good even 
 ing. This broke up the whole. The party bade good-bye 
 in the drawing-room, and in fifteen minutes we of the 
 household were in our bed-chambers. 
 
 Then I tried to recollect whether John Fisher had shown 
 any musical enthusiasms in college. Had this all developed 
 late in life ? Surely he was not in the college choir, yet he 
 would have been, had he known C sharp when he saw it. 
 Certainly not in the glee club ! Nor had he any piano then.
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 7 
 
 But then he had not money enough, in those days, for a 
 piano. But, leaving pianos aside, so few fellows had 
 pianos thirty years ago. I could not recollect that John 
 even had a Jew's-harp. I did not remember that he ever 
 whistled a tune. How strangely fellows do turn out ! 
 
 Of the whole crew of us, John Fisher was the very last I 
 should ever have thought of as President of a Jubal club 
 and the leading virtuoso in music of a great city ! 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 some of us breakfast is a critical business, and 
 the prosperity of our day largely depends upon it. I 
 was, therefore, glad enough to find that it was not shuffled 
 out of sight, in mad haste, at John Fisher's, but recognized 
 as the glad solemnity, not to say sacrament, which it is, 
 loved and lingered over, and regarded indeed as the first 
 friend of the day and not as a skirmishing enemy. 
 
 How sad the household where breakfast is simply the 
 hasty fighting place, where the man of the household seizes 
 a buttered roll in his hands, gulps down his cup of ruined 
 coffee and runs for his inexorable train ! 
 
 At John Fisher's, on my first morning there, I found 
 many, many things to eat, in that American abundance 
 which contrasts so agreeably with the "Toast, sir?" 
 " Mutton chop, sir?" "Muffins, sir?" which constitute 
 the stock in trade of the chef at an English inn.
 
 8 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 More important than this, they were lavish as to time. 
 
 " I am awake now," John Fisher would say ; " and we 
 are by ourselves, now. Heaven knows where we may be 
 at lunch ; or who may be here at dinner, or at supper." 
 
 John Fisher had invariably been up before breakfast. 
 He had imbibed his oxygen and his ozone on some piazza 
 or stoop, while he read his morning paper. Perhaps he 
 had had an early cup of coffee. 
 
 He would come into the breakfast-room among the first, 
 throwing the newspaper away as he did, and exclaiming 
 that there was not a word of news, and that he did not see 
 how people could live and print such stuff. 
 
 " Now, here is a stock-broker's rumor that the Emperor 
 of Germany has broken his leg. Why, I had a dispatch at 
 my counting-room when I went down town yesterday, to 
 say it was all a lie, from our own man at Vienna." 
 
 I intimated gently, that the local editor at Tamworth 
 probably did not have ' ' his own man " at Vienna. At 
 which suggestion John was well pleased. The truth was, 
 that he was so well informed a man himself, that the aver 
 age "chief" of a journal would have been at disadvantage in 
 meeting him. 
 
 " Now we will not hurry," he said, as he sat welcoming 
 one and another arrival, after he had asked a blessing on 
 the day. "We will not hurry. At lunch we shall have 
 to hurry. At dinner we may have to be grand. Who 
 knows whether there will be any supper? Here is break 
 fast ; this is a fixed fact. And unless the ground opens 
 and swallows us up, we are well-nigh sure. 
 
 " What do you say? Do you begin with fruit? Or there 
 is oatmeal on the side-table. Miss Bell will give you ome-
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 lettc ; or, I will give you a piece of steak ; or, there is fish. 
 That white fish is fresh. Jonas brought it in, whfle I put 
 on my necktie." 
 
 And then he began talking. On this particular morning, 
 he was in excellent spirits. He was never in bad spirits, 
 indeed. But sometimes he talked more gayly than at others, 
 and this was one of these times. 
 
 "What I mean, Cordelia, is this," said he. He had 
 been talking with her on the piazza, before breakfast. " It 
 is a great waste of capital, by which you story-tellers intro 
 duce a new hero, a new heroine ; or, a new second hero, or 
 new second heroine ; a new villain's tool and a new villain's 
 fool, with every story you tell. I hardly know their names, 
 I am so stupid, before you wind up the book. 
 
 " Then I have to buy a new book, and to learn another 
 set of names. 
 
 " Now if my business were story writing, and I some 
 times wish it were, I would do as the Chinese do with 
 their plays. I would let the story run on and on, just as 
 life does. People could begin to read where they like, and 
 leave off where they like, as they do at that Normal School 
 in Ohio which you told about. They need not buy the 
 early numbers, and they need not hold on till my death. 
 
 " Indeed, when I died I would leave the good- will of my 
 story, as David Crockett did his almanac." 
 
 " How was that?" said Mrs. Grattan, laughing. 
 
 "Why, there was a comic almanac published, called 
 ' Crockett's Almanac,' full of hunting stories, alligator fights, 
 and so on, very popular among boys like me, and Tom 
 there. One unfortunate day, Davy Crockett was killed at 
 Alamo, if you know what that was ? "
 
 10 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 Mrs. G-rattan shook her head for "no," like a guilty 
 thing. 
 
 " No matter. He was killed. But the almanac appeared 
 all the same. And it bore the statement that he had ' com 
 pleted the preparations, calculations and all, for five years 
 in advance, before he ever went to Texas.' 
 
 " Now that is the way to start a novel." 
 
 I said some German said that the Iliad has no introduc 
 tion and no conclusion, that it is just like a Greek frieze. 
 The head of a horse sticks in at the left, and the tail of a 
 horse sticks out at the right, and it is supposed that you 
 know that the head has a tail and the tail has a head. 
 
 " Just so," said John. " A sensible German. Find his 
 address and I will send him our new illustrated catalogue 
 from the shop. I do not doubt he will give us an order." 
 
 Mary Bell said that Trollope did work in this way, so far 
 as his inferior people go. The background of his story is 
 always familiar ground. 
 
 "Exactly," said John Fisher, "and that is why we 
 everyday working people liked Trollope so much. And 
 when I found from his book that he reeled off novels, as I 
 do machinery, twelve pages every day he lived ; glad or 
 sorry, sick or well, at sea or at home ; one steady, twelve- 
 page grind, why I could have kissed him, and I would, if 
 he would appear to me a vision. He wrote novels as the 
 British government built gunboats." 
 
 " How was that? " asked Cordelia Grattan. 
 
 "You are so good-natured. You have heard me tell 
 twenty times. Thank you for being so civil. They used 
 to build a long trough of gunboat out into the sea. Then, 
 when an order came for a new gunboat, why, they cut off
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 11 
 
 eighty-six feet and fastened on a ready-made bow and a 
 ready-made stern, and sent her to sea ; had another ready- 
 made bow and stern for the next, and so on. They could 
 deliver a great many in a week." 
 
 "I wish you would write a novel," said Mrs. Grattan. 
 " You would not be near so hard on us who do." 
 
 " Take care, or I will. The very first day the mail fails, 
 so that I have no letters ; bridge broken at Taladega ; snow 
 drift at Girard, I will call Miss Typewriter, her real 
 name is Jones, and I will begin : 
 
 ' ' ' James could not hold in his anger at this announce 
 ment.' And I tell you the public will start, when they find 
 such a prompt beginning as that, and when the chapter ends 
 with 'Hector ! ' she cried, as she found the treacherous 
 sods gave way, and she was falling through space ' 
 
 "Will they not be uneasy, then, till the next chapter 
 arrives, in the. next number of The Century? 
 
 "But that is what life is. Heavens! am I not now 
 going clown town to have a cable from ' London tell me that 
 Mr. Gladstone has been struck in the head by a paving- 
 stone? And then the dispatch will stop. And if he dies, 
 all values will decline, and I shall stop the works and we 
 shall all retire to that log-cabin in Purchasville, which is 
 the property of Cordelia's uncle, and shall live there on 
 ground nuts. 
 
 "And if he lives, all values will boom, and I shall pre 
 sent to each of you a diamond necklace for a birthday present. 
 
 "You are all, always, sitting on the edge of such a vol 
 cano ; and yet you think William Black's guidebook 
 stories interesting, and talk to me of the plot of the Duchess's 
 farrago. Lucky for you that I do not write novels."
 
 12 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 " Indeed, indeed !" said Mrs. Grattan. "I shall pray 
 for a snow-drift at Girard. Once you try with your Miss 
 Jones, you will wish you had forty of your old letters to 
 answer. Stay at home to-day, and help my hero out of his 
 scrapes. I will go to the office, and your Miss Jones and 
 I will see to the mail." 
 
 No, John Fisher would not do that. But he said he 
 would take us all to the office, and then if I liked I might 
 take the ladies to drive. He would leave the carriage and 
 horses with us. We might call for him at one o'clock 
 and he would come home to lunch. And to this we gladly 
 agreed. 
 
 By the ladies were meant Mrs. Fisher and Miss Mary 
 Bell. We were to start in half an hour. We left the 
 breakfast-table for family prayers. Fisher read a few 
 verses from the Bible ; we all offered the Lord's Prayer, 
 and with Mrs. Grattan at the piano, sang two verses of a 
 hymn. Every one disappeared with the understanding 
 that we were to meet for our drive in half an hour. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 TN half an hour Fisher and I stood on the steps, and Miss 
 Bell joined us. But word came down from Mrs. Fisher 
 
 that she was too busy, and would not come. Neither of 
 
 the others seemed surprised. 
 
 " Go ask Mrs. Grattan if she would like to ride," said
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 13 
 
 Fisher to the maid. " Say there is an empty seat, if she 
 likes it." 
 
 To my surprise, Mrs. Grattan appeared immediately, 
 ready for the drive, as if she had been expected. I found 
 afterwards, that whenever Mrs. Fisher said she would go, 
 she did not ; and whenever she declined, she afterwards 
 changed her mind, like the boys in the parable. It made 
 no inconvenience, for every one in the house calculated abso 
 lutely on this habit of hers. 
 
 Like most men who have lived much in action in the 
 open air, Fisher liked to drive his own horses, rather than 
 to have a coachman drive them. A great carriage builder 
 once told me, that he had to devise special carriages for the 
 need of men of wealth who want to be their own coachmen. 
 I sympathize with the men of wealth. 
 
 Fisher discovered a short cut which took us off the 
 crowded street at once, and in a minute he was in the gay 
 est talk as he drove to his works, perhaps a mile out of 
 town. Then he called a lad to stand by the horses, and 
 asked me to come in for a moment to see his workshop. 
 
 " You need not leave the carriage," he said to the ladies. 
 " This is an old story to you, and I will not keep him two 
 minutes." 
 
 He wanted to show me a particular contrivance for the 
 transfer of power, of which we had been talking, and, with 
 just a nod to the people we met, he led the way to the long, 
 low room where we could see this. We were talking all 
 the way about people and things. 
 
 I saw the bit of machinery ; I understood the difficulties 
 and the success enough to ask the right questions about it. 
 1 heard part of what he said, and three-quarters of it I lost,
 
 14 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 in the whirr of wheels, the stamping of hammers, and the 
 trill of saws. When we came out on the stairway, he said : 
 
 " Her fortune was enormous then, and it is larger now. 
 And really, all she wants to know is how to spend the 
 income of it, for the good of man and the love of God. You 
 see she is as simple in her taste and dress as if she were my 
 typewriter." 
 
 It would have been better, perhaps, had I asked whom 
 he was talking about. But I did not like to, and I had 
 not a moment to think. Probably it was one of the ladies 
 in the carriage. For I had spoken of Miss Mary Bell 
 before the clatter had begun. 
 
 I was no fool, and I should find out before our drive was 
 over. 
 
 " I leave yon with the ladies," he said. " There are 
 one hundred and six different drives from this place, each 
 more lovely than the other." 
 
 " What they do not know about them is not worth 
 knowing. So, bon voyage ! " 
 
 " Be prompt at one, Mrs. Grattan, or I will dictate two 
 novels." 
 
 And so we started. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 T MUST not describe the drive. If I do we shall never 
 
 be done. 
 
 I told the ladies that they meant to pile all their treasures 
 together. Mary Bell was an enthusiast in the open air. 
 Her complete knowledge of the outer world and sympathy
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 15 
 
 with everything that has life made a curious contrast with a 
 certain quietness of manner as we sat talking at home. 
 
 Mrs. Grattan, as perhaps became a novel-writer, was an 
 enthusiast and a dreamer in her way. But she did not pre 
 tend to know any difference but that of color between the 
 purple of ripened grasses as the sun struck them, and the 
 brown of sedge in a swamp, such as could hardly be found 
 elsewhere on that side of the Mississippi. 
 
 " No, Mary," she would say, "it is quite enough that 
 one of us knows these things. You shall expound and 
 explain to me and when I forget, for I shall forget, you 
 shall expound again ; and you are so good, Mary, that you 
 will not mind if I make you tell me twenty times." 
 
 Under the direction of these two fanatics I drove the 
 bays, that morning, up hill and down dale, across the table 
 land, through swamps, by the side of brooks, to this " shed 
 line " and that, for twenty different points of observation. 
 We passed by hill-sides where the purple grasses grew, we 
 passed across meadows where late asters grew, we got 
 glimpses of the blue of the far-away hills, we caught the 
 reflection of red maples in a dozen different lakes, and came 
 round by the usual cemetery, established on the site of an 
 old Indian battle-ground. Of all this I must tell no detail, 
 but rather what I learned, such as it was, of the life and 
 fortunes of my college friend, John Fisher. 
 
 "You are here to speak to the Temperance people, are 
 you not? " said Mrs. Grattan to me as we came to a long 
 causeway, where for a minute, even Mary Bell had no 
 b^ta.niKiing vo rave c>cut, nor distant cumulus to wonder at. 
 
 66 Yes,'* II said, " I had agreed to speak at a great meet 
 ing wiich was to be held before the election, and when
 
 16 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 Fisher heard of this he wrote to me that I was to come 
 direct from Omaha and make this visit, which had been 
 talked of now for nearly thirty years." 
 
 " Is he especially interested in this temperance matter?" 
 I asked. "Why, of course he is," said Mrs. Grattan, 
 looking at me with her great wondering eyes, as she might 
 have looked had I asked if John Fisher knew the names of 
 his own children. " Live in Tamworth long enough, and 
 you will not have to ask such questions ; or go down every 
 morning as he did just now, to tell thirteen hundred men 
 what they are to do before dinner, and you will see why he 
 is interested." 
 
 " Yes," I said, a little impatiently ; " but is he interested 
 in it as he is interested in music, or as you are interested in 
 novel- writing ? " 
 
 " John Fisher interested in music? " asked Mrs. Grattan, 
 lifting her eye-brows. And Mary Bell turned round on me 
 as if I had confounded him with some other man. 
 
 " Why surely," I said, " last night " 
 
 " Oh, yes ! last night," said Mrs. Grattan, and then 
 both the ladies laughed. " Wait till you see to-night, and 
 wait till you see to-morrow night. 
 
 " John Fisher is interested in music just as he is inter 
 ested in books and athletics, and pretty houses with clematis 
 over the window, and reading clubs, and pictures, and ice- 
 chests in the milk shops, and cheap cottons and good cut 
 lery, and in anything else that helps toward the ' good time 
 coming,' or, as he would say, ' to make the Kingdom 01 
 God come.' But how he would laugh if he knew you 
 thought him an authority on music because we happened to 
 go to the Jubal together."
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 17 
 
 4 : Well," said Mary Bell, " I wish I had his knack, or 
 yoa may call it his gift. I wish I knew how to help peo 
 ple without ruining them in the helping. Seriously, we 
 might do a worse thing than to start him upon writing his 
 novel." 
 
 " Novel ! " cried Cordelia Grattan. " The man's whole 
 life is one romance. But it is quite too varied to be writ 
 ten down. It defies all the unities at once. Indeed, it 
 needs a steady hand like his to keep those forty-seven 
 prancing steeds of the Sun in any sort of order." 
 
 " Steeds of the Sun?" asked I. " And is there no twi 
 light, no shadow, no darkness in his life? " 
 
 They hesitated for a moment, both. But after a moment, 
 Mrs. Grattan said gravely, " I should think there was ; " 
 and at the same instant Mary Bell said, almost in a whis 
 per, " You will see." We were all embarrassed, and I, to 
 relieve the stiffness and to change the subject safely, asked 
 Miss Bell if she were any relation to the Mary Bell of the 
 Hollo Books. But at that moment, passing out through a 
 chestnut grove we came in sight of the chimneys of the 
 factory, and Miss Bell pointed at them. 
 
 " I must tell you that another time," said she. " Here 
 we are." 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 "AND how have your romances sped?" This was 
 John Fisher's question, as soon as he had gathered 
 the reins in his hands. " Did a horde of red-skins in their 
 war-paint rise shouting from a morass to scalp you ? And 
 did Tom here empty two revolvers among their number,
 
 18 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 not missing once in his unerring aim ; and then touching 
 up his gallant bays, did he rescue all from impending dan 
 ger, and receive in reward the guerdon of Miss Mary's 
 hand, or Mrs. Grattan's? 
 
 " Not that I know what a guerdon is," he added, in 
 mock meditative tone. 
 
 The ladies laughed, and we owned that we had only 
 added descriptive passages, heavy padding, to our stories ; 
 but Mrs. Grattan asked eagerly what was the progress of 
 his. 
 
 John Fisher took on a more serious air, and he said that 
 if we did not object to extending our drive to the Look-out 
 Station and back, that would give him fifteen minutes, and 
 so he told the story. 
 
 Mrs. Flaherty had come in. " You know her, Cordelia. 
 Husband that drunken brute. This time he had been off 
 longer than usual, thank God for that! But last night, 
 late, came a letter from somebody in Chicago. HOAV those 
 people get their letters, if indeed they ever do get the right 
 ones, I never knew. 
 
 "Anyhow, here was the letter, black and white; very 
 bad spelling, announcing that Tim Flaherty, who is sup 
 posed to be her Tim, got into a drunken fight last month, 
 stabbed a policeman who died, and that Tim is now in the 
 state prison for fourteen years. For once, they seem to 
 have given short shrift in Chicago." 
 
 " That is the best news I have heard in a month," said 
 Mary Bell, quietly. 
 
 " I made the same observation to his wife," said John. 
 " But I am sorry to say it made her cry. Now, a more 
 gentle spirit, say Cordelia here, would have encouraged
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 19 
 
 her, would have said that there are forty-seven Tim Flaher 
 ty s in the directory, and maybe it was not he. 
 
 " I boldly said I was sure it was he, and that I was very 
 glad, and so I made her cry. 
 
 " But I told her that this was as good as a divorce, 
 these people call them ' disvoces,' and better. I told her 
 that now she was in no more danger of paying his whisky 
 bills. I asked her whether my bookkeeper had anything to 
 her credit. You see, Tom, this is the woman who washes 
 the towels, and makes things tidy in the counting-rooms, 
 and her fortunes are the common interest of Miss Bell and 
 me. 
 
 " They occupy me much more than the Emperor of Rus 
 sia's order does," he added, laughing. 
 
 Then, in answer to Mrs. G rattan's eager and detailed 
 questions, it proved that the bookkeeper had saved four or 
 five weeks of her earnings from the grasp of different bar 
 room princes, to whom Flaherty had given orders for her 
 money. There were twenty odd dollars to her credit. 
 
 "Then we sent to the annealing room for Dan. Dan 
 came, and he made a fine appearance, Mrs. Grattan. He 
 does credit to your artistic eye, Mary. I recognized your 
 taste in the very color of his overalls. Dan reported that 
 his foreman had, oh ! I think forty dollars to his credit. 
 Between them they had held this in face of orders unnum 
 bered signed by Tim. To tell the truth, I am afraid they 
 had lied awfully, in a good cause. But the money had not 
 been passed over. 
 
 " On which, I bade Dan go and make himself decent, 
 and told the foreman he must get along without him this 
 morning. Then Dan went in the glory of a clean face and
 
 20 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 of his Sunday hat to find up Kilmansegg. Kilmansegg 
 was on the top of a load of lumber. But Dan hailed him, 
 tendered his hundred dollars, and Kilmansegg said it was 
 right, and that he should have the deed before night, and 
 he will." 
 
 Of this condensed narrative I asked the explanation. It 
 proved that Kilmansegg was treasurer of a Building Asso 
 ciation. That Dan and his mother had coveted a certain 
 five-room house which belonged to this Association. But 
 they had not dared to buy while Tim could pounce on their 
 wages at any moment. 
 
 Now that Tim was "jugged," in the elegant phrase of 
 his first-born, the mother and son were able to go into their 
 first real estate speculation. 
 
 ' ' You said a hundred dollars," said Mary Bell, breakingher 
 part of the silence. " But you only accounted for sixty odd." 
 
 John Fisher blushed, as if he had been detected in a 
 crime. "Oh, the foreman and I made that all right. I 
 told them they must work and they will. ' Real Estate ' 
 means a great deal, Tom. Your only way to help people 
 is to show them how to help themselves, and the real, 
 ' royal ' I suppose the word means, step to helping them 
 selves, is over real estate. None of your sham estates, as 
 Mary Stevenson said of the roast pork. What is your 
 story about Antams, Miss Bell ? " 
 
 " I did not know it was my story." 
 
 " Well, the explanation of it is, that whenever he was in 
 the stock-market and the bears pulled him down, Antaeus 
 fell back on his real estate investments. He put his foot on 
 the earth, and as I heard the parson say one day : ' He 
 drank in new strength from his mother.'
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 21 
 
 " Dan Flaherty will never drink. Sixty dollars a year 
 will he save which would else go in whisky. The sons 
 of these drunken dogs almost invariably hate IT." John 
 Fisher always spoke of whisky as " It," with a certain 
 jerk, which I represent by a large I. " They hate IT. It 
 is their children, the boys and girls too, who sometimes 
 have the curse in their blood, poor things. 
 
 " But now, Dan and his mother have fairly started on 
 the ascent of the Great Temple, or Tower, or Castle of 
 Human Life. It is built on Real Estate. And when suc 
 cess is ended for all four of us, and we are poor beggars, 
 all of us seeking a day's crust, we will hand in hand knock 
 at the door of the Flaherty palace, and they shall take us 
 "in." 
 
 And so he swept up to the door of his own palace, and 
 gave the reins to the waiting groom. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 / T" V HE party at lunch was as large as that had been at 
 supper the night before. But I did not recognize one 
 face of those who met then, except the children of the house 
 and the ladies. There was a certain informality about the 
 gathering as becomes a party at lunch : a great deal of 
 merriment, as was natural where most of the guests were 
 young, and talk irrepressible. 
 
 No ! If I had expected musical amateurs again, and I
 
 22 MY FRIEKD THE BOSS. 
 
 did not after the ladies' laughter in the morning, I should 
 have been disappointed. It very soon appeared that the 
 party was made up mostly from the Directors and other 
 officers of the Base Ball Nine of Tarn worth, who had come 
 with their wives, and, in some cases, with their daughters, 
 and with whom were other gentlemen interested in the 
 Athletics of the town. The Medical Director of the Gym 
 nasium was there ; the President of the Cricket Club was 
 there : a white-cravated, single-breasted young man, who 
 proved to be the minister of St. George's church. They 
 were prayer-book people, and, being Americans, said "Min 
 ister" and did not say "Rector." The head of the High School 
 was there ; the President of the Rowing Club, and in short 
 we were a company of very muscular Christians, with their 
 pretty wives and daughters. 
 
 No ! the talk was not very much of the shop. We were 
 going in the afternoon to see a practice game, as it was 
 called, of the Tarn worth Club, who were to exhibit them 
 selves in full rig, to their admiring friends, after a tour 
 they had made through the principal towns in the State, in 
 which they had easily maintained their championship as 
 the best club in the State, a championship which they had 
 now held for several years. 
 
 I observed that we all spoke as if it were a matter of 
 course that our club should hold the championship. Nor 
 was this the last time that I observed, that, whatever the 
 subject of conversation, the Tamworth people all under 
 stood, that they stood, as it were, of course, in a well- 
 defined position of leadership. Had the Chief Justice died 
 in the night, I am quite clear that the men of Tamworth, 
 as they met at the post-office the next day, would have
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 23 
 
 determined promptly which of the Tamworth lawyers could 
 be best spared to go to Washington and to take his place. 
 [ remembered that last night, when I had said that some 
 thing was better played than I had ever heard it, the large- 
 eyed woman to whom I spoke, had intimated that this was 
 quite a matter of course. But I had not then understood, 
 as I came tojdo, before the week was over, that this was 
 not her notion only, but that it was the happy habit of all 
 the town. 
 
 So, all through lunch, it was " conceded" that the jour 
 ney of the club had been an unnecessary courtesy, due in a 
 sort to the other cities and towns of the State. The "boys" 
 had of course done well, and now the afternoon was to be 
 made a fete day in their honor. 
 
 As I say, the talk was not very largely on base ball. 
 But it was very Aryan. Or, not to speak philologically, it 
 was all quick with ozone, oxygen and the open air. You 
 were ashamed of yourself, if you were not in the habit of 
 walking fifteen miles a day. It was taken for granted that 
 you knew the " record" for bicycles and tricycles, and that 
 for amateurs as distinguished from professionals. You did 
 not speak of a boat, but, in more precise phrase, of a birch, 
 or a canoe, a shell, or a four-oar, or a catamaran, or a cat, 
 or some one other of forty different builds. It was taken for 
 granted that life was very well worth living, and you would 
 have said that not one of these very brown and very hand 
 some young people had ever had an ache or a pain. 
 
 I was a little annoyed to find that Miss Bell was not at 
 the table. " One of her Bible-class called on her at just the 
 wrong time," said Cordelia Grattan. I had hoped that I 
 might sit by her at table, and that she should be guide, 

 
 24 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 philosopher and friend, to explain to me the different guests, 
 and interpret to me the local jokes, to which, inferior, I 
 could not mount alone. 
 
 Instead of this, I was introduced to a stranger, with 
 whom to begin all over again, as I had begun Avith Mary 
 Bell, the night before. To borrow the simple phrase of the 
 Georgia colonel, I was " put out to a strange gal." 
 
 But poor Mary Bell was less pleasantly engaged than we 
 were. The Mrs. Waters who had called on her was evi 
 dently ill at ease from the first. It took her some time 
 before she could come to her story. 
 
 " I am so sorry I interrupt you. I see Mrs. Fisher has 
 company. Oh, no ! I would not think of staying. I am 
 not dressed, you know ! Indeed, indeed, Miss Bell ! I 
 would not have waited for you, if well, you will see, I had 
 to wait, if it was any good coming at all." 
 
 " The dumb man's borders still increase." 
 
 This is a favorite quotation of Mary Bell, and to a con 
 siderable extent, it accounts for what people think a certain 
 reserve in her manner. But as the Mrs. Waters stam 
 mered and stopped, and blushed, and turned pale, Mary 
 Bell began to think that even this great principle of life was 
 going to fail her. 
 
 " You are sure no one hears us? Did any one mention 
 my name?" These ejaculations followed from the visitor, 
 as for the second time she tried the door, and made sure 
 that it was fast. 
 
 Then with a bold dash she said, " Do you know any 
 thing about Mrs. Fisher's necklace, her opal necklace? Has 
 she said anything about it to you? " 
 
 Then Mary Bell remembered what she had hardly had any
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS'. 25 
 
 occasion to know, that the husband of Mrs. Waters was 
 the chief man in the large shop of Niederkranz & Smith, 
 the chief jewelry firm of Tamworth. Mr. Niederkranz was 
 old and lame, and never appeared. Mr. Smith was in the 
 counting-room or somewhere, and seldom appeared. Mr. 
 AVaters was perhaps the " Co." anyhow he was the man 
 you always saw. 
 
 And at last, with much difficulty, many surprises, end 
 less parentheses and other obstructions, Mrs. Waters told 
 Miss Bell that nearly twelve months before, Mrs. Fisher had 
 brought to the firm this necklace, which she did not want 
 repaired ; she did not want to sell ; she wanted to pledge 
 for money. She wanted a large sum of money for private 
 use ; some relatives she wanted to befriend, and it was to 
 be, for the time, a secret from her husband. She did not 
 like to have to ask him for the money, she said. But there 
 was this necklace, which had cost five thousand dollars at 
 Tiffany's. She brought Tiffany's bill as her evidence. 
 AVould they lend her a thousand dollars for two or three 
 months, and take the necklace as security? Mr. AVaters 
 had received this precious confidence. Mr. AVaters had 
 been a good deal disgusted, not to say mortified. But he 
 had asked Mr. Smith, who was rather a cynic, and woman- 
 hater. He had laughed, and had said it was a pity not to 
 accommodate so good a customer. Ten bank bills, of one 
 hundred dollars each, had been given to Mrs. Fisher, and 
 she had the next day sent down the necklace. 
 
 The queer part of the story was that nobody had looked 
 at it. The box was marked with Tiffany's name. Mr. 
 Waters was busy and thought Mr. Smith had looked at it. 
 Mr. Smith was cross and thought Mr. AVaters had looked
 
 26 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 at it. A boy had been bidden to carry it to the safe and 
 had locked it up. At the end of three months, or there 
 abouts, Mrs. Fisher had been reminded of the loan, and 
 she had said, " in a few days." At the end of three months 
 more, she had said "in a few days" again; and so in 
 three months more. There had come a row. Old Mr. 
 Niederkranz had been jumbled down to the store in his 
 carriage to look at the accounts. He had seen the entry of 
 one thousand dollars lent to Mrs. Fisher, in a little pri 
 vate cash-book. He had asked a question, pretty cross. 
 The pledged jewel had been sent for. The box had been 
 opened, and lo ! a trinket of brass and copper and glass, 
 not even up to Attleborough standards, sucli as the grand 
 Tiffany never dreamed of, even in a nightmare ! 
 
 Of course every one was amazed. Every one felt abused. 
 Every one threw the blame on every one else. Mr. Nieder 
 kranz was opposed in politics to Mr. Fisher. He swore he 
 would expose him. Mr. Smith was cross ; he always was 
 cross. This time he had been good-natured, and see what 
 had come of it ! Mr. Waters was the only person who 
 was in the least cool. He did not know what was to be 
 done. Therefore he consulted his wife, having begged a 
 truce, or intermission of hostilities till afternoon. Mrs. 
 Waters did not know what should be done, but had ordered 
 her carriage and had come to tell Mary Bell, and leave the 
 responsibility with her. 
 
 For Mary Bell, as I had many occasions afterwards to 
 learn, is one of those persons on whom everybody throws 
 the responsibility. It would be one thing if this were only 
 the responsibility of judging what other people should do, 
 as for instance the Pope does. But in Mary Bell's case,
 
 * MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 27 
 
 and in other like cases, I have observed that certain people 
 not only have to decide as to duty, but have to bell the cat. 
 " I told Mary Bell," people say, and then they fancy that 
 they have nothing more to do in the premises. She will 
 take the whole affair off their hands, not that she wants to, 
 poor woman. " But then, you will do it so much better 
 than I, Miss Bell." As probably she will. 
 
 Such was Mary Bell's occupation while the rest of us 
 were at lunch before the athletic exhibition, or reception of 
 our nine. She was hearing, weighing, and learning to 
 understand Mrs. Waters's incredible story. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ]VTO ! I will not be tempted by any artistic considerations 
 to switch off from the proper track of this story, too much 
 crowded at the best, to tell the fortunes of that afternoon's 
 game of base ball. How Fremantle covered himself with 
 glory by very prettily stealing secoiid, or how Dawes dis 
 gusted every one by curious lack of judgment in throwing to 
 bases, but subsequently made up a little by striking out 
 seven men consecutively. All this has its place in litera 
 ture, as Dr. Everett and a certain unknown author in the 
 No Name series have shown. There will yet be published a 
 novel in which every one's destiny will turn on the question 
 Avhether, as the Hector of the story springs from the ground, 
 stretching his arm above him, his fingers close tightly on 
 the ball, or whether the ball strikes the third phalangette, 
 breaks it backward and disables him for life. On this shall
 
 28 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 hinge the fortunes of the blonde heroine and the brunette 
 heroine ; of the cynical hero and the good-natured hero ; of 
 the pan of millions and the beggar in the gutter. But this 
 story is not that novel, and I sadly pass by the fascinating 
 episode. 
 
 The reader will lay down the book, and recall the last 
 game he say played on the Diamond Field ; will imagine 
 that the party from Mr. Fisher's is sitting, watching the 
 players, in three or four open carriages ; will observe that 
 John Fisher is not there, but that Mrs. Fisher is ; rather 
 noisy, rather simple in her observations, and always foolish, 
 and then the reader will return from the ball-ground to the 
 house. 
 
 And here was to be a party in-doors and out-doors, for 
 all the players, for all the substitutes, for the amateur clubs 
 and all their friends. The party was to be in-doors if it 
 rained ; out-doors if it were not too cold. And, as it prov 
 ed, it was one of the last straggling days of Indian summer, 
 and on the exquisite lawn were scattered groups of pretty 
 girls who had not yet lost the brown of their summer cam 
 paign, and of eager boys who were browner than the dames 
 they admired. A band of music was on the west terrace, 
 and just before the sun went down, in answer to a sugges 
 tion of Cordelia Grattan's, the dignity of the great leader 
 of the music so far unbent that he consented to play a waltz ; 
 nay, many waltzes. The hint was readily taken, and boys 
 and girls, young men and maidens ; nay, gentlemen of nine- 
 aud-fifty and women of an uncertain age, were flying round 
 and round on that almost matchless lawn, " accoutred as 
 they were," and enjoying the dance all the more because 
 they danced in boots and hats and bonnets.
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 29 
 
 For myself, I had determined, as I dressed for the party, 
 that I would devote myself to our hostess, and find out, if I 
 could, why thus far I knew so little of her. I saw her 
 talking with a young man, who seemed ill at ease, and I 
 drew up to them, thinking that he might wish to be relieved, 
 and she he equally grateful if I relieved him. 
 
 I wns at least half right. As for the rest, I do not know. 
 
 " I think not," he said, as I drew near. Either he was 
 of a very florid complexion or he was blushing vehemently. 
 
 " Oh ! yes it is, I know it is," cried Mrs. Fisher, and 
 she giggled vehemently. " I tell all the young men so." 
 
 " What do you tell them? " asked I. I never knew any 
 one who did not class himself among the young men. Cer 
 tainly I am one of them. Dr. Jackson says the prime of 
 life lasts till we are sixty-five. 
 
 ' ' I tell Mr. Rose he should have his eye-glass set with 
 diamonds. They have such pretty ones at Bookwalter's." 
 
 "And I tell Mrs. Fisher," said young Rose, "that she 
 must have our salaries raised at the Board of Works." 
 And then, quite as much relieved as I had fancied he would 
 be, he touched his hat, and walked away. But it was pret 
 ty clear to me that he had been a little wounded by his 
 hostess. 
 
 I asked where her husband was. " He affects to be 
 at leisure all the afternoon," said I. "Can he not come 
 and help in the dancing? " 
 
 " Don't ask me about Mr. Fisher. He goes his way, 
 and I go mine. I tell him if he will not bother me about 
 his old machinery, and his letters from Europe, and the price 
 of iron, I will not bother him when I give a party." 
 
 Of which ready retort, the specially interesting feature was
 
 30 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 that it was wholly untrue. Not only had Mrs. Fisher nev- * 
 er made any such remark, which had in fact flashed on her 
 at the moment, but every arrangement for this party had 
 been made by John Fisher himself. The band had been 
 ordered ; the collation had been provided ; the invitations 
 had been written and sent, all as one little detail in the busi 
 ness of this particular day. And, because he was a great 
 man of business, the very smallest of them and the largest 
 had all been attended to ten days before. 
 
 " He likes young people, does he not?" This was my 
 next attempt. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! I suppose he does. I am sure he is always 
 filling up the house with them. It is a party to-day, and a 
 reception to-morrow, and an afternoon tea next day. I say 
 to them that I might just as well be keeping a hotel. Bet 
 ter, indeed, for there's Jane Mulhouse, she does keep a 
 hotel, or her husband does. And she lives in just the 
 sweetest, dearest little house, on a side street in Chicago, 
 with her books and her birds and her music, and you would 
 not know there was a hotel within a thousand miles of her. 
 That's the way I wish I could live." And she rolled her 
 eyes over her fan at me, with a sentimental look which gave 
 me courage. For I saw that even I was worth flirting 
 with. I persevered. 
 
 " I was sorry you could not go on our drive with us to 
 day. Mrs. Grattan said you were not well." 
 
 "Oh, yes ! I had one of my headaches. I -am not fit to 
 be here now. But it is one of the things, well, I suppose 
 you orators would say, it is one of the things which one 
 owes to society. That means, Mr. Mellen," she said in an 
 affected sadness, " that means that my husband chooses to
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 31 
 
 give a great party, and tells his people to invite Tom, Dick, 
 and Harry, whom I never saw nor heard of, and then wants 
 me to come and be gracious to them all, and make it pass 
 off well. Well, I do as I am bidden. That is poor 
 woman's place, I suppose. What is a headache to compare 
 with the good of society ? " And she sighed profoundly. 
 
 I saw that I had made a mistake, and I stumbled out of 
 it as well as I could. " You spoke of your friend's quiet 
 life with her books. I suppose I may credit you for those 
 charming editions I saw in the breakfast-room." 
 
 I took her off her guard here. For the moment she hesi 
 tated, doubting whether she would say she had selected them 
 or not. But the instinct for contradiction prevailed, as it 
 almost always does with silly women, badly bred or not 
 bred at all. They seem to think that there is wit, or at least 
 brilliancy, in opposing every proposition brought forward. 
 
 "Books? Oh! breakfast-room? Oh, yes! I know what 
 you mean. Oh, no ! Don't charge me with filling the 
 whole house up with books. I may do very silly things. I 
 believe people think I do. But the book folly was never 
 one of mine. I tell them that I have my Bible, and my 
 cook-books, and that if they want to talk about French 
 novels, or German philosophers, they must go to some one 
 else. Books, indeed ! I pity the maids who have to dust 
 them, and for all me they might be carved out of oak, as 
 some books were which I saw somewhere." 
 
 " That does very well for you to say," I said, persever 
 ing, as one sometimes does, because the exigencies of social 
 life seem to require it. " For all that, I should like to 
 have a peep at the table in your own sitting-room and see 
 who your favorite authors are."
 
 32 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 " No, you would not, Mr. Mellen. You would find my 
 favorite authors are people you turned up your nose at. I 
 am not one of the people who run with the crowd. My 
 husband made me go to the theatre to see the Lady of Lyons. 
 ' Why should I see the Lady of Lyons ? ' I said. Then the 
 next night they had something of Shakspere's. I would not 
 go ; just to show my independence I would not go. I hate 
 Shakspere, and I said I did. Then the man acted some 
 thing else, Claude Melnotte, was it not? and I went to that 
 just because the others would not. No, you would not 
 want to see my favorite authors." 
 
 I said I had been turning over the music in the music 
 racks, and I saw that she had some of my special favorites 
 there. 
 
 ' ' Music ! I fond of music ? Did you really think 
 because my poor husband chose to fill the house with those 
 people, squalling and howling last night, that I cared for 
 music? In the first place, I cannot sing a note. And, in 
 the second place, I never had any patience to practice when 
 I was a girl. And in the third place I have no ear. Oh, 
 dear ! Mr. Mellen, the money that is spent in this city on 
 singers and players, operas and concerts, terrifies me. If I 
 had my way, there should not be a Jews-harp in the town." 
 
 I was beginning to wonder what was the charm of that 
 Chicago lady's house, seeing books and music, on which I 
 had ventured first, were so worthless. I believe I should 
 have asked if Mr. Fisher were fond of birds, but another 
 lady drew near, paid her respects, and the two fell into talk 
 together, in which I was an unwilling third. But I had 
 not, or thought I had not, a chance to leave. 
 
 " So glad to see you, Mrs. Vanderweyer."
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 33 
 
 " So glad to see you, dear Mrs. Fisher. What a perfect 
 day you have, and what a lovely party." 
 
 " It is pretty to see the young people, is it not? I was 
 saying to Mr. Mellen, let me introduce Mr. Mellen, that 
 there is nothing I so delight in as seeing young people 
 happy. I hope dear Clara is here." 
 
 No ; Clara was out of town. She had gone over to the 
 college at New Padua, and there was an exhibition that 
 day, and Clara had stayed to hear Dr. F"arrar read 
 Browning. 
 
 " Dr. Farrar read Browning ! " cried Mrs. Fisher. " Do 
 you tell me that to-day is the day for Browning? Why, I 
 sent over for the tickets a week ago, and they lie on my table 
 now. I so dote on Browning. I was saying to Mr. Mel 
 len that if I could not call Browning my own poet, and 
 Christina llossctti, too, you know, I did not think life 
 would be worth living." 
 
 Mrs. Vanderweyer had undoubtedly heard enough of such 
 protestations before. She broke in a little unceremoniously 
 to ask where Mr. Fisher was. 
 
 " Don't ask me about John Fisher. I am the last per 
 son in Tamworth to ask about him. I tell them that every 
 body else is privileged to know about him, except poor I. 
 No ! this is just the way. He comes to me and says, ' It is 
 time for a party to the people of the town.' And I say I 
 think it will be a pretty time for a lawn party. Then I 
 order the music, and send out my. notes, and put on my best 
 gown, and come and have the party, and John Fisher has 
 forgotten all*about it. He is down at the foundry with a 
 new steam gauge, or lie is in the Club talking politics, and 
 I have the party to entertain. I say to them that at the
 
 34 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 end of the year he does not know his neighbors by sight, he 
 is so unsociable." 
 
 And so on, and so on. 
 
 And in truth, all this afternoon John Fisher was sadly 
 and wearily rushing from one office to another and one 
 house to another, to hear more and more details of her utter 
 folly and absurdity, in her fraud with the necklace, and was 
 trying to save her from the public disgrace which at twelve 
 o'clock that day had seemed inevitable. 
 
 For Mary Bell, unwillingly enough, had gone to him to 
 tell him the whole story. It was certainly the best thing 
 which she could do. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 /^\F all this misery about the necklace, I knew nothing 
 
 all that afternoon, nor, indeed, for some days after. 
 The day was only too short for the dancers. But the 
 evening chill would come on^ and unwillingly enough they 
 retreated to the house. There a few enthusiastic couples 
 still kept up their waltzing, with a band not at all unwilling. 
 To my great pleasure Mary Bell appeared. I felt more at 
 ease with her than I did with any one but our host. I saw 
 this afternoon that she was a little ill at ease. But when I 
 asked after him, she simply said that his time was never 
 his own, and that she supposed some one had called him 
 away.
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 35 
 
 Just as the last dancers disappeared he came in. If he 
 were annoyed or careworn, I did not then notice it, nor 
 learn that he was tired. The very moment when the last 
 guest vanished, "tea" was announced. It proved to be 
 that composite meal which old housekeepers call a " high 
 tea," w T here, on one hospitable board, appear provisions 
 which would answer for breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea or 
 supper, or for all of these piled together. The children 
 were here and their father let them have their way ; he drew 
 them out, indeed. Perhaps he did not want to show that he 
 himself had something other than hospitality to think of. 
 At all events he did not show it then. 
 
 We really lounged at table, listening to the boys' 
 accounts of Fremantle's prowess, and to criticisms of 
 Dawes's wretched failure, till a servant announced that two 
 gentlemen were waiting for Mr. Fisher in the library. He 
 turned to me and asked if I would join them. " They are 
 both intelligent men," he said, " and there will be a dozen 
 others like them. Come if you want to talk politics. If 
 you do not, Mrs. Fisher and Mrs. Grattan will give you 
 some music. To tell you the truth, this is our last chance 
 for a final discussion before our great battle of Tuesday. 
 You have not heard, perhaps, that Tuesday week is the 
 critical day of all history, that Waterloo and Pharsalia 
 only led up to it." 
 
 I said I had heard that they had their city election on 
 that Tuesday, in fact I supposed my Temperance speech had 
 something to do Avith it, and that I should be very glad to 
 be admitted behind the scenes. 
 
 " As for that," said John Fisher as we left the room, 
 " there is very little scenery ; and very little costume, but
 
 36 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 what we wear in the shops. The English of it is, as in all 
 large towns of which I know anything, that the liquor deal 
 ers, large and small, are of course a unit in all politics. 
 Their business compels them to be a unit. It is just as 
 slavery made the fifty thousand slaveholders into one great 
 corporation, and they needed no charter to incorporate them. 
 Of course, also, this liquor-dealing unit controls a great 
 many votes of men who drink daily. Every chalk-score 
 gives a lien on some one voter, and any candidate, who 
 will wipe out that score, may have that man's vote, without 
 many questions. Of course this combination, this unit, votes 
 together. It votes for the same President, for the same 
 Governor, for the same Sheriff, for the same Aldermen. 
 There is not a large town in America where this Unit does 
 not exist. It makes in each town a political club, of people 
 who never saw or heard of each other. This club votes, as it 
 has a right to, as one. 
 
 "What is there on the other side?" he went on, after he 
 had presented me to Lauderdale and Jackson, who were 
 waiting for us in the library. "On the other side are all 
 sorts of opinions. There are the politicians, who are inter 
 ested in National parties. They detest local politics, bc-cause 
 they introduce so much confusion in calculations. Then 
 there are the Temperance people. They are apt to be quar 
 relling with each other's panaceas. There are a handful of 
 people, one in fifty, Avho care about the schools. There are 
 a few lawyers with theories about government, and a few 
 persons with other theories. There are some ambitious young 
 men who wish the city were better governed ; who liate 
 rings, and will do anything, so they are o:ily sure nobody else 
 wants them to do it. All this breaks up the opposition to
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 37 
 
 the Unit. It breaks it up so badly in some places, that the 
 decent people, who would be glad to see a decent government, 
 lose all heart. 
 
 They tell me that in Boston, where I think your father came 
 from, they cannot get fifty voters in a hundred to the polls 
 at their city elections. They tell me that the Unit governs 
 them, while it has not a quarter part of the voters." 
 
 "But we do not do things in that way here," said Mr. 
 Lauderdale, a fat, bustling, jolly man, who stood, with his 
 back to the fire, rubbing his hands with glee. 
 
 "Not much," said Mr. Jackson, a tall, thin, pale man, 
 more taciturn, to whom he appealed. 
 
 John Fisher introduced me to these two gentlemen, and I 
 found they knew my name. Lauderdale began at once to 
 give me points which he wished I would make in the ad 
 dress I had come to deliver ; and Jackson, in his short-metre 
 way, made his suggestions and confirmed his friend's. One 
 and another gentleman came in, and to each I was present 
 ed. Some of them fell into our group, which was discuss 
 ing Temperance specially, the others fell into groups of their 
 own, all standing, until the entry of two gentlemen made 
 our number fourteen complete, and then without even a 
 word from our host every man looked for a chair, turned 
 it round and seated himself, so that we all sat in a rude 
 horseshoe order, with John Fisher in the middle, at his 
 writing table. 
 
 "I am glad to see you all," he said, very quietly. "I 
 hope all the news is as good as Weemyss brings us." And he 
 looked inquiringly at the left end of the horseshoe, and 
 nodded to the gentleman who sat there, who was, as it hap 
 pened, one of the last comers.
 
 38 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 "I am very sorry to say our news is very bad," replied 
 he ; "it is as bad as it can be. In fact Ward 7 has gone all to 
 pieces, and 'all the Kings oxen' cannot set it up again. If 
 the rest of you have as bad news as I, we may as well all 
 go a- fishing to-morrow morning." 
 
 There was something amusing in the lugubrious tone of 
 this Mr. Harkness. But he was evidently badly in earnest. 
 It was clear enough that he would not have made any such 
 confession outside these sacred walls. What he was telling, 
 also, was news which the public would not know till the 
 next morning ; might not know for many days. But there 
 "was no doubt it was true. It amounted to this, that in the 
 Seventh Ward, which was the very palladium of the vote of 
 the good sense and integrity of Tamworth, on which the 
 leaders in this coterie always relied for a square thousand 
 majority over "It," with which to to start all their calcula 
 tions, in this redoubtable Seventh Ward, certain old-time 
 jealousies had become uncontrollable. The Blues and the 
 Greens, in the house of our friends, were in raging quarrel 
 with each other. Swinton had declared that he would be 
 alderman this year, if every other district in Tamworth 
 chose the Devil and his saints to be aldermen. Swinton 
 would not be "sat upon" and despised any longer. He had 
 led the ward, in good times and bad times, and he would not 
 be snubbed as he had been at the caucus which chose dele 
 gates to the State convention. Ever since that time had 
 this fire been smouldering in Michael Swinton's mind. And 
 now it burst out, and there was not a man in all the shops 
 but thought Swinton had the right of it, and deserved 
 justice. 
 
 But, as everybody who sat around John Fisher's table
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 39 
 
 knew, that is, every one excepting me, Michael Swinton 
 could no more be chosen the alderman of Ward 7, than 
 Benedict Arnold could. Harkness was dramatic and very 
 amusing, as he described the horror of the people on the 
 Hill at any such suggestion. The people on the Hill were 
 going to the caucus this very night, in forces such as the 
 Hill had never sent to any caucus since caucuses were heard of. 
 To tell the truth, the people on the Hill generally let caucus 
 es alone. They generally voted for the ticket which was 
 suggested, well, in the room we were sitting in, or which 
 was approved there. But there came occasions when the 
 people on the Hill forgot their cosmogonies and their cor 
 relations, turned a cruel back on their own whist parties, 
 left the discussion of Protoplasm and of Evolution ; the last 
 novel was on the shelf, and the last Fortnightly was uncut, 
 while Mr. Molineux bade Dennis drive him down to the 
 ward meeting, that he might take part in the government of 
 the country. This was one of these gilded occasions. 
 There would be quiet to-night in the philosophical and fash 
 ionable circles on the Hill, while the Molineux people and 
 the Gnlls and the Fitz-Altamonts and the Sweenys all rode 
 down to the caucus, to vote as Henry Gull, who managed 
 the politics of the Hill, should direct them. 
 
 "And who are the Hill people going to send to the Board 
 of Aldermen?" asked John Fisher, laughing at Harkness's 
 lugubrious caricatures. 
 
 "Oh, they have got a fossil. Even you never heard of 
 him, Mr. Fisher. They dug him up out of the graveyard. 
 They have persuaded old Col. Stothers to run, and old Col. 
 Stothers says, that, 'if a little of the sineAvs of war should 
 prove necessary, he will venture to intimate that the fount-
 
 40 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 ain of the sinews will not soon run dry.' Old Col. Stothers 
 is to take the stump against Michael Swinton ! The cau 
 cus to-night will break up in a row. Swinton's people will 
 adjourn to the Methodist vestry opposite, and you will have 
 two tickets, and then Master Dick Mallory, the most popu 
 lar and the most unreliable little son of perdition that ever 
 lied to a woman or cheated a man, will slip into your City 
 Council, over the head of both your candidates, and the 
 good God only knows what mischief he will do when he 
 gets there !" 
 
 This was poor Horace Harkness's peroration. He had 
 occupied more time than his share in telling his story, and 
 he knew he had. But all men knew the importance of it. 
 Ilarkness had been spending all that day, all of many days, 
 on this business. There was no one "of any account" in 
 the Ward whom he had not seen about it. He had even 
 talked suavely and with dignity with Col. Stothers. "I tell 
 you" said Harkncss, "I put on my dogskin gloves, I took a 
 Malacca joint. I had Withers send a coupe to carry me, 
 and we put Bob Sykes into livery for the occasion." But 
 the Colonel's heart had not melted. Harkness seemed to 
 have done all that a prudent and conciliatory counsellor could 
 do. But the English of it all was that the Ward was 
 fatally divided, and that at the very outset we had lost 
 our best advantage. Worst of all, as it always is, we 
 were sorest wounded in the house of our friends. 
 
 In such fashion we rapidly went round the semi-circle, 
 and in longer or shorter reports obtained an interior view of 
 the prospects of the great election from each of the twelve 
 wards. There was never the slightest self-deception among 
 these men. They spoke as clearly and calmly of defection or
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 41 
 
 of accession to the forces of order, as a physician in consul 
 tation might speak of the temperature revealed by his ther 
 mometer, or the rapidity of the pulse as he had counted it. 
 However pitilessly they might one day choose to brag before 
 the public, there was no such bragging here. Some of the 
 reports were encouraging ; some seemed fatal. It was 
 taken for granted that unless " We" carried eight wards 
 handsomely, "/" scored a substantial victory. No one 
 spoke of the parties in contest by any political or local names. 
 It was " We" or "They," or, as I have written, " We" or 
 11 It." They all understood entirely that their enemy moved 
 as one man, and their whole object was to secure a con 
 centration which might, in the least degree, rival a union 
 so certain and so formidable. 
 
 How far they would succeed in this, I was by no means 
 certain. "Where bad men conspire, good men must com 
 bine," Mr. Burke says, but he does not say, anywhere, how 
 they are to do it. Cousin says, on the other hand, that low 
 down in the quality of evil is its powerlessness, its incapacity 
 to reproduce itself. This also is true. 
 
 But we were not worried about the evil of ten years to 
 come. It was the evil of that autumn that we were in bat 
 tle with. And that living Evil had power enough to do a 
 great deal of harm in Tamworth, if it were permitted to 
 take possession of the government now. How were you go 
 ing to combine ? You had twenty different corps and as 
 many as five hundred corps commanders, and each corps 
 commander had a special evil he wanted to crush and a 
 special policy he wanted to carry out. 
 
 Indeed, I was reminded of Spain, where, with sixteen mil 
 lion people, they have sixteen million and one political parties.
 
 42 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 But in John Fisher's library there was harmony, if only 
 from that library it might take possession of the city, and 
 the real leaders of the city. 
 
 Everybody knew that there were leaders ; nobody com 
 plained of this. The opinions of the leaders had been 
 obtained. Indeed, you might say that this meeting was 
 meant chiefly for a report of what the leaders of the different 
 shops, clubs, reading-rooms, unions, associations, corpora 
 tions and companies, thought best and could stand by. 
 
 What they thought BEST, that was really the object which 
 these twelve gentlemen who were " combining " with John 
 Fisher believed was attainable, and indeed they thought it 
 was the only thing worth fighting for. I was fairly awed 
 sometimes by the cool puritanism with which some John 
 Brown would make a report as to the tone of feeling of a 
 knot of boys, hardly yet men, in a skating-rink which he 
 seemed to be interested in. I was tempted to ask him if 
 they did not open the rink with prayer. I am sure they 
 might have done so, as he described the young fellows there, 
 and have done it reverently. 
 
 When I did speak to him, he said, with a smile like Crom 
 well's, " We do not mean to let the Devil have all the fun." 
 
 The reports from the twelve wards were all made. John 
 Fisher " resumed " the position with wonderful clearness, 
 and threw light on it, with a way to give every one 
 courage. He then made two or three practical suggestions 
 which led to discussion, and asked some questions which 
 called forth answers. Of the result of the discussions this 
 story will tell. I will not try to make the reader under 
 stand the detail.
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 43 
 
 Everything had to be considered. The people of the 
 Causeway, justly irritated about the vote on their school- 
 houses ; the whole interest of the Wire men, who had lost 
 their water power when the canal was closed by the State, 
 and had never had justice done them ; the evident unpopu 
 larity of the commission which was cutting down all the 
 trees in the streets and substituting jonquils, with the best 
 possible motives, but in face of public opinion ; the demands 
 of the cabmen ; the rights of the street railways ; the need 
 of the athletic clubs, who wanted new privileges in the park ; 
 the failure of skating, now for two years, all these interests 
 and a hundred more, I suppose, Avere to be considered and 
 conciliated. And IT was not to be permitted to handle one 
 of them. Every one knew how IT manages such affairs. 
 
 For me, I listened longer than I understood, and when 
 the company broke up into groups again, and different 
 gentlemen began impressing their wishes on each other, I 
 left the library and crossed to the parlor, where I hoped to 
 find my guardian genius in the house, my " guide, philoso 
 pher and friend," Mary Bell. 
 
 I found there, as I knew I should, several ladies, generally 
 the wives of the gentlemen who had met in the library. 
 There was quite a little party assembled. 
 
 I joined Miss Bell at once. 
 
 It is very hard to describe the charm which this young 
 woman, I had almost said this girl, already had over 
 me. It is very hard to describe her. I have never known 
 any one say she was beautiful when he had seen her but 
 once ; nay, when he had only seen her, as you might see 
 her, as she rode by in a carriage. On the other hand, if an 
 impious person should say in a group of her friends that
 
 44 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 Mary Bell is not beautiful, he would hardly escape with his 
 life, after the assertion. Clearly the charm is in her expres 
 sion, as people say, if they only quite knew what they 
 meant. I have found this out, that her voice is very sweet, 
 and shows its sweetness in talk quite as well and as often 
 as in the elaborations of music. 
 
 What I said of her raving, when we were in the carriage, 
 shows what is her enthusiasm for nature. Indeed, when I 
 joined the party in the drawing-room, Mary Bell was saying 
 to a Mr. Rossiter, who had left the library a little before me, 
 
 " Oh, yes ! in the perfect world, whenever we come so 
 far, all our dances will be out-of-doors." 
 
 They had been talking of the impromptu frolic, led by 
 Mrs. Grattan, on the lawn. 
 
 " Then we shall certainly not dance much in what is now 
 the dancing season," said he. " Low dresses and satin 
 slippers will have little chance with the snow fifteen inches 
 deep and the thermometer below zero." 
 
 "Who said satin slippers, Mr. Rossiter?" said she. 
 " And who asked for low dresses? You only show your 
 crass conservatism, as Mr. Mellen here would say. Only 
 yesterday Mrs. Fisher brought home a charming book of 
 national costumes, where there is a lovely Polish lady 
 waltzing in fur boots and in a coat of furs. 
 
 " You may be sure that half the social evils you gentle 
 men are battling about in the library, come from the people's 
 staying in-doors so much." 
 
 "I should like to know what you would say, after a 
 winter with the Sioux on the plains," said he. 
 
 " Well, we need not push things to the extremes," said 
 Mary Bell. "Perhaps the Sioux and we can meet half
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 45 
 
 way. Let us persuade Stilling & Hausbildcr to send them 
 out a little consignment of frame houses say ten thousand ; 
 that is nothing to Stilling & Hausbilder. That will make 
 fifty thousand poor, freezing wretches comfortable. Then 
 the Sioux may send back to me, and other long-suffering 
 people like me, fifty thousand skins of ermine, and otter, 
 and beaver, and elk, and bear, and we will be grateful to 
 them, if only they or any power can keep us in the open air 
 four hours of every winter day." 
 
 Mr. Rossiter laughed, and said that she solved the Indian 
 problem very easily. She threw the solution, he observed, 
 quite largely on Stilling & Hausbilder. 
 
 " Not too largely, perhaps," said Mary Bell, speaking 
 now more seriously. "I do not know Mr. Stilling, but I 
 do know Mr. Hausbilder. He helped me through so well 
 with one of my poor people. A man who has worked his 
 way up, every inch from the bottom. He knows what it is 
 to be hungry, and what it is to be cold. And he is a man 
 who takes hold with a will when there is anything to do. 
 
 " Yes ; there are rich men, and rich men. Some of them, 
 and this is one of them, like to succeed in their business. 
 Just as Cordelia Grattan likes to write a good story ; just as 
 Meissonier likes to paint a good picture ; just as Dr. Thorn- 
 dike likes to have a patient get well, this Mr. Hausbilder 
 likes to send a house to the king of the Cannibal Islands. 
 He likes to have it go up without the sound of a hammer. 
 He likes to imagine the king's satisfaction when he comes 
 down from the hills after two days, and finds the house 
 standing there. He likes to have anybody write and tell 
 him about it. 
 
 " He does it because he likes it. He does not do it
 
 46 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 because Mr. Ledger, the book-keeper, or Mr. Skinflint, the 
 financial partner, tells him that they have made eleven hun 
 dred and twelve dollars and twenty-three cents on the houses 
 they sent to the Cannibal Islands. 
 
 " He wants to have the people in this world live in better 
 houses. This is his way of making the Kingdom of God 
 come." 
 
 I said with some of her enthusiasm that Westerly said 
 the same thing to me about clothing every twentieth man in 
 the country. He took real pleasure, substantial pleasure, in 
 knowing that they had better clothes on their backs than 
 they would have had if he had not lived. 
 
 "No!" said Mary Bell. "I used to think the money 
 part was the hard part. I do not think so now. Is not 
 your poor Secretary of the Treasury half crazy because he 
 does not know what to do with his money ? He pulls down 
 his vaults and builds larger. 
 
 " Poor man ! " and she shuddered. " I should think he 
 would be so afraid of the parable." 
 
 Mr. Rossiter said that his mother used to say that slie 
 had been tried with all the trials except one. She was sev 
 enty years old, and said she wished she could be tried by 
 Prosperity. She wanted to know how she should bear 
 that. 
 
 " I wish I had known your mother," cried Mary Bell, and 
 I saw that at the moment the young man's cheeks flushed 
 red. He was not wholly under his own control. "I think," 
 said she, " that I should have agreed with her in so many 
 things." 
 
 Was Mr. Rossiter, then, so intimate with Miss Bell that 
 she knew what his mother said or thought often ?
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 47 
 
 She turned to me, and asked some question about what 
 she called the caucus in the library. 
 
 I answered as well as I could". But I found I was annoyed, 
 when Rossiter, who knew everybody and understood the lay 
 of the land so much better than I did, was able to supple 
 ment my explanation, and, in fact, filled in the exact gap 
 where mine failed. 
 
 Why was I annoyed ? Mr. Rossiter did this without the 
 least presumption or affectation. Why should he not tell 
 Miss Bell what she wanted to know? 
 
 None the less I was annoyed, and I was annoyed because 
 I was annoyed. Who was this Mr. Rossiter? I crossed 
 the room to ask my other friend in the family, Cordelia 
 Grattan, who was just leaving the piano. 
 
 But at this moment there was a general incursion of all 
 the men in the library. We had but few ladies in the 
 drawing-room to meet the requisitions, or to make agree- 
 ableness, light and sweetness for so great a multitude, still, 
 our little handful of skirmishers formed in open order to 
 receive infantry as well as they could. 
 
 But Cordelia Grattan was surrounded by half-a-dozen 
 gentlemen beside myself, and I found I had no chance to ask 
 her personal questions about the company. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 T MUST not attempt to follow, in such detail, the successive 
 
 days of even the short visit which I made with John 
 
 Fisher. To the last, each day was a day of surprises. I 
 
 never knew whether we were to be artists, or historians, or
 
 48 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 people of fashion, or ecclesiastics, or patrons of education. 
 Days came, indeed, when we led a simple home life, if we 
 chose, though there was always a good deal of coming and 
 going for those who would. The children were bright, 
 wide-awake, intelligent girls and boys, who were evidently 
 made to understand that they must take their share in the 
 work of the world, and not expect play unmixed with work, 
 or sugar without its share of lemon-juice. 
 
 I was very much interested to see how John Fisher made 
 both boys and girls his companions. They were as much 
 at home in his work-room as he was. Those who were old 
 enough would copy a letter, or translate an invoice, as if 
 they had been trained clerks. And, in talk at table, he took 
 it for granted that they were interested in what interested him, 
 as if indeed they had been his partners. 
 
 There were horses and carriages enough in the stables to 
 meet the requisitions even of the most varied caprice. And 
 people used them freely. I had been driving one morning, 
 early in my visit, with Mrs. Grattan. I had tried to draw 
 out from her some hints as to the standing and influence of 
 one or two of the gentlemen with whom I had affairs in the 
 city, and not without success. But I may as well confess 
 that my secret object in proposing the drive had been to 
 come at some better understanding about Mary Bell and her 
 position in the family. Mary Bell lent a hand always, but 
 she did not seem like what one calls a "German wife," that 
 convenient member in a large German household who relieves 
 the lady of the house from all care, and leaves her free for 
 all relaxation and amusement. Yet she did not seem to me 
 on a visit simply, as I was. Servants and children seemed 
 to recognize her presence as if she were to the manor bred,
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 49 
 
 and was to remain there. There had been no talk of her 
 arrival, and there was no allusion to her going away. 
 
 I quite pleased myself with my skill in leading up to talk 
 of Miss Bell, as if I had not led up to it. And very much 
 was I pleased by Mrs. Grattan's frank and hearty enthusiasm 
 about her. I had seen, before this, the simple and wholly un- 
 consciotis way in which a lady of large fortune can speak of 
 some old school friend, who is living on three hundred a 
 year, as if income were of no consequence, and a few mil 
 lions in bonds, more or less, a sheer nothing, in comparison 
 Avith good temper, or pleasant memories of school. Cordelia 
 Grattan spoke now in this easy way ; she spoke with all 
 the eagerness of a determined friend, and, what pleased me 
 most, she recognized the absolutely indescribable charm in 
 Mary Bell, which had so attracted me, and which I found it 
 impossible to define. 
 
 I did not, however, dare talk too long, even on a subject 
 so agreeable. As if we had come on it merely by chance, 
 sure that I could now renew it when I would, I put in an 
 allusion to Mrs. Fisher, who confused me more and more. 
 And once more, just as it had been with Miss Bell, once or 
 twice, when I had tried such an experiment, I was landed 
 in Antipodes. 
 
 "I thought Mrs. Fisher seemed annoyed this morning 
 when the children spoke of Dr. Lemon's lecture. Is she so 
 fond of him?" This was my ingenious question. 
 
 "I think you did not hear Dr. Lemon." This was the 
 more ingenious reply. For the subtle lady went on, "You 
 must not pretend to talk of the Philippine Islands, until 
 you have heard all our missionary course. We shall teach 
 you the difference between Apiu and Opiana. That is really
 
 50 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 a curious business, the traces of taboo after two generations 
 of Christianity. Did you " etc., etc., etc., and not one 
 word, too, from me as to Mrs. Fisher or her peculiarities. 
 
 As we drove up to the door my lively companion looked 
 at her watch, and declared that we were late, and that she had 
 to dress. "And we must be very early," she said "for the 
 ministers will only adjourn for an hour. They will call it 
 an hour, and in truth it will be only an hour and a half." 
 
 "Ministers!" said I, amazed. For I had thought we 
 were to lunch by ourselves. 
 
 "Is it possible," said she, as she jumped from the carriage, 
 "that you are so taken up with your licenses and your drunk 
 enness that you do not know that the Convention of Cove 
 nanters met here this morning? Why all the chiefs, f the pre 
 siding elders and all the rest are to lunch with us, and I 
 must run up stairs to attend to my finery." 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 E of the servants confirmed Mrs. Grattan's statement. 
 Lunch was to be served half an hour earlier than 
 usual. 
 
 The second secession of Reformed Covenanters holds very 
 much the same position in Tamworth which the Greek 
 church has in Moscow, the Latin church in Rome, the En 
 glish church in Canterbury , and your own church, dear reader, 
 in the particular city or town in which you read these lines. 
 Possibly it might fare as well without a Decennial Con-
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 51 
 
 vention as with one. But its leaders do not think so, and 
 on this occasion one of these great historical gatherings came 
 in on us just as we were preparing for our critical local elec 
 tion. 
 
 Some two thousand delegates were in town, quartered by 
 a central committee on the different residents, and I soon 
 found that eight or ten of them had been billeted on Mr. 
 Fisher, and were beginning their visit under our hospitable 
 roof. Some forty or fifty others had been asked to-day to 
 lunch, and had accepted under the stern condition that they 
 could be only absent from the town hall an hour, or, at the 
 most, an hour and a half. On such occasions the clergy are 
 regardless of dyspepsia, as indeed they are, perhaps, on too 
 many others. 
 
 I had scarcely entered the parlors where they met, when 
 I saw that John Fisher's invitations had been wisely given, 
 whoever had been trusted with that affair. Wisely, I mean, 
 if he meant to have the leaders of opinion, or those who 
 thought they were. For, though there were sitting meekly 
 by different doors, in small chairs, with their backs to the 
 wall, two or three of those timid brethren who always make 
 one element of such a party and take this method of giving 
 literal obedience to the instructions of the parable, the large 
 part of the company were men at ease in society, men who 
 would have attracted note anywhere, and were not unused 
 to offering their opinions, and commanding respect for them. 
 They were in half-a-dozen groups, eagerly discussing the 
 policies of the convention, past and to come. There was 
 the inevitable group of those who wanted the " business " to 
 go on in a pre-ordained and well-regulated fashion. There 
 was the other inevitable group of those who considered that
 
 52 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 this well-regulated fashion had been regulated only by Satan, 
 or one of his satellites, and who were determined to over 
 throw it. But these different groups were perfectly good- 
 tempered ; and, from one nebula to another, messenger 
 comets passed, from time to time, bringing or carrying one 
 or another proposition for conciliation. " Would White 
 accept such an amendment?" or, " Would Jones withdraw 
 his motion till Brown had offered his?" or, " Would Black 
 yield the floor to Gray, that Gray might explain AVhite's 
 amendment to Black ? " All this was eagerly canvassed 
 Avhile we waited the short summons to what was called 
 " lunch," and was an elaborate dinner. 
 
 Be it known to readers in Europe that the hospitality of 
 the great Western cities of America does not limit itself 
 severely by names. You are asked to dine at six, and you 
 decline because you are engaged elsewhere. Then you are 
 asked to lunch at one, and you accept, and the provision 
 made for you is perhaps identical in form with what it would 
 be at the most elaborate dinner. At least it is such as 
 would have been ample for Amadis, were he looking on 
 food for the last time before a six days' encounter with 
 giants. 
 
 I sat at Mrs. Fisher's end of one of two long tables 
 which had been set in the largest drawing-room of the 
 house, the ample dining-room even being insufficient for so 
 large a company. I found, as I had expected, that all the 
 more prominent of the clergy of the neighborhood were 
 there, of Avhatever communion. There were two bishops, 
 for instance, and all the professors of both theological 
 schools. On this occasion all warfare between " Homoi " 
 and " Homo" ceased, and there was no difference between
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 53 
 
 an ultra Montanist and an Ultra-montanist. On other days 
 the hyphen separates two worlds of belief. We were the 
 lions and the lambs, and while we discussed the oysters, the 
 clear soup, the white fish, the fillet and other necessaries of 
 life at Mr. Fisher's board, we did not feast upon each other. 
 
 But I need hardly say that Mrs. Fisher did her best to 
 disturb this harmony. Nothing but the admirable breeding 
 of the different theologians prevented her. I hardly ought, 
 however, to give her credit for any intention in the matter. 
 I think that she simply gabbled from "native impulse, ele 
 mental force," as a forgotten poet says. None the less it is 
 true, as Henry Kingsley says, that, when the Devil has no 
 knave for an errand, he sends a fool, and that this answers 
 quite as well. 
 
 My experience has confirmed Henry Kingsley's. Mrs. 
 Fisher, of course, did not know the names of many of the 
 strangers. But she did know the clergymen of Tamworth, 
 and perhaps had herself arranged that most of these gentle 
 men should sit at our end of her table. So soon as there 
 was a chance, she began with her little compliments. 
 
 "My dear Professor Prince, let me thank you with all my 
 heart for your charming article in the Panoplist. I would 
 not go to bed till I had read it through. I said to Cordelia, 
 ' You may go to bed, the rest of you, but I will read every 
 word of this paper ; it is so convincing and cogent.' And so in 
 structive, too ! I agree with you in every word, and I know 
 my husband does. Do not you, Dr. Witherspoon? Have 
 you seen the Panoplist ?" 
 
 Now the truth was that it was only by the merest accident 
 that Mrs. Fisher knew that there was any such article. She 
 had happened to see the magazine on the library table on
 
 54 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 that morning, and had observed Professor Prince's name, as 
 one of the authors, on the cover. Unfortunately, too, the 
 article was a bitter personal attack on this very Dr. Wither- 
 spoon to whom she appealed so confidently. It was, indeed, 
 much more sharp than are even the terms of ordinary 
 "theological hatred" ; and I fancy that even Prince himseli 
 was thoroughly ashamed of it by this time. 
 
 But Dr. Witherspoon is a well-bred man, and was equal 
 to the emergency. 
 
 "I have not read my Panoplist carefully," said he ; "I 
 opened on their article on the ' Lost Cities of Edom,' and 
 that sent me back to Waddington's book, which I had not 
 seen. Mr Alvord," he added, bowing to one of the strange 
 gentlemen, " I think you have been in Edom?" 
 
 And they launched at once into questions of trans- Jordanic 
 antiquities, quite to Mrs. Fisher's amazement. She had 
 heard of "lost cities," and had practiced a little in the game 
 which bears that name. You hide the name of Troy, for in 
 stance, in such a phrase as "What royal weather." Mrs. 
 Fisher tried to recollect how the word ' ' Elyria " was buried 
 in the phrase, "John's grandmother died yesterday." But 
 she had either confounded the name "Elyria" with some 
 other name, or it was not John's grandmother who had died. 
 Poor Dr. Lemon had never heard of the game, and did not 
 in the least understand what she meant. While he listened 
 to her he was trying to catch what the traveler said, and he 
 put in "Yes"and "No, "and "That is curious," in very bad 
 places. But Mrs. Fisher did not mind this ; and Professor 
 Prince seemed to me ashamed of his ill-nature, and glad for 
 the relief Mr. Alvord gave him. 
 
 Mrs. Fisher had lately returned from a six weeks' visit in
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 55 
 
 Baltimore, and some one asked her if there had not been an 
 unusual religious interest there. "Oh, yes! I think so; 
 I know there was ; Mrs. Carrol was speaking to Miss Linders 
 about it, I am quite sure, the morning we drove in the park. 
 But you know I had such a cold all the time I was in Balti 
 more." Poor Dr. Lemon on one side of her, and Dr. Van- 
 derweyer on the other, had to give her up at last. But she 
 would not give them up. Lemon was perfectly delighted to 
 find himself so near the great Dr. Vanderweyer. Vander- 
 weyer was just home from traveling in Europe. He had 
 dined with Gladstone ; Ruskin had taken him through the 
 galleries ; he had even traveled with Tennyson, had met 
 Martineau and Cardinal Wiseman again and again ; had been 
 made a guest and was quite at home at Balliol, and in Paris 
 had been invited to lecture. It was a great thing for quiet Dr. 
 Lemon to meet Vanderweyer, and hear him talk. He would 
 not talk across Mrs. Fisher, but he did think he might pick 
 up some crumbs. He was doomed to disappointment. 
 
 After the episode with Professor Prince, she turned to her 
 neighbor and said to him, " Doctor, I have been dying 
 to see your wife, and now I shall send her a message by 
 you." 
 
 "Yes," said the great man, and he added gallantly that he 
 would not forget one message though she should give him 
 one hundred. What could Mrs. Vanderweyer write or do? 
 He should be at home on Monday, and Mrs. Fisher should 
 hear directly. 
 
 " I want her to send me word, Doctor, whether she puts 
 camphor under the edges of her carpets, or whether she ever 
 tried green tobacco leaves. I read in a newspaper that crude 
 camphor," etc., etc., etc.
 
 56 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 And this ended all hope of hearing any of the central 
 axioms of life from Dr. Vanderweyer. 
 
 The courses were very promptly served. The ministers 
 seemed to be men not unused to eating rapidly, and talking a 
 good deal at the same time. Within an hour and twenty 
 minutes, this little interlude to the great discussions of the 
 convention was over ; and Fisher and his wife, Mrs. Grattan, 
 Miss Bell and I, found ourselves alone in the library. 
 
 " Peace after storm," said Mary Bell. 
 
 "Storm ! " said Fisher, laughing. "We had no storm at 
 our end of the table. They were as good-natured as lambs." 
 
 "My gentlemen were good-natured enough," said she. 
 "But they forgot my existence. There was so much talk 
 about the amendment, and the rider, and the original proposi 
 tion and the substitute, that I really forgot minor matters, as 
 the Ten Commandments and Beatitudes. I wonder if I did 
 not steal that little man's handkerchief," and she pretended 
 to look at her own to see what initials were marked on it. 
 
 "But that is the manner of conventions, " said our good- 
 natured host. ' ' Think what a variety this is to these gentle 
 men. Those very neighbors of yours, now; for six months, 
 those good fellows have had no chance to try their hand in 
 governing in this fashion. One of them has been begging 
 money for Siloam college ; one of them has been bullying 
 the school committee of Cranberry Centre ; one of them has 
 fought through his drainage scheme for Hollybank, and that 
 little white one had been reading his proof-sheets for a new 
 translation of the ' Wisdom of the Son of Sirach.' It does 
 them no end of good to be shaken up together. The ministers' 
 parties are the most interesting to me of all of them. Be 
 cause, if you asK the right men, any forty of them take a
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 57 
 
 wider range than any other forty men you can light on 
 easily." 
 
 I said I did not see that. 
 
 " Oh !" said Fisher. "Forty artists all talk Rose Madder 
 and wrinkled canvas. 
 
 "Forty newspaper men all talk about the Associated Press. 
 
 "Forty authors talk about International Copyright. 
 
 "But you get forty ministers together, and you do not know 
 what will come. They will talk about anything in the 
 heavens above or the earth beneath." 
 
 " What I know, " said Mrs. Fisher, " is that that ridicu 
 lous Mr. Alvord does not know what a lost city is." 
 
 Fisher took me off with him. 
 
 "It is a good thing," he said, "to bring the different 
 kinds together. At heart, the ministers themselves are 
 catholic and tolerant. It is rather the denominational news 
 papers which keep up the sectarianism of the country. The 
 ministers themselves know they are in the same boat, and, 
 whenever they are thrown together, they find a thousand 
 ways to help each other." 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 TT 7HEN the carriage came for me, which my friends of 
 the Temperance Society had sent, on the evening of 
 my speech, I noticed that there was a policeman on the box 
 with the coachman. I had been, I confess, a little disappoint 
 ed when I found that Mrs. Grattan and Miss Bell were not 
 coming to the meeting. John Fisher did join me.
 
 58 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 The two members of the committee who escorted us were 
 gentlemen I had not met before, and, at the very first, I fan 
 cied that they were more excited than the occasion seemed to 
 me to warrant. Scarcely were we in the carriage when one of 
 them began to advise the coachman as to his route. 
 
 " Careful Thomas ; be sure you turn in by Ninth street. 
 Don't let them see you on the avenue." 
 
 Then the other tried to soothe him. " You are nervous, 
 Harry; you are nervous. You've never been under fire." 
 But, though he said to me, in a reassuring way, "It is all right ; 
 it is all right, Mr. Mellen," it was clear enough to me that 
 he was the more nervous of the two. 
 
 Gradually it leaked out that a row was quite probable. 
 All the afternoon handbills had been circulated, and posters 
 on the walls had announced that no Chinaman should speak 
 in Tamworth. Some ingenious liquor dealer, who had 
 wanted to breakup the meeting, had given the idea that, be 
 cause I had just come from San Francisco, I was an apostle 
 of Chinese labor, of the religion of Confucius in general and 
 particular. When our friends had left the hall, to come for 
 us, a considerable crowd was already around the doors, and 
 one of them had heard an address in which it was explained 
 that Chinamen ate rats, and could therefore under-bid the 
 regular workman in his own market. It had also been ex 
 plained that he drank nothing but bilge-water, and, as soon 
 as he arrived, would prohibit the sale of whisky and lager. 
 The keeper of the hall had shown the white feather, and 
 wanted to postpone the meeting. But bolder counsels had 
 prevailed. He had been compelled to light up, and had been 
 bidden to open the doors at the usual hour. The Mayor had 
 been notified of the danger, and now our carriage was to
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 59 
 
 dodge through the streets, that I might enter quietly at the 
 back of the hall through Judge Tristum's private door. 
 
 This was the reason why John Fisher had bidden Miss 
 Bell and Mrs. G rattan stay away. I say "bidden"; he 
 advised at first, and they were only more eager to be 
 present. He had been forced to assume for once the aspect 
 of command. 
 
 As for his wife, he knew she would not come, because as 
 late as dinner she had said she should certainly be one of the 
 party. 
 
 We made the transit safely through Judge Tristum's 
 office. The old gentleman was there himself, with both his 
 sons, to join us on the platform. " It is a good while since 
 I have gone to a temperance meeting, Mr. Mellen," he said 
 to me. "But this promises to be interesting," with a 
 delightful smile. Then we Avere both introduced to Mr. 
 Stepney, a young man whom I had never met, who was to 
 make the first speech. He looked to me a little pale. But 
 I found I misjudged him, if I thought him afraid. 
 
 The moment we were on the platform there was no ques 
 tion as to what would be the experience of the evening, had 
 there, indeed, been any room for question before. 
 
 As we crossed to our seats we could see that the hall was 
 crowded, every seat filled, and the aisles between jammed 
 close with such a host of men as one never saw at a temper 
 ance meeting before. Every now and then a bottle would 
 be tossed from one side to another, caught, and a pretence 
 made of drinking. As we entered a shout rose of " No 
 rats ! No rats !" and one boy cried out, " Where'b the rat 
 catcher?" by which epithet I know he meant me. 
 
 Had they but known it, it so happens that I sympathize
 
 60 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 through and through with the feeling on the Pacific coast, 
 that our civilization is our own, and that we ought not to be 
 expected to receive all the overplus of Asia. I know that, 
 if I lived there, I should join in very stringent measures, so 
 they were legal, to keep out the Chinaman. I never forgot 
 how Arinori, the Japanese minister, once said to me, "If I 
 were an American statesman, I would resist the Chinese in 
 vasion with the last drop of my blood." But the platform 
 and the meeting were no place for me to say this. I saw in 
 a minute that this crowd was of that complexion and quality 
 which, as Curran says, "It is not well to run away from." 
 I altered the plan of my speech a little, that it should be 
 sufficiently defiant, and waited the issue. 
 
 The meeting was opened in form, and little Stepney sailed 
 in magnificently. If the little fellow was frightened, he did 
 not show it more than Hardy did when he led the English 
 line at Trafalgar. Hardly had he begun when a dead rat, 
 thrown from the floor, grazed his ear and struck the Avail 
 behind. But, on the same instant, a stout policeman collared 
 the boy who threw the rat, lifted him from his place and 
 passed him, over the heads of some orderly people in front, to 
 three or four other officers, who huddled him out by a side 
 door. Meanwhile cries from the hall, "Let him alone ! 
 This is not the Chinaman ! Down in front ! Let him go 
 on ! "with appeals from the chairman, finally subsided into a 
 calm, and Stepney got a chance to put in a hundred words 
 extremely well. Since than I have marked him as an orator. 
 The true orator is he who knows how to place his first hundred 
 words. 
 
 He made a ringing and effective speech to an audience, half 
 of whom had never heard such a speech before. He had
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 61 
 
 won their attention in that first minute and he never lost it. 
 They fairly applauded him when he sat down. 
 
 But I, who was to follow, did not deceive myself for a 
 moment. I had had the chance which Stepney gave me, by 
 speaking a full half-hour, to recast my speech. I saw that 
 full half my audience were well disposed, or, rather, were so 
 disposed that they wanted nothing better than a fight in which 
 they might turn these rowdies out-of-doors. The episode of 
 the boy, captured and "jugged," showed that law and order 
 had a certain power in the hall. None the less, however, 
 was it clear that I must take and keep an attitude of confi 
 dence, even of attack. 
 
 I was met as I stepped forward with ringing cheers and 
 howls of derision. 1 bowed to the cheers, waited for them 
 to stop, nodded to one and another friend, and then waved 
 my hand as if they were all my friends. By this sheer 
 audacity 1 won silence. When it was perfect silence I began : 
 
 " Have you no good liquor in Tarn worth? And what do 
 you pay for it? I saw a man on Fourth street selling poor 
 Indiana wish-wash at ten cents a drink yesterday. Do you 
 stand that? That man bought at a dollar and ten cents a 
 gallon, and sold for six dollars a gallon. We know better 
 than that in our country." 
 
 The sheer surprise of the audience at such secular remarks 
 from a "distinguished" Temperance orator, as the bills and 
 the president had described me, gave me the all-essential five 
 minutes, by the loss of which any speech is lost, and by the 
 winning of which, probably, any speech is saved. All the 
 beginning of the address was a subtle attack on the retailers 
 (who were, in fact, ruining half my audience) , and was what, 
 I dare say, the men among them were in the habit of saying
 
 62 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 to each other, when they had a chance to look back and see 
 where their money had gone to. I passed to more dangerous 
 ground. "Why should Jem Vilas and Tom Sayers want to 
 keep their shops open on Sunday, when I may not sell dry 
 goods ; when Mr. Fisher may not make machinery ; when the 
 trains may not run on Sunday?" If a man bought fruit and 
 had it Saturday night, it might rot in the shop before Monday 
 morning, and the law would not let him sell it. Why should 
 the law be more mild on McGullian and on Harris, than it 
 was on Warder or Trott, who sold strawberries and bananas ? 
 
 But by this I was losing sympathy. This whole row had 
 been created by half-a-dozen men who had been fined once and 
 again for selling liquors on Sunday. They were in presence 
 before me, with a dozen of their bar-tenders, and hundreds of 
 their customers. I was very soon warned by a rotten egg, full 
 on the bosom of my shirt, that there were some good pitchers 
 in the gallery, and, at the moment when this strucK me, a 
 voice from the gallery cried out, ' ' Tell us how to cook rats ! 
 Turn him round ; we want to see his tail ! " and my periods 
 were lost in howls ; in screams ; in cross-talking all resulting 
 in that chaos confounded, which takes possession of a great 
 hall when a thousand people are all expressing their senti 
 ments together. A somewhat noisy sergeant of police made 
 himself rather conspicuous. But, really, he was powerless. 
 The hall was too full for any person to move from place to 
 place without the ready help of those among whom he moved. 
 To make an arrest and carry off the victim was simply 
 impossible. 
 
 While this chaos lasted, I stood talking with Fisher and 
 the president of the evening. After ten minutes, more or less, 
 I stepped forward again, waved my hand as before, and as
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 63 
 
 before commanded instant silence ; for if every man stops 
 talking, by surprise, the place is as silent as creation was in 
 the beginning. 
 
 " Let me tell you," I said, " how we do in China ! " 
 
 The audacity of this speech saved it as before. 
 
 "The men give their money Saturday night to their wives. 
 I know a woman who made her husband promise to buy all 
 his liquor of her, and she would only get what he liked. 
 She got old Bourbon, Dry-mash, and three or four more of 
 the best Kentucky brands. She made her parlor into a pretty 
 drinkiug-place, she got a neighbor to teach her how to mix 
 liquors well, and made it very pleasant for her husband and 
 his friends. He liked her shop better than anybody's. It 
 was the prettiest shop in town. She could buy at wholesale 
 of the big dealers, who ride in carriages, arid have plenty of 
 money. And her husband, instead of drinking once a day, 
 drank three times a day, and then he drank five times in a 
 day, and, the more he drank, the more money she made. 
 And at last he died in the horrors. And she had saved up 
 money enough, in the five years she had been killing him, 
 to build herself a cottage on the hill and to send all the children 
 to the Academy." 
 
 I had taken them again by surprise, and a parable is al 
 ways listened to. People will remember a parable fifty years, 
 when they do not remember an argument for an hour. 
 Also, we gained a laugh ; a hearty laugh from the 
 audience, and a laugh is a great thing on the side of 
 order. I had no passion for speech under the circumstances. 
 I thought if I could close handsomely, without one more 
 storm, we should come oft' witli the honors. One does not 
 seek much logical connection in such surroundings. Indeed,
 
 64 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 it is a fault in any public address, to a general audience, to 
 be very careful to tell why you say what you say. Say it. 
 That is the best rule. 
 
 ' ' What reason is there why a handful of ten men should 
 govern Tamworth? What makes Harry Redmond a better 
 man than my friend, yonder, who threw the turnip at me? 
 Why is Fritz Reidelberger more fit to govern Tamworth 
 than Rudolph Kramer or Carl Schmidt? Who told Frank 
 Wallis that he was one of the rulers of Tamworth to rule you 
 
 workingmen, who held the votes of Tamworth " And, 
 
 by this time, they sa\v I was reading from a list, on which 
 were Redmond's name, Reidelberger's and Wallis's. I went 
 through the list of ten. "These are the ten men whose 
 names are on all the bonds of all the liquor-dealers here. 
 There is not a poor man who wants to sell you or me whisky 
 but he has had to go to one of these men and make a bow to 
 him, and ask him to sign his license bond. These ten men it is, 
 who mean to tell you how to vote when the Election Day 
 comes round. These ten men will meet in the private office 
 of somebody's brevc'ry " 
 
 "Fitting place ! " screamed an enthusiast, delighted to have 
 a few bottom facts alluded to. 
 
 " I do not know your names," said I, "only I took this 
 list yesterday from the Registrar's office. These ten men 
 will meet somewhere, and they will make the list of votes 
 which you are to carry when that day comes round . 
 
 " Now, you are Americans, all of you. You do not mean 
 to be led by the nose ! If these men were priests, and had 
 their heads shaven, and wore long black coats, with little 
 whole white collars round their necks, and they came and 
 told you how to vote, you would pack them all on a train
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 65 
 
 and send them to the place they came from. If they 
 were in any uniform, if they wore red coats, or if they 
 had silver buttons on their sleeves, like the Greasers yonder 
 in Mexico, you would heat a tar-barrel and give them a 
 coat of white feathers. But they do not wear uniforms. 
 They only act uniform. They do not show their colors. 
 They meet in the back parlor, and the ticket 
 
 This was as far as I ever went in that speech. By this 
 time the men who had undertaken to capture the meeting 
 had quite enough of it and of me. They were on their 
 feet again, howling. The men behind them were howling 
 again in one interest or another. Such missiles as remained 
 were flung upon the stage. Stepney made a clever diversion 
 by catching a cabbage, as if it had been a base-ball, and 
 tossing it across to the President. But at this moment a 
 critical accident ended the whole thing. Some one slung a 
 heavy rutabaga at me. It missed me, but struck John 
 Fisher rather heavily, as he sat at my left. It scratched 
 his cheek and drew blood, which flowed rapidly, so that in a 
 moment his collar was red and the wristband of his sleeve, 
 where he had held his hand to the wound. At the moment, 
 one saw the regard which the real people had for this quiet 
 man. He had refused to speak ; not a word would lie say. 
 But that stain of a few drops of blood was more eloquent 
 than any words. " Shame ! Shame ! " cried some Stentor. 
 "Shame ! Shame !" echoed all the well-meaning men in the 
 hall. They had now aery, a symbol, and a purpose. They 
 rose to their feet. They collared and dragged off one and 
 another of the rioters. The fussy sergeant threw open some 
 great escape doors which were made for fires. The noisy 
 part of the assembly, those who were not yet in the grasp of
 
 66 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 anybody, thought best to disappear. And in five minutes 
 the great hall was nearly empty. On the platform, we were 
 well satisfied to see that nobody was really hurt, and in the 
 excitement of the moment we all agreed that things had 
 turned better than we had feared. 
 
 I took the whole thing to heart, as shoAving, as I had not 
 guessed before, how simply a man might make himself, and 
 deserve to be, really an idol of the people. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 [INTERPOLATED IN MR. MELLEN'S MEMOIRS.] 
 
 'T^HE adventure at the Temperance meeting, in which Mr. 
 Mellen played a part so important, made him, naturally 
 enough, quite a hero in the life of Tarn worth, for a few days, 
 and especially in the house of John Fisher. Mrs. Fisher 
 had gone comfortably to bed before the gentlemen came 
 home ; nor did she inquire or hear anything of their conflicts 
 until morning. Then she was quite sure that she had ex 
 pected all that had passed, and had warned every one that it 
 would happen, just as it had happened, She said it was 
 always so, and that her advice was always rejected. She 
 also said that if she had had the slightest idea that there 
 would have been any danger, she should have ordered her 
 own carriage and should have bidden Barney drive her 
 through the crowd to the front of the entrance of the hall,
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 67 
 
 where she should have herself addressed the people. And 
 she gave what the reporters would have called a sketch of 
 her address. She also said that if they had not stolen away 
 as they did, she should have insisted on going with them to 
 the hall, that they could have entered early and taken their 
 seats on the platform before the mob arrived ; and she sketch 
 ed another speech, which she would have delivered before the 
 meeting, and which would have prevented all the difficulties 
 which followed. At different periods in the narrative at 
 breakfast, she offered other suggestions equally consistent, 
 and equally confused. They threw Mr. Mellen out a little, 
 and he found it rather difficult to meet them. But all the 
 others seemed to understand that all this was " pretty 
 Fanny's way," and to take them for granted, without reply 
 or comment. 
 
 So far was Mrs. Fisher justified in complaining, as she al 
 ways did, that nobody paid any attention to any of her sug 
 gestions. 
 
 Mrs. Grattan and Mary Bell were both up and eagerly 
 waiting for the returning party. John Fisher and his friend 
 told the story, in varied interruptions, both of them, of 
 course, a good deal excited. Mr. Mellen stood this supreme 
 test very well. He had really kept his temper through the 
 whole scene, and had shown tact and spirit in playing with 
 his persecutors. But he told his part of the tale modestly, 
 and gave full credit to all the other actors on his side, par 
 ticularly to little Stepney, who had sailed in so magnificent 
 ly and had come out so well. But John Fisher did not 
 mean to have his friend's light hid under any bushel. He 
 gave him full credit for his pluck ; he let the ladies under 
 stand the full extent of the danger, and Mr. Mellen appeared
 
 68 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 in the most charming character of all, as a modest hero, 
 while he ate the oyster soup and the omelette with herbs 
 which the care of the housekeeper had provided. 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Edwards," John Fisher had said to that 
 functionary, "people are always very hungry when they 
 have been speaking to mobs." 
 
 The reader has perhaps suspected Mr. Mellen had not been 
 thrown, day by day, with Mary Bell, as one who was large 
 ly under instructions in this Tarn worth life, without himself 
 feeling the force of the fascination to which once and again 
 he alluded in his papers. It would be queer if he had not 
 felt it. He had knocked about the world a good deal, and 
 it is no business of this writer to tell what had been his ex 
 periences in the society of women before. But this the 
 reader may be told, that he had never so far lost his heart 
 but that he got it back again. He had never married, 
 though he believed in marriage. He was, it may be added, 
 generally liked by women ; he talked well with Avomen, which 
 means that he recognized their good sense and ability, and 
 did not treat them like fools ; he had implicit faith in women, 
 and held the highest standard as to what a woman might be 
 and what she should not be. So high was this standard, 
 indeed, that it seemed as if it had often been too high 
 for the women whom he had measured by it. His life, 
 too, had been to some extent a vagrant life, and he 
 had not often had the chance to show to any really first-rate 
 woman how much of a man he was. For some reason or 
 other, in brief, when Mr. Mellen met Mary Bell, he was 
 neither heart-touched anywhere else, nor engaged, nor mar 
 ried. A man may be heart-touched who is not engaged, and, 
 alas ! a man who is not heart-touched may be engaged or
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 69 
 
 may be married. But neither of these things could be said 
 of Mr. Mellen. 
 
 Up to the event at the Temperance lecture, Mr. Mellen 
 could never have thought that Mary Bell took any more in 
 terest in him than she might in any other guest in the house ; 
 or, indeed, than she showed for many of the other gentlemen 
 who came in again and again in its profuse hospitality. In 
 deed, he had permitted himself to be annoyed, one evening, 
 because Mr. Rossiter was so intimate with her, or because 
 she permitted his intimacy. 
 
 But, on the morning after the " adventure," as they came to 
 call it, Mr. Mellen found, and was naturally not displeased 
 to find, that he was quite a hero with all the ladies. They 
 wanted him to tell the story again. They read aloud the 
 newspaper accounts of it, and compared them with each other. 
 They tried to make him say he had not slept well, and, in 
 deed, beset him with a hundred nameless attentions such as 
 shall not be here described, but which are the fair reward of 
 the brave. He was no fool. But he was not displeased at the 
 good fortune which had given him such regard, where, in his 
 heart, he knew he prized it most. He sat talking with them 
 in the comfortable parlor, where every one liked to linger 
 after breakfast, longer, much longer, than was usual. Then 
 Mrs. Fisher bustled off, with some pretence as to something 
 disagreeable which she was to do. Cordelia Grattan good- 
 naturedly took herself out of the way, and Mr. Mellen 
 promptly followed up his opportunity by asking Miss Bell if 
 she would not let him take her to drive. There had been some 
 talk of a drive, that he might see the water- fall at Newry Gap. 
 
 "Drive, Mr. Mellon? Have you forgotten to-day's duties 
 in your triumph for last night's success ? "
 
 70 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 " Duties !" said poor Mr. Mellen;"! had thought my 
 duties were all done. I was asked to make a speech, and I 
 have come and made it, as far as my audience would let me ; 
 if, indeed, they may be called an audience, who were resolved 
 not to listen. 
 
 "No, I ought really to go away, and be making speeches 
 at Chicago, and at Dunleith, and at Cleveland, and at 
 Turk's Hollow. But I am quite too much interested in your 
 election, and I have told Fisher I should stay and see who 
 is chosen Alderman from the Hill." 
 
 " Exactly," said she, " I heard you say so. And do you 
 not put this and that together enough to see that the laying of 
 the corner-stone has its part also in the election ? " 
 
 " Corner-stone ! What corner-stone? " 
 
 " Mr. Mellen, you will never understand Tamworth. 
 Here I have been instructing you and instructing you, and 
 you are so shut up with your prohibition and license that 
 you do not so much as know that we lay the corner-stone for 
 an Art Gallery to-day. Mr. Fisher is Chairman of the 
 Trustees. Mrs. Dolliber and Mrs. Thurtlc are a Committee 
 of ladies to procure a silver trowel. Cordelia G rattan has 
 written an ode, and Dr. Witherspoon is to deliver an oration ; 
 and after all you ask me to go to ride, on that very day, to see 
 a water-fall. 
 
 " This is your interest in politics." 
 
 "I did know," said he, rather ruefully, " that Mrs. 
 G rattan had written an ode. I helped her with a line that 
 was limping. I did know that Dr. Witherspoon was to 
 ' pronounce,' as he said, an oration. But I should much 
 prefer to go to drive with you. And as to all this taking 
 place to-day, I have heard no time fixed, nor have I expected
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 71 
 
 to. All that I know in this house is that they always do 
 something, and that the something is always what you 
 would not expect. It goes without saying, that it is differ 
 ent from the something of the day before." 
 
 " Be warned, then, in time. At noon you will meet at the 
 Art Club ; in full dress, too, Mr. Mellen. And then a pro 
 cession of you gentlemen will move, as the newspapers 
 say, to the spot. There you will see Mrs. G rattan looking 
 pale from anxiety, and you will not see me. I shall be hid 
 den among the contraltos of the chorus of the Jubal." 
 
 Mr. Mellen declared that he should know her among nine 
 hundred other contraltos. But this was the only word of 
 gallantry or of tenderness he had any chance to thrust into 
 the conversation. For, as she spoke, her hand was on the 
 door. 
 
 It seemed but fair to give the reader a hint of what does 
 not appear in his own language in his memoirs, that just at 
 this time, when accident had made him a bit of a hero, Mr. 
 Mellen made sure that Mary Bell was the noblest woman 
 and the loveliest in the world, and determined to tell her so. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 [jm. MELLEN RESUMES.] 
 
 A FTER we had been sufficiently questioned, pitied and 
 praised, the morning after our Temperance conflict, it 
 proved that all more agreeable and private enterprises must 
 be set aside, for that day at least, while we laid the 
 corner-stone of the "Academy of Fine Art." The estab 
 lishment of this Academy, as I found out, had been a favor 
 ite enterprise now for a year or two in Tarn worth, and all
 
 72 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 our household was committed. The corner-stone must be 
 laid of course, for there could not be an Academy without a 
 corner. And the affair was so important that the Mayor 
 and Aldermen and all officials were to join. The school 
 regiment was to parade, and a general holiday had been 
 given. I found that even at the mills they would shut down 
 at twelve o'clock for the day. 
 
 I was by no means sure whether my presence would add 
 to the hilarity of the occasion. For it was quite certain that 
 there were eggs and ruta-bagas left in Tamworth, and if any 
 of my friends of last night's audience happened to recognize 
 their target, and begin on another course of projectiles, it 
 might be disagreeable to my neighbors, unless the marks 
 manship were better by day than by night. But no one else 
 intimated any doubts as to my going ; indeed, it seemed tak 
 en for granted that I should go. The ceremony would 
 be long. We had an early lunch, and hurried down to be at 
 the Athenteum Hall at noon. And I may as well say, now 
 and here, that neither egg nor turnip disturbed the solemnities 
 of the day. The rowdies of the night before took no in 
 terest in this occasion. 
 
 At the Athenreum Hall I found all the magnates of the 
 town. The Mayor and Aldermen, and Common Council, 
 and School Committee were there, ninety-nine different 
 people chosen to executive business, in which they were to 
 oversee the expenditure of three or four million dollars. A 
 railway or a factory, with the same annual expense, would 
 have been owned perhaps by a thousand people, but they 
 would take care not to have more than four or five responsible 
 directors. 
 
 This was the remark John Fisher made to me, as he
 
 MY FKIENL) THE BOSS. 73 
 
 looked round to see which of the City Government I should 
 best like to know. 
 
 I was amused to see that, literally, he knew every man in 
 the room. He shook hands with every one, and called each 
 correctly by name. 
 
 " We are in full force, Mr. Mayor," he said. 
 
 "Yes. Everybody is interested. Most of them think 
 they are the founders of the Academy ; that is well." 
 
 "The more founders, the better, if they will not forget that 
 founders must maintain. How does the fund stand? " 
 
 And then the Mayor, in rather a lower tone, began to tell 
 him who had been written to, and who had answered. 
 There was a son of the town who had lately had new views 
 on religion, which had impelled him to go and establish a 
 sheep walk in Montana, where his late father had a great 
 silver mine. It had been hoped that, if he were " properly 
 approached," he might contribute fifty thousand dollars to 
 the fund for the Academy. But it was clear from the way 
 in Avhich the Mayor shook his head, and put his finger to his 
 forehead, that he feared that this new Mahomet, on his sheep 
 ranch, had not wits enough left to sign a check, even if 
 "proper influence" could make him see the value of the 
 Academy. There was a rich widow at Munich, preparing 
 herself to paint portraits. She also had been "approached 
 in the proper direction," but she had made no answer. 
 Whether Mr. Lathers, the great lumberman, would subscribe, 
 also seemed doubtful. If the Ranchman proved able to draw 
 a check, it seemed certain that Lathers would wish to "go 
 one better." But if the Ranchman's wits failed him at the 
 critical moment, it was feared that Lathers would prove in 
 different to Fine Art.
 
 74 NY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 "In short," said John Fisher, " it is the old story, that 
 nothing succeeds like success " 
 
 " They are on time," cried a bright little man, whom I 
 had seen flying about everywhere, and who was clearly a 
 sort of Lord High Chamberlain on the occasion. 
 
 His real official position was that of Clerk of Committees ; 
 his duty was to supply brains and etiquette both, to such 
 persons among the ninety-nine governors of Tarn worth, as, 
 by any accident, found themselves destitute of either. As he 
 spoke, he pointed out of the window, where a light column 
 of steam showed that the lightning express was at that 
 moment passing the viaduct at Kroom's Hollow. On the 
 lightning express were the Governor and staff, who were 
 to make a part of the ceremonial of the day. In fact, as I 
 afterwards found, the Governor was another person who 
 thought he was the inventor and founder of the Academy. 
 The Superintendent of Education, who came with him, knew 
 that he himself Avas. The truth was, that a quiet little Mr. 
 Mole, a second cousin of the Count of that name, who fought 
 Louis Napoleon, had conceived the whole plan. He came 
 on in the legislative train, and as the " exercises " went on, I 
 had a good deal of very satisfactory talk with him. He and 
 John Fisher were almost the only men in the company who 
 made no public addresses on the occasion. 
 
 Ten minutes more were enough to bring the lightning ex 
 press into the station, to transfer the Governor and suite into 
 their carriages, and to bring them to us ; for there had 
 been no guard of honor at the platform, nor any presenting 
 arms. The Governor, in his turn, was introduced to all of 
 the Aldermen and to the members of the Committee of Re 
 ception, all of whom wore sashes of pale blue silk. The
 
 MY FRIEND THE P.OSS. 75 
 
 Lieutenant Governor and the military gentlemen of the staff 
 were also introduced. The Governor was asked if he would 
 have a little Orange-Phosphate, and he and the other gentle 
 men accepted. They had traveled two hundred and seventy 
 miles since they breakfasted, but it seemed to be understood 
 that they were quite ready for this laborious day, without 
 other refreshment. They did not themselves make any 
 difficulty about this. 
 
 Accordingly, in a few minutes more, the little Clerk of Com 
 mittees announced that all was ready. The Governor led by 
 the Mayor, the Lieutenant Governor led by the President 
 of the Aldermen, and others with fit escort, filed out of the 
 hall, and we gathered on the elegant portico of the building. 
 In front was the school regiment, of a thousand or more boys. 
 So soon as the Governor appeared, they presented arms, 
 and they stood at " present " while the rest of the procession 
 arranged itself. Mr. Mole and I were, as " invited guests," 
 near enough to the Governor to hear his compliment to the 
 Mayor. 
 
 " I could hardly have given you such an escort for a 
 ceremony, Mr. Mayor, without a ' special act' ; at least, I 
 should have to send over half the State for so many compa 
 nies." 
 
 " \Ve were laughing about that," said the Mayor. " If 
 the President were here he has under his orders in this State 
 one one-legged sergeant at Fort Pike, two recruits and three 
 Indian scouts. Your Excellency, 1 suppose, could call out 
 by courtesy the young gentlemen of your ' Governor's guard.' 
 Are there fifty of them, all told? But while we keep up 
 school drill, which I hope may be always, the Mayor 
 of Tamworth may order out this pretty escort, as sure that
 
 76 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 they will appear as the Czar may be sure of the Imperial 
 Guard." 
 
 And again, and fortunately, the little Clerk of Com 
 mittees was satisfied, and permitted us to move. My own 
 belief is that we had been waiting till a messenger from his 
 wife told him that her party was all ready, in Seligman and 
 Kroom's front windows. Then came the joyful " Forward, 
 march," and we ''proceeded," or "proceshed," as I ob 
 served the boys called our movement, to the open region 
 where the Academy of Fine Art was to stand. It is in the 
 northwestern part of the city, a part which has great natural 
 advantages, I am told, but to which at that time the move 
 ment of population had not advanced. " Hold their lots too 
 high," said Mr. Mole, who walked with me. But another 
 gentleman afterwards assured me that the difficulty was that 
 the lots had been held too low ; that the only way to sell real 
 estate in such circumstances is to convince people that yon 
 have "the very best article." He said the purchasers did 
 not know much about it themselves, and had not often an 
 opinion ; that they wanted to go where other people Avent, 
 and that you must hold it as you would hold a Meissonier 
 picture, or a folio Shakespere at a round price and a high, 
 when they would all rush for it as a trout jumps at a fly 
 just above the water. 
 
 However this may be, there were then no houses in the 
 neighborhood of the future Academy. The most pretentious 
 building was a large platform, on which the Governor, the 
 Mayor, the Aldermen, the Trustees and the invited guests, 
 alas, Avere elevated above the level of the prairie, to join in 
 the ceremonial and to be observed as they joined. I say 
 "alas," because I was one of the three or four persons who
 
 MY" FRIEND THE BOSS. 77 
 
 were invited, having no official right to be present ; and thus 
 I AVUS exposed with the others to the tenderness of a north- 
 Avest Avind, Avhich Avas tearing its Avay across from the North- 
 ern Rockies, unbroken by any of those palaces which Avillcurb 
 such a Avind more or less when the proper price shall have 
 been found for the sale of those matchless sites for building. 
 I learned the next day how foolish I Avas, and Avhat I 
 should haA'e done. Hardly had Ave begun on the " exer 
 cises " of the occasion just at the moment, in fact, when 
 Dr. Thursby said, " Let us pray," a sharp crack was heard, 
 and, from my corner, I saw the Governor, the Lieutenant 
 GoA r ernor, the military staff and others, Avho, but just before, 
 had been a tall human line, shielding me a little from the 
 Euroclydon of which I have spoken I saAV them, I say, all 
 descending as they stood, without moving a muscle. It 
 was just as one sees the cloAvn descend at the theater. It 
 spoke well for the courage of these men, that no one flinched, 
 started or even turned pale. They went doAvn as if this 
 Avere a part of the ceremony, and as if they had been fore 
 warned by the Clerk of Committees. Dr. Thursby was not 
 so used to facing danger. He stopped in his prayer. The 
 Mayor opened his eyes, and said, not very loudly, "Will 
 every one stand still?" Then one by one he bade gentle 
 men jump off, till the Governor and others could do so safe 
 ly. Then a hurried investigation was made by the Presi 
 dent of the Mechanics' Association. That side of the plat 
 form had been badly built and had given Avay, "that Avas 
 all," they said. The Governor priA'ately told me afterwards 
 that he Avished that Avhen they asked him again, they Avould put 
 the Mayor and the Aldermen on the exposed sides. One 
 or tAvo shores of timber Avere hastily run under the platform,
 
 78 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 and the ceremony went on. Again Dr. Thursby began his 
 prayer, and the printed programme, brief in this part, was 
 followed through. 
 
 I say I learned by this experience where I should have 
 been, and what I should have done. For I noticed the next 
 day that this little incident, in which the lives of four or five 
 men of prominence were in danger, was not so much as al 
 luded to by the Argus-eyed and many -voiced press of Tarn- 
 worth. I asked John Fisher if the managers had power 
 enough to suppress the notice of a failure so mortifying. 
 " Oh, no ! " he said, " you do not think those reporters were 
 going out in that gale, do you? They had the printed 
 programme, and knew the plan. They knew the wind was 
 stiff and cold, and while we Avere laying the stone, they were 
 all writing out their notes in the hall where we saw them 
 afterwards. They did not know the thing happened. Nobody 
 knows it, except you and I and two or three hundred people. 
 And if you had known how to be comfortable, you would 
 not have ' assisted.' " 
 
 " But you see I mean," said John, " that while you are at 
 Tarn worth you shall see all there is to be seen." 
 
 So, with very short ceremonial, the stone was laid. The 
 silver trowel, which the ladies had provided, was presented 
 in a short speech by their spokesman, who was a man, to the 
 Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements. The chair 
 man in another speech presented it to the Master of Cere 
 monies. In another speech he presented it to the President of 
 the Board of Aldermen. He presented it to the Mayor in 
 another, and he finally gave it to the Governor. The Govern 
 or was a prompt man, who had carried a musket at Fort 
 Donelson, and had here learned the advantage of doing
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 79 
 
 quickly, with few words, what you set out to do. He nod 
 ded to the chief Masonic character who was in attendance, 
 and the stone was pronounced plumb and square, almost lit 
 erally in what the native proverb calls " no time." 
 
 Then we were able to " proceed" again to the hall, where 
 " the address," as the dialect of our time calls it, was to be 
 made. People speak of " the address," on such an occasion : 
 of " the oration," for instance, on the Fourth of July, as if 
 it were always the same oration. They say Mr Stokes 
 delivered "the oration," as if it had been kept in a cage since 
 the last Fourth of July, and, on this anniversary, he let it 
 out to run around a little while. So, on the laying of the cor 
 ner-stone, we went to the Mechanics' Hall that we might 
 hear " the address." 
 
 And here, for the first time, I found out where the singing 
 was to be. I had learned that the ladies at our house were 
 in a chorus somewhere, and I had supposed that we were to 
 find them on the ground. But so soon as we stood in that 
 northwester, I saw that that was a business for men only, 
 and I asked Mr. Mole, my companion, vainly about the 
 women. So soon as we came into the Mechanics' Hall, the 
 mystery was solved. The Jubal Society was in full force, 
 with a chorus of four hundred voices. A delegation even 
 larger from the public schools occupied some of the largest 
 balconies, and I was told that they were to sing also, and 
 other societies. 
 
 All through this ceremonial, almost endless, I had been 
 learning more and more where and how the enthusiasm had 
 been roused, which made all the people of Tamworth give up 
 their daily occupation and create (out of the whole cloth, I had 
 been tempted to say) an Autumn Festival, in honor of this
 
 80 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 "Academy of Fine Art," which was still to be. I un 
 derstood better and better every hour that the Germans of the 
 town had set their hearts upon such an institution, and I 
 could see how prominent they were in the arrangements for 
 carrying it through. In the manufactories of every sort, it 
 happened almost always that Germans were the draftsmen. 
 And, as it happened, there went out from Tamworth a great 
 deal of work which needed artistic design and decoration. 
 Their enthusiasm in the Academy cause had been enough to 
 call out all the musical force, in which, as everywhere in the 
 world, they were such skilful leaders. This was the reason 
 why the Jubals and the Amphions, and, indeed, all the 
 musical societies of any note, were present at our festival. 
 
 I should not tell the history of it in such detail, but that I 
 was also learning, all along, more and more of the place 
 held by my friend Fisher in this community. I had noticed, 
 in the morning, that when the fussy little Master of Ceremo 
 nies was arranging us for our march, he was conscious that 
 John Fisher "belonged" somewhere, though he did not 
 know quite how to express it. He had a list of officials, 
 but John Fisher was not an official. From this list, he 
 called off Governor, Mayor, and all the dignitaries. 
 But, of a sudden, he looked at it with a certain despair, 
 and then, turning promptly to my friend, he said, " Mr. 
 Fisher comes here, with Governor Winterhalter ! " Gov 
 ernor Winterhalter being the most distinguished guest 
 present, the chief of the next State. Just so was it when 
 we were modestly arranging ourselves in the front of the 
 bass-drums on the great platform at the Mechanics' Hall. 
 We were all trying to obey the parable and to find the worst 
 seats, where all were pretty bad if one thought of enjoying the
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 81 
 
 music, when the little man, seeing a chair of honor immedi 
 ately next our own Governor's, looked round wildly till he 
 saw John Fisher, and said to him at once, " Mr. Fisher, you 
 are to come here ; you are to come here. This is your 
 chair." As indeed it was. So soon as John Fisher came 
 forward to it, modestly, the assembly recognized him and 
 clapped loudly and long, showing indeed more real interest 
 in him than they had shown in the more formal, courteous 
 welcome they had given to the Governor. 
 
 No ! It is fortunately not the business of this story to tell 
 what the Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements said 
 to that mass of six thousand people, nor what the Mayor said, 
 nor what the Governor said, nor what the Chairman of the 
 Building Committee said, nor the President of the Trustees, 
 nor ' ' the Orator of the day " when at the last he ' ' delivered 
 the oration " from the captivity of his portfolio. These 
 words of wisdom, are they not written in the Tamworth 
 Chronicle and the Tamivorth Eecord of that evening and the 
 next morning? Nay, were not enterprising newsboys sell 
 ing them under the windows before the overture by Wagner 
 was finished, so that, in a sense, that captive oration was 
 delivered before Dr. Witherspoon untied the ribbons of his 
 portfolio ? 
 
 We were only four hours and a half in the hall. After 
 the overture, we began on what the ungodly would call a 
 variety entertainment, sandwiching our music and addresses 
 quite evenly. Between two speeches Avould come a " Hymn 
 written for the occasion," or an " Ode written for the occa 
 sion," or the song of praise, or a triumphal chorus. After 
 the oration was delivered, and the manuscript was again 
 confined within its limits, we sang " America " with such
 
 82 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 zeal that it was a wonder the roof did not rise. Then a 
 benediction was pronounced by Dr. Thursby, and then 
 " Then," says the reader, a little tired, having, indeed, 
 been turning the page to see what would come next, " then 
 it was all done ! " 
 
 Dear reader, this shows how little you know about such 
 things. I am sure you skip when you read the newspapers. 
 The celebration was by no means ended. The real celebra 
 tion was just now to begin. The speeches we had been 
 making were our offering on the throne of dignity and 
 decorum. Now we were to celebrate as we wanted to. 
 
 Fortunately for all concerned, the raging storm of the 
 morning had blown itself out. By some divine change of 
 a center, or other formality known to the Signal Sergeants, 
 the wind had come into the southwest, and was breathing on 
 us from the Indian's heaven. For the last hour of that deli 
 cious autumn day, we stood again on our platform of the 
 morning, which had been thoroughly repaired by a corps of 
 carpenters while we had been singing and speaking and 
 listening. And now there passed by jolly companies of 
 tradesmen, each with the devices of their craft, to lay 
 flowers on the stone ; companies of scholars, companies of 
 singers, all sorts of companies. All this had been planned 
 and executed, one could see in a minute, by German ingenu 
 ity. I felt as if I were in Antwerp, by the side of my grand 
 mother's great- great-grandfather, after some splendid victory. 
 Children prettily dressed in fancy costumes, jolly blacksmiths, 
 singing as they marched, trained companies representing 
 this or that triumph of the Arts, passed by in rapid 
 succession. And from each, without the "march past" 
 being stopped, would run forward a pretty girl, or a fine boy,
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 83 
 
 or a young woman, or a more awkward man, with a wreath 
 or a cross, or a basket of flowers, to place it on the corner 
 stone, and to say, " I pledge the interest of the Girls' 
 Friendly Union," or " The men of Kroom's Hollow will 
 not be forgotton," or " The children promise the fathers to 
 maintain what they begin," or in some other fashion to ex 
 press an interest in that to w r hich the day was dedicat 
 ed. Beautiful teams of horses, in one case eight exquisite 
 white oxen, dragged along great platforms on which were 
 pretty tableaux repeating some of the great pictures of the 
 world. I have never lost the memory of a Diana, so well- 
 dressed, playing so prettily with a pet fawn, and yet with 
 an air so thoroughly antique and Grecian that I never see 
 the cast of the Diana of the Louvre without recalling that 
 pretty figure. 
 
 And, as every one of these companies passed, its enthusi 
 astic Marshal, after he had called for "three cheers for the 
 new Academy," would call again for "three more for John 
 Fisher." He would do this certainly, whether he remember 
 ed the Governor, or forgot him. And the cheers for my mod 
 est friend, John Fisher, always came " with a will." 
 
 I had hoped that I might have the pleasure of going 
 home with Miss Bell. But, when the fete was over, she was 
 nowhere to be seen. Fisher seemed to know where to find 
 tin- other Indies, and without delay we took up Mrs. Fisher 
 and Mrs. G rattan, and the rest of the party. As it happened, 
 Mrs. ( i rattan and I rode home together, and I asked her about 
 this regular tribute to John Fisher. " Had he many 
 Germans in his employ ? " 1 said. 
 
 " Oh, no ! it is not that," she said. " It is well, sim- 
 l it is that he deserves it Germans ? No ! You are
 
 84 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 right in thinking that these clubs and societies have been 
 marshaled so prettily by Germans. But I do not think there 
 are many Germans in his mills. No. It is not that. It is 
 well, Mr. Mellen, it is that he helps all these things along. 
 He lends a hand, as you Wadsworth people say. If a 
 cricket club wants to put up a pavilion, he subscribes. If 
 the Wagner people want some new instruments, they go to 
 him. He takes an interest ; that is what it means. They 
 know they have one friend, who has risen from the ranks, 
 and who has not forgotten them." 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 "TWHERE in the world is Mary Bell?" So did Mrs. 
 Fisher question us, as we sat down to our well- 
 earned, late dinner. "As for my husband I never expect 
 him ; and Mary Bell is as little to be relied on as he is ; off 
 there it is lucky, Mr. Mellen, that there is one person, not 
 above vulgar bread and butter, in this house." 
 
 The truth was, so far as I had seen it since I was her 
 guest, that Miss Bell had been present at every meal, at the 
 moment the company assembled. So had Mr. Fisher until 
 to-day. J This evening he was dining with the Trustees 
 of the Academy. Mrs. Fisher herself had had fully half 
 her meals in her own room. 
 
 But this was only her piquant way of speaking. 
 
 We had scarcely begun our dinner, however, when a 
 servant came in and called me out. "A young woman is ' 
 very eager to see you, and says she cannot wait." 
 
 Sure enough, I found in the hall a woman, I might well
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 85 
 
 say a girl, with her face pale and marked with tears. I led 
 her into a room on one side, made her sit down, almost 
 unwillingly, and said, " What is the matter? Why do you 
 want to see me ? " 
 
 She found it very hard to answer. She sobbed before 
 she did answer. " I am so sorry. You will think I am 
 crazy. But, indeed I know I ought to come I wanted, 
 you know. No, you do not know I asked for Mr. Fisher, 
 and he is not in . But I could not come to-morrow you are 
 his friend? " 
 
 I suppose I looked uneasy, as these incoherencies ran on. 
 In truth, I thought she was crazy. 
 
 She laughed, in a wild way. " You think I am crazy. 
 No, no. I will tell you." Then in a perfectly distinct and 
 business-like way she said, "Tell Mr. Fisher that he must 
 not go to the rtitifi cation meeting Thursday. The plan is all 
 made that he shall be put to shame to his face. I am so 
 sorry, but my husband is in the plan. And Mr. AVilliam 
 Salter is to make a speech, and tell all about the necklace ! " 
 
 i was now sure she was crazy. But I said, "Necklace! 
 What necklace?" 
 
 " Do you tell Mr. Fisher what I tell you to tell him, that 
 William Salter will tell the people all about the necklace. 
 Mr. Fisher will know." 
 
 And with that she was gone. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 /\ S the election drew nearer and nearer, 1 found myself more 
 
 and more interested in it, although as a stranger I could 
 
 not interfere much with the various plans which were discussed
 
 86 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 around me, and would not indeed, if I could. My time 
 never hung heavy. Thanks to my friend the Boss, and to 
 public spirit like his, which I found was a general matter in 
 Tamworth, it was a place where a stranger could live for 
 three weeks, and yet not end those weeks by suicide. The 
 people were hard at work, but were social. After I became 
 acquainted among them I found I could make a visit with 
 out exciting the suspicion of the servant-girl who took my 
 card to her mistress. She did not seem to think I came for 
 the parlor clock or the spoons, as they do seem to think in 
 most of the cities to which my vagrant life tempts me. They do 
 not run to club houses in Tamworth, as in some other places 
 I know. Clubs there are, unnumbered and innumerable. 
 But what with galleries, reading-rooms, libraries, museums, 
 " exchanges of literature," " exchanges of art," and the rest, 
 there are a plenty of " loafing places," if one may use the 
 vernacular. Now a "loafing place" is what a stranger 
 most needs. 
 
 There was a good-natured fellow named Sturgeon (if I 
 might use the vernacular again so soon, I should say he was 
 Yankee " clever"), who had opened a house of accommoda 
 tion, which had many imitations. But his. was the original 
 " Saint's Rest." That was its name in gold letters over the 
 door. I need hardly say that John Fisher had furnished 
 him the funds for a beginning, but the success of the enterprise 
 had long ago made Sturgeon independent, and he had re 
 paid John. The " Saint's Rest" was just off the Main 
 street, on one of those narrow cross streets which trade 
 avoids, but still central. Any one might go there. So you 
 may to an ordinary hotel, but you are not wanted at a 
 regular hotel, unless you come for a meal. Here, they
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 87 
 
 Avould give you a cup of coffee or a slice of toast, but that 
 was not what they were for. They were there, and the 
 " Saint's Rest" was open, that you might have a " loafing 
 place." 
 
 If you had an appointment with a man at eleven , and the 
 clock obstinately announced ten-thirty, you went to the 
 " Saint's Rest, " paid ten cents as. you entered, and then 
 Avere free of the lower stories of the house indeed, of almost 
 all of it. There was a great newspaper room ; there was a 
 great room full of novels and magazines. They took seventy- 
 nine copies of the first number of Lend a Hand. There were 
 writing-desks, with paper, pens and ink. There were di 
 rectories and cyclopaedias and telegraph blanks. There were 
 long, deep sofas, if a man wanted his nap. There were 
 smoking-rooms. It was in fact a club, where you chose 
 yourself and expelled yourself, and in which there was no 
 assessment after you paid the initiation fee. This fee, as I 
 said, was ten cents. You paid it at the door, and went in. 
 At the end of an hour, a boy found you and asked you for an 
 other ten cents, if you wanted to stay another hour. Prac 
 tically you never did want to. No one ever wants to stay 
 in such a place more than an hour. But he may want very 
 much to stay in such a place fifteen minutes, when there is 
 no such place at hand. 
 
 Sturgeon established the " Saint's Rest" with such suc 
 cess, that six or eight other Sturgeons of different names 
 followed his example. He did a very good business, enlarg 
 ed his house by adding all the neighboring houses never 
 rebuilt it so that it had all the coziness of home house 
 building, and often, as he told me, he received a thousand 
 people a day there. Now that I recur to it, I suppose the
 
 OO MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 convenience of such places may have been the reason why 
 there were so few other club-houses in Tamworth. 
 
 If you think of it, a " club-house " is a hotel kept by a 
 committee of gentlemen who were never trained to the 
 business of hotel-keeping. And its first rules are directed 
 to the question how it can keep out the people who would 
 like to come in. 
 
 For John Fisher himself, his comfortable and pretty office 
 at the works was his club-house, and there you might often 
 meet agreeable people not too busy. He left us, as had 
 been said, soon after breakfast every clay, and we were then 
 left to our own devices. Not long after the laying of the 
 corner-stone, I found one day that there was no drive in 
 prospect, or other morning plan which gave me an excuse 
 for waiting on Miss Bell's movements or Mrs. Grattan's, 
 and I accordingly started alone to walk down town. I had 
 hardly passed into the street, from the avenue, when Miss 
 Bell overtook me, in the carriage which she always used, 
 and she bade the coachman stop and ask me if she might 
 not take me down. 
 
 "Or are you walking for pleasure?" she asked, laughing, 
 as I took my seat gladly, and shut the door. 
 
 I told her that I should be glad to take my exercise at some 
 other time. If I had dared I should have said something 
 which would have been absolutely true, as to the pleasure 
 she gave me. But, with this woman, one avoided by instinct 
 all the conventional pretences, and I was therefore, in this 
 case, afraid to tell the truth. I did say that to give the 
 traveler " a lift" seemed to be a work of mercy, which in 
 modern life belongs with feeding the hungry and giving clothes 
 to the naked.
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 89 
 
 " Which is, as it happens, just what I am starting upon," 
 she said ; " and unless you are in a hurry, I shall make you 
 stop at the Diet Kitchen. If you are in a hurry, you must 
 do as the canal-boat people do." 
 
 " I must go afoot? " said I. 
 
 " Yes. But I will not keep you long." Then she told, 
 briefly, of the suffering in a family which the Charity 
 Organization of Tarn worth entrusted to her. ' ' I am afraid 
 the battle is fought, though, " she said. " All we can do 
 now is to bind up the wounds and retreat with honor." 
 
 I was glad enough to see the Diet Kitchen, a perfectly 
 neat and well-organized bureau, occupying the ground floor 
 of a house on a cross street. The attendants were all ladies, 
 many of whom I had met at John Fisher's music parties, 
 whist parties, or dinner parties. This was the day of week 
 ly service, chosen by these particular people, and I think no 
 single detail of this ministry for the sick was left by them to 
 any hired hands. The gift was Love from the beginning to 
 the end. 
 
 Miss Bell took what she wanted for her patient, giving 
 me the chance to carry to the carriage this basket and that 
 can, gave the coachman her direction, and we started again. 
 But this time we were to stop at a fruit shop. Just at that 
 season those Western cities make a display of pomp, crimson, 
 scarlet, topaz, and gold of color and glory which cannot 
 be named, such as the gorgeous East with lavish hand can 
 not surpass, if indeed it can rival. Let the sated traveler, 
 who is tired of picture galleries and has " done " every cata 
 logued museum in the world, stay over a train some day in 
 October that he may see the marvels of the fruit shops of 
 Rochester. Two or three more baskets, of late peaches, of
 
 90 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 early pears, and of grapes in season, were put into the car 
 riage and then she said "Birnebaum's," and the carriage 
 dived into the canal region of the town. Clearly the coach 
 man knew where he was going. 
 
 "And here I must leave you, Mr. Mellen," said my 
 companion. " Hiram will take you where you wish to go, 
 and come back for me." 
 
 But I begged that I might carry the baskets in. Perhaps 
 I might be of use. 
 
 "No one is of use," she said sadly. "As for poor 
 Birnebaum, he is too weak to see any one whose face he 
 does not know. But you can, of course, bring in the 
 baskets. Stay with your horses, Hiram. Mr. Mellen will 
 come with me." 
 
 And we wentin and up the stairs. A two-story house, where 
 the poor people we sought occupied the upper floor. I went 
 with one set of baskets, returned to the carriage for the fruit, 
 and waited at the head of the stairs some minutes for any 
 one to guide me further. 
 
 Miss Bell then appeared in tears. " I am sorry to make 
 you wait," she said. " But it is at the very end. He will 
 not live an hour. I did not suppose all was so nearly over. 
 And his poor wife and his mother " 
 
 She sat on the window-seat, in the narrow entry way. 
 silent for a moment, and I saw that she was a little puzzled. 
 Once more I said, " Can I do anything, go anywhere?" 
 
 "Thank you," she said in a half unconscious way, and 
 then roused herself. " Yes, if you will. I was going to ask 
 John to send me a messenger boy. But but if you will, 
 
 Mr. Mellen " and without finishing her sentence she 
 
 wrote on a leaf of her diary, tore out the page, and folded it
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 91 
 
 in an envelope which she carried with her. She addressed 
 this in pencil and gave it to me. 
 
 I did not look at the letter, but asked her where I should 
 take it. 
 
 " He is at the Iroquois Building, the number is 73, you 
 will find it on the note. I would send Hiram but he must 
 drop you at the Avenue. He goes home for Cordelia Grattan. 
 You might say at lunch that we may be here all day. There 
 is everything to do." And then, with the absent-minded 
 ness of a person wholly engrossed in one affair, she left me 
 almost abruptly, without saying good-by, and went back into 
 the sick room. 
 
 I knew where the Iroquois Block was, perfectly well. It 
 was a great columbarium of lawyers' and architects' and 
 doctors' offices. I took it for granted that the note she gave 
 me was to some doctor who had been in attendance. I was 
 not likely to forget any word she had spoken to me. I 
 hurried to the place, which was, perhaps, a mile away. I 
 took the elevator up, and bade the boy drop me at 73. 
 
 " Third door on the right," said the boy, after Ave paused 
 on our flight toward heaven. 
 
 I came to the door to read on the sign, " George Rossiter." 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 T UNCH proved to be an early dinner. And early dinner 
 
 proved to be a dinner party. We did not have Cordelia 
 
 Grattan or Miss Bell, as she had warned us. But we did 
 
 have a large party of what I must call the literary people of
 
 92 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 Tarn worth, including quite a scattering from the college and 
 the " seminary," and several of the newspaper men. For 
 ladies, we had Mrs. Stetson, who edited the children's de 
 partment of the organ of the Reformed Covenanters ; Miss 
 Porter, who was the head of a successful girls' school at 
 Ponceau, the other side of the river ; a Miss Flinders, whom 
 no one explained to me, and a German lady who was called 
 the Countess, as I observed, when we spoke hehind her 
 back, but whom one addressed as Madame Aristell. We 
 were fourteen without our own two ladies, for whom excuses 
 were made. I soon saw that I and the Countess, Dr. Knapp, 
 and Mr. Keane, were all comparative strangers, and that there 
 was the necessary friction before the party could warm up. 
 We had the inevitable talk as to English pronunciation and 
 American, whether one says " either " or " either," "trait" 
 or " tray," with the old stories about " nice " and " nasty," 
 but after one or two courses, having felt each other's force 
 and parry, we were more at ease and talk became free. 
 Mrs. Fisher, when there was the slightest risk of a rut, 
 would upset the whole carriage by one of her rudenesses or 
 follies, and this gave us no bad chance to begin again. 
 
 In her light and festive way she told us that she was de 
 serted by her two ladies, and if this was a party of men 
 with no women who could cheer it up it was no fault of hers. 
 This was agreeable to the four ladies who were her guests. 
 Then she cheered up those who sat around her by an account 
 of the sufferings of the Birnebaum family, and an account, 
 drawn from imagination, of Mr. Birnebaum's death. Then 
 she said that for her part she wished she were with 
 the widow, that she took no pleasure but in ministering to 
 such grief, and thst she could not understand how any woman
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 93 
 
 could stay away from sucli calls. At the same time she 
 seemed able to join in conversation with the gentleman and 
 lady at her right and left, and to trifle with the provision 
 which Mrs. Edwards had made for us. She afterwards, 
 on another view of the subject, said that Cordelia Grat- 
 tan and Mary Bell were both impulsive creatures, govern 
 ed merely by passing fancies ; that their absence in the dis 
 tressed household was merely a whim of the moment, and 
 that any hired nurse would have done all that they did, vast 
 ly better. 
 
 Mr. Emerson charges us to read no book till it has been 
 published a year. He says that so many books are wholly 
 forgotten before the year is over that one thus saves a great 
 deal of time. I am not brave enough to obey him. And I 
 thought myself well up in the current literature. But these 
 people silenced and confounded me. They looked with scorn 
 on any one who had not digested the last Fortnightly, the 
 lastBevue and the last biography, it being at that moment the 
 life of the Hessian general Rahl, by his great grandson's 
 brother-in-law. I was reminded by their facility of the 
 well-known readiness of the bright Boston circles. The 
 first day a stranger meets them, he wonders at their omni 
 science. Every one knows the Himalayan passes. Every 
 one discusses Sanskrit and Prakrit. Every one is at home 
 in the Fiji islands. At his next dinner party every one 
 discusses Virgil's meters, and Mad. de Stael's grandfather, 
 and the laws of enharmonics. And he still marvels at the 
 wonders of culture. Before the third meeting, however, he 
 has found out that they all read Littell's Living Age ; he also 
 subscribes and then is as bright as the rest of them. What 
 interested me in the Tamworth people was that they were
 
 94 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 so perfectly up to time, and so indifferent about questions 
 which had been on the carpet a year ago. As the Mackinaw 
 editor said to Dr. Farrar, "Dante is played out." 
 
 But we had too many editors and too many people of con 
 science not to drift round to the very latest subject and most 
 engrossing, which was for them, as for the rest of the world, 
 the coming election. I was very much interested to see 
 that these people of books, even the editors among them, 
 were affected by the political crisis, in a way quite different 
 from that in which it had aroused the business representa 
 tives of the wards, or from that in which my Temperance 
 friends looked at it. The fact that in the neighboring city 
 of Putnam, "THEY," (always "They,") had put a man in, 
 as keeper of the public library, who did not know a line of 
 French from a line of Italian, exasperated these people 
 twenty times as much as would the fact that, in the same 
 city of Putnam, " they " had made the repairs of the jail 
 cost forty-seven thousand dollars, when thirty thousand 
 would have built a new jail. And when I intimated to my 
 next neighbor, a distinguished man of letters there, that the 
 reason why they needed any jail in Putnam, which was not 
 a county town, was that they chose to do all the liquor 
 retailing for the rest of the county, I saw at once that he 
 counted me as simply a fanatic from that moment, and that 
 there was no great use in talking to me, except for civility. 
 But it mattered very little whether he talked to me or not, 
 for the conversation became general, and we all rushed pell- 
 mell into the details of the canvass, quite as eagerly as had 
 the evening party I have before described, though not with 
 as much system. If there ever were an etiquette which de 
 layed talk on politics till the ladies left the table, that eti-
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 95 
 
 quette was violated now. No one was more eager than they 
 were, nor any one more amusing than Mrs. Fisher. 
 
 "I tell my husband that, if he would only let us vote, we 
 would settle all this at the first election. To begin with, we 
 would not have any of this nonsense about aldermen and 
 common council. I Avish I knew the difference. I believe 
 there is none. I am quite sure Mr. Beltridge, the super 
 intendent of our Sunday-school, told me he was a council 
 man, and then when I wanted him to pardon Jane Flaherty's 
 husband out of jail, not six months after', Mr. Fisher told me 
 he was an alderman, and had nothing to do with it. No, 
 Mr. Keane, I should have the same number of aldermen as 
 of councilmen, and then they could not be opposing each 
 other as they do. If there were no mayor at all we should 
 get on a great deal better. But I tell Mr. Fisher that no 
 woman, who knows a woman's place, can think for a 
 moment of voting, etc., etc., etc.," poor Mr. Keane being the 
 only person who could rightly repeat this part of my story. 
 
 "But the news of the day," said Mr. Visdon, the editor- 
 in-chief of the Chronicle^ " is that Michael Swinton has been 
 appointed one of the Commissioners to the International Fair 
 at Antwerp. His commission came from Washington this 
 morning. He means to accept, and so the question as to the 
 Seventh Ward must be fought all over again." 
 
 Let us hope that a patient reader remembers that Michael 
 Swinton led the Street in its conflict with the Hill in that 
 region. 
 
 "Then Col. Stothers will walk over," said I, hoping to 
 show my intelligence, and really, as usually happens when 
 one shows off his intelligence, showing that I was a fool. 
 The editor did not so much as look at me, nor form any sort
 
 96 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 of reply. Such a question deserved no answer. But Pro 
 fessor Greene said, with a frightened tenderness for me, 
 "Oh dear, no! Col. Stothers would no more unite 
 imite our friends there, than would than Avould well, 
 any one you could name." 
 
 We had all looked at John Fisher when this new problem 
 was brought up. The question of Alderman in Ward Seven 
 had become much more interesting it probably was 
 more important than the question of the vote for Mayor, 
 where, indeed, we felt quite sure. But, if we lost the 
 Seventh Ward, the whole fabric of our system would give way. 
 
 I do not know if Mr. Visdon thought that his news would 
 surprise John Fisher. Perhaps he did. For it was certain 
 that Michael Swinton had told him, in secrecy, that he re 
 ceived the appointment, just an hour before, without even 
 applying for it, or thinking of it, and that at that time no 
 other man in Tamworth knew it. It was also certain that 
 Fisher had just come from the mills and had met Visdon on 
 the door-steps. So it is possible Visdon thought that he had 
 for once, a bit of local news which even John Fisher did not 
 have. 
 
 But, if Mr. Visdon had known what Mr. Fisher told me 
 that evening, that so soon as the difficulty in Ward Seven 
 took place he had himself written to the Secretary of State 5 
 at Washington, to ask that this place or something like it 
 might be given to Michael Swinton, which would take him 
 out of the canvass ; if Mr. Visdon had known that three or 
 four private letters had passed from each side, and that, the 
 morning before, Mr. Fisher had a long despatch in cipher 
 from Washington, I think he would not have supposed that 
 this anecdote took John Fisher by surprise.
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 97 
 
 " I knew I had some influence in Washington," said John 
 to me afterwards. "Of course I would not use it for myself, 
 but for the public I would. What am I for? If Michael 
 Swinton spends next year in Antwerp he will be much more 
 fit to be an alderman when he comes home." 
 
 At the table, however, the talk ran fast and loud as to 
 what could be done in the ward. Col. Stothers would never 
 withdraw. He had pledged too much and had gone too deep. 
 The Hill people were on a " regular bender." It was their 
 first experiment in politics in many years, and they rather 
 liked it. And yet there was as little chance of their choosing 
 Col. Stothers as there was of their choosing the lead statue 
 of Meriwether Lewis, which stood in their pretty little park. 
 
 " Such a shame that we should lose Ward Seven," said 
 Miss Flinders to me. 
 
 John Fisher had said almost nothing. It seemed to me 
 that he had been, almost with affectation, discussing Lo 
 hengrin with the Countess, who was on his right. Miss 
 Flinders and I were well down the table on his left. It was, 
 therefore, the more marked, when he, as if he heard every 
 word which everybody said at his own table, took up Miss 
 Flinders at once and said : 
 
 "Do not be distressed, Miss Flinders. We shall not lose 
 Ward Seven. We shall carry it by the strongest vote we 
 have had for years. All your funny quarrel there has done 
 no end of good. Your kid-gloved friends have taught us 
 how to carry on a canvass." 
 
 "I am glad they have taught anybody anything," said 
 Miss Flinders, who had the courage of her convictions, was, 
 as it happened, the only person present who lived in the ward, 
 was a child of the public, a perfect lady, and .defied the Hill
 
 98 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 people and all their elegant buckram and precision. "But 
 I should be glad to be let into the secret, and know how this 
 is to be done. For one, I want to vote. I do not agree with 
 Mrs. Fisher." 
 
 For Mrs. Fisher's third and last oracle on this subject had 
 been that no woman should ever wish to vote, and that no 
 decent woman ever said she did. She had three times ex 
 pressed herself on the other side of the same subject since 
 dinner began. 
 
 " You do not suppose that Col. Stothers wants to stand, 
 do you?" asked John Fisher, quizzically. 
 
 "I know he is no coward," said she, doubting to what 
 this must lead, and knowing that she must commit herself to 
 nothing, in a conflict of wits with him. 
 
 "No one ever thought him a coward," said John seriously. 
 "You canal people may laugh at him as you choose, he is a 
 gentleman born and bred. He loves his country and would 
 die for it, as readily as on the day when he was the first man 
 on the breastworks at Fort Donelson. He would with 
 draw this moment, if he were here, and if we showed him 
 a better man." 
 
 "A better man? Yes," said Keane, "but the trouble is to 
 persuade him and the Hill that we have found a better man." 
 
 "It would be hard to name a better man, in the true 
 sense," said John Fisher. " A better man than Col. Stothers 
 is does not walk this earth, if by goodness you mean honor, 
 truth, generosity, pluck ; yes, and modesty. But he will not be 
 trampled on, more than Michael Swinton. All you have to 
 do is to show him a candidate -who on the whole knows this 
 city, its schools, its poorhouse, its roads, its people, better than 
 he does."
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 99 
 
 " And that is hard to find," said Keane again, Keane be 
 ing the leader of a coterie, not unlike the Hill coterie, in Ward 
 One, where they had things all their own way. "Hard, I 
 mean, in Ward Seven." 
 
 Miss Flinders's eyes were flashing fire. She was about to 
 give "that little Keane" an answer which would have en 
 venomed the politics of the town for years, when John Fish 
 er, who was not going to give her a chance, said : 
 
 "I will give you your man. And Col. Stothers will with 
 draw in his Favor, and all the Stothers horses will work all 
 day carrying voters to the polls for him. And Miss Maud 
 Flinders will wave her handkerchief when the new alderman 
 is cheered in the evening by the people in the Hollow." 
 
 "You are a wizard, Mr. Fisher," she said, but you must 
 wave your wand before I believe. Who is your candidate ?" 
 
 " Col. Stothers's next door neighbor !" 
 
 Miss Flinders dropped the orange she was peeling. 
 
 " Dr. Witherspoon ! Dr. Witherspoon an alderman ! " 
 
 "Precisely," said Mr. Fisher. "Dr. Witherspoon an 
 alderman. Dr. Witherspoon knows as much of drainage as 
 he knows of Greek, and that is to say he knows the matter 
 to the bottom ; he knows men by instinct, he knows the 
 schools of Tarn worth as no supervisor of them all does, he is 
 a man of that simplicity and that honor that no man dares 
 speak of fraud within a mile of him. He is liberal to every 
 form of opinion, and he has the courage of his convictions. 
 Now what are we to have aldermen for, as Mrs. Fisher says, 
 if we may not choose such a man as that when we need him, 
 or Col. Stothers when we need him? " 
 
 Thus was it, I think, that Dr. Witherspoon was first nomi-
 
 100 MY FRIEND THE BOSS 
 
 nated. What is more, I believe he was flattered as Avell as 
 surprised when he heard of the nomination. 
 
 To me, as we sat together that evening, after the rest of 
 the party had gone away, Fisher opened himself rather more 
 confidentially on the subject of local politics than ever before. 
 
 I rallied him a little on the nomination of Dr. Witherspoon. 
 " Ah, well," he said, "as well to nominate him at a dinner 
 party as a caucus. One must move somewhere. I wanted 
 Miss Flinders, who is a power ' in the street.' to have the 
 comfort of thinking that she was a prominent agent in his 
 election, as she will be. She is a pillar in his church, and a 
 loyal public-spirited woman." Then he told me what I have 
 revealed to the reader, that he and the Secretary of State to 
 gether, had thought our honest and stubborn friend, Michael 
 Swinton, would do good service at Antwerp, and that it was 
 thus that a vacancy was created in the ticket for aldermen, 
 which must be instantly filled. 
 
 " It has all turned out very well," he said. " When the 
 canvass began those people would no more have let us have 
 their ' dear Dr. Witherspoon' on the Board, than they would 
 have burned his church down while he was preaching. 
 But now the Greeks were at their doors, literally. They had 
 carried their ridiculous Swinton-Stothers quarrel so far that 
 they were within a week of choosing the master of a grog 
 shop to the Board, and three common councilmen of his own 
 kidney. They will begin to learn that no man is too good for 
 this sort of service." 
 
 I asked if he did not find himself annoyed and provoked in 
 the midst of such conflicts. 
 
 " Sometimes annoyed, never provoked, often amused," 
 said he. And then it was that he opened his confidence to me
 
 MY FRIEND T.HE BOSS. 101 
 
 a little. " I have large interests in this town," he said. 
 "Pride apart, I have a large pecuniary interest in having it 
 well governed. It is now six years since I saw that decent 
 people were deserting the business of governing it. That 
 business was running into the hands of adventurers, bar 
 tenders, horse-jockeys, gamblers, what you call ring-men. 
 AVliy, I tried to choose a decent school committee. I found 
 I was considered as interfering with the prerogatives of a set 
 of drunken hounds whom I would not speak to in a street 
 car. 
 
 "Well, I set to considering this thing. I said to myself, 
 ' Suppose I had a fancy for yachting. Or suppose I wanted 
 to buy folio Shaksperes and original Miltons. Or suppose I 
 had taken to Corots, and Calarnes,and Meissoniers, like your 
 Mrs. Morgan or Mr. Vanderbilt. How much should I gladly 
 spend a year in that business? Why, I should readily spend 
 a hundred thousand dollars the first year for my yacht, and fifty 
 thousand a year afterwards.' I laid aside those amounts in 
 my plans for the next six years. Of course I never bought 
 a man or a vote. But I put the money where I thought it 
 would help in the good government of the city. I put it in 
 reading-rooms, and boys' institutes, and music-clubs, and 
 libraries, and Sunday-schools, and galleries, and turner 
 matches, and gymnasiums, and law-and-order leagues, and a 
 thousand other agencies which enthusiasts are constantly in 
 venting. The consequence is that I am the friend of the en 
 thusiasts and they are friends of mine. 
 
 "And, Mellen, it is always the enthusiasts who win in the 
 long run, if they have a man of sense behind them. Nothing 
 ever succeeded in this world, which had not a crazy man 
 hitched on somewhere.
 
 102 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 "That was the first consequence, I say. The second, if 
 you ever choose to go into the same line of business, was this. 
 When I began, my taxes in this city were sixteen on the 
 thousand, I paid sixteen dollars on every thousand of my 
 assessment. Now I pay eight on the thousand, just half 
 what it was, and the government is much better than it used 
 to be. They assess me for about two millions. So I save 
 in my own taxes rather more than a hundred and fifty thou 
 sand dollars a year. Practically it costs me nothing to run 
 my yacht, and I enjoy the fun of sailing her." 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 T SHOULD have said that I knew what John Fisher's 
 life was, in all its important details, after I had been in 
 Tamworth for a fortnight of such experiences as I have de 
 scribed. But one of those coincidences turned up, which 
 are frequent enough in daily life and on the stage, but which 
 writers who are not dramatists are always afraid of, which 
 show in truth how small the world is, and it gave me quite 
 a new glimpse of the way in which part of his time was 
 taken. 
 
 There had been another state dinner party at his house. 
 For a set of French gentlemen had turned up, commissioned 
 by their government to inquire into the condition of prisons 
 or of something, and they had letters of introduction to John 
 Fisher, and so we had them to dinner. "We were full for 
 ward in the ceremony, but I was doing my best with the 
 particular pundit who was entrusted to me on one side, and
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 103 
 
 a frightened school girl on the other, who had been asked be 
 cause the pundits had been hospitably received by her father 
 in Duluth. Of a sudden, one of the servants spoke to me 
 and gave me a letter, which he said came by the latest de 
 livery and was marked, rather boldly, "IMMEDIATE." 
 
 I was afraid of bad news from a friend who was ill, and, 
 as soon as I well could, opened my letter to find that I need 
 not have been so anxious. But Carmichael, who was an 
 old friend of mine, and was now settled down in Eden ton, 
 in North Carolina, had fallen in Avith a newspaper giving an 
 account of our terrible railroad accident, at the Lookout Sta 
 tion, the day of the wash-out. In the account was the 
 name of Mrs. Winborn among the killed, and the name of 
 a certain Nathan Winborn, as badly wounded. "Now I 
 see by the same paper that you are to come to this same 
 Tamworth," so Carmichael went on ; " and I beg you to 
 find if this Mr Winborn is my old Captain in the llth Ken 
 tucky. He is the noblest fellow I ever knew, if he is, and 
 you must bear him my best love, and see if you can do any 
 thing for him. There is no man living, whom I love and 
 honor as I do him." 
 
 Of course, there was no reason why I should feel that 
 this commission of Carmichael's must be attended to imme 
 diately. But I tell all this story about the dinner simply to 
 explain why I went in search of Col. Winborn when I did, 
 and how the coincidence took place to Avhich I referred. 
 For, after dinner, when other guests came in, rather tired, 
 to say the truth, of the prisons, and of talking bad French, 
 I thought I would see if the poor man were anywhere in our 
 part of the town, and so slipped out, unobserved, into the 
 splendid moonlight. It would not take long to ride into the
 
 104 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 city on a, street-car, and there I could determine whether I 
 would or would not go in search of my man. Naturally, I 
 should have asked advice of the home party. But they 
 were all engaged with their guests, and I was glad to paddle 
 my own canoe. 
 
 But I had the inevitable drawbacks. The directory re 
 vealed " Nathan Winborn, 53 Laurel," very plainly. Cer 
 tainly, there could not be in the world many people of that 
 name. But I saw, with a certain regret, that the directory 
 revealed nothing more. Now when a man's name is in the 
 directory, without any other token than that he lives some 
 where, you know that he is either very high on the ladder 
 of comfort or very low. He is so grand that he has no oc 
 cupation but to fret over his investments, in which case that 
 occupation is not put down, for reasons not known to me. 
 Or he is so unfortunate that no one will employ him. And 
 then you feel afraid that the wolf is at the door. In 
 Nathan Winborn's case the ' ' Laurel Street " was not en 
 couraging. I had never heard of Laurel Street, nor had the 
 somewhat cynical, though courteous druggist's clerk, whose 
 chained directory I was consulting. I asked him, timidly, 
 if he knew where Laurel Street was, and his reply showed 
 that no man, well-to-do in the world, knew or cared. This 
 was clear from the tone in which he said, " No, Sir !" No 
 Laurel streets for such as him. 
 
 But the friendly directory revealed again that Laurel 
 Street ran from 173 Garfield Street across to 99 Hancock 
 Street. And these streets were in a distant suburb of the 
 city. I doubted whether I should find Nathan Winborn 
 that evening. The courteous clerk told me what line of 
 street-cars I was to take, and that I should find them at the
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 105 
 
 City Hall. At the City Hall it proved that the car went to 
 Hanco.ck Street every half hour when the Omaha train was 
 not late, as that night it probably was. All this ended by 
 my walking a mile, taking the car when it passed me, and 
 then, when I modestly asked to be dropped at Laurel Street, 
 I was told with surprise, and scorn even, that I should have 
 transferred at Baldwin's, that I had been switched off and 
 was now on Grover Street, which was far away from Gar- 
 field Street, in short, that the best thing for me, was to 
 leave the car at once and walk back again, all which I did 
 accordingly. The reader will not wonder, then, that it was 
 nearly ten o'clock before I found Nathan Winborn's house. 
 I had determined not to ring, or make any sign, unless 
 there seemed to be lights below stairs. 
 
 Alas, when I found the house, No. 53, my presages, grad 
 ually growing more doleful and more, acquired a sad cer 
 tainty. This particular Garfield, and Arthur, and Laurel 
 suburb was, clearly enough, no abode of splendor. The 
 people were not at the top o the comfort ladder. No. 53 
 was a little " five-room house." Even in the moonlight I 
 could see that it had but little paint, and it might have been, 
 probably had been, moved from site to site half-a-dozen 
 times, since some pioneer erected it, as various streets be 
 came more and more grand, and its place in them had been 
 taken by more substantial homes. In all the rest of the 
 street, the houses were as dark as at midnight. Either no 
 body else lived in Laurel Street, or they were all early peo 
 ple, who would not waste their kerosene. But Nathan 
 Winborn's house showed a light from every window. It 
 must be fully occupied with people who were awake. 
 
 After a moment's hesitation, therefore, I turned the little
 
 106 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 crank in the middle of the door, and struck the little gong 
 on the other side within. I had to wait a full minute for an 
 answer. Then to my surprise, as the door was flung open, 
 the man who held a lamp above his head that he might see 
 his late visitor was John Fisher ! He was in his shirt 
 sleeves. 
 
 " Is it you ?" he said, quick, anxious, and in a low tone. 
 " Nothing wrong at home, I hope." And in a moment I 
 re-assured him ; told him, indeed, that I had left home 
 while he was still in his own parlor, and that I had been 
 two hours in coming. " No," I said, " I found my way by 
 the directory to 'inquire about this poor gentleman. Was 
 he an officer in a Kentucky regiment in the war?" 
 
 " The same," said he, in the low voice in which he had 
 spoken before. " Poor fellow, he is at this moment dying 
 in his room. The doctor is with him, and says it cannot 
 last long. But I have sent the children to bed ; those are 
 their rooms up-stairs and the day-nurse is sleeping here." 
 He pointed to the rear room* which opened from the little 
 passage where we stood. "I cannot ask you in, you see, 
 unless, indeed, we should explore the kitchen. If, as I 
 suppose, you came to be of use to him, I am afraid there is 
 nothing more we can ask you to do. He will be with his 
 wife and baby before morning. The baby, you know, was 
 crushed with her mother." 
 
 I told him that I knew nothing, but that I came to be of 
 use, and, if it were of any use, I could easily spend the night 
 there. 
 
 ".No, "said John Fisher, perfectly simply, "he knows 
 me ; he is used to me. We will not make any change to 
 night. This is my night, you see. But do not let us stand
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 107 
 
 talking here ; they will wonder where you are, at home ; 
 and I will show you a shorter way than you came by. 
 Really, really, I am all the force that they need. You see 
 the doctor is here, and will be here till midnight. Stay, I 
 will tell him I am going with you, and we can talk as we 
 walk, in the open air. 
 
 He went in, for a moment, to the dying man's room ; 
 came back, arid said he was sleeping gently, and then joined 
 me to show me the direct way home. " I knew nothing of 
 them," he said when AVC were well out of the house, "till 
 the evening of the accident. One of our fellows, Hastings, 
 went to the station when the doctor's train came in, and 
 brought poor Winborn to his house. For Winborn begged 
 to come home. It would have been better, perhaps, to have 
 taken him to the hospital ; but here were the children, three 
 not hurt besides the two that were ; and the poor fellow has 
 been so much happier to have them where he could see them 
 at any moment. So I am glad that Hastings brought him 
 here. We had, of course, all the force which you could 
 handle in that little cabin, and the doctors have been untir 
 ing. It is Lincoln who is with him now." 
 
 I told Mr. Fisher who Carmichael was, and repeated, as 
 w r ell as I could, the words of his eager letter. He had said 
 that Nathan "VVinborn was a fellow-officer and one of the 
 noblest men who ever lived. He had written to me to be 
 sure that he might know what had befallen his friend. 
 Then I asked, imprudently perhaps, " You speak of Hast 
 ings. Do I know him? Who is he? Who are 'we'?" 
 
 " Oh !" he replied, with an instant's hesitation, "there 
 is a little knot of us ; there are ten in all, who have kept to 
 gether since we were all at the bench, and have sometimes
 
 108 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 counted in a new member to fill up a gap. We have found 
 it a good thing to take the care well, of such a thing as 
 this, when it comes along, for ourselves and by ourselves, 
 without making any fuss about it. And it is a good thing. 
 I am very glad to be counted in still. Some things cannot 
 be done by proxy ; and I think it is always bad for a man 
 to be separated, by whatever circumstances, from the rank 
 and file, from all sorts and conditions of men. I wish I 
 had known this fine Major Winborn before. I could have 
 been of use to him, and he to me. But, as I have not 
 known him, I am glad to take care of him here in person 
 now ; glad not to relegate everybody and everything to some 
 body else to see to. I was glad to split the wood for his 
 kitchen fire, and to draw the tea which he wanted, after his 
 own army fashion. 
 
 "The truth is, Mellen, that we ought never to lose the 
 touch of the elbow, even if it happen, as things come and 
 go, that you are serving on the staff. Do you remember 
 no ; you were not with us that fine fellow, Denny, when 
 we Avere all drilling, just before Sumpter? I have never 
 forgotten one of his saws : 'A man never knows his man 
 ual too well.' There is a deal in it. Those boys of mine 
 should never ride a horse, if they could not saddle him, 
 bridle him, and groom him. I believe I ought to say shoe 
 him. And I swear to you, Mellen, I should feel cheap 
 enough, if I were ever laid up with a broken leg, with a 
 lot of women bothering about me to take care of me, if I 
 had not found some chance to take my turn. That is the 
 reason why I am on duty to-night. It does not happen often. 
 But I should be very loath not to take my turn with the 
 others. I cling to this Ten, of the old days, as I do not to
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 109 
 
 any of the grander clubs. "When it is my turn, as it is to 
 night, I am glad the night comes round." 
 
 And he bade me good-night, and went back to close poor 
 Winborn's eyes. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 T'XT'HEN the day of the ratification meeting came, I had, 
 of course, determined to go. To my surprise, Mrs. 
 G rattan and Miss Bell insisted on going also, and claimed 
 my escort, which I was very willing to give. The woman 
 whom I thought crazy had bidden me tell Mr. Fisher that 
 William Salter would tell the people all about the necklace. 
 I had thought she might be crazy, but still I did not dare 
 neglect her message. I had fallen into the habit of asking 
 Miss Bell's advice and information, when Tarn worth life 
 puzzled me. But I did not dare do that now, for the com 
 munication was clearly confidential. 
 
 So I simply told John Fisher, after waiting, in rather a 
 cowardly way, for a day or two, that a woman had called 
 me out to say that he must not go to the ratification meeting, 
 for that William Salter Avould make a speech and tell the 
 people all about the necklace. 
 
 I could not doubt for an instant but he was annoyed. 
 There passed over his face a shadow, which I never saw but 
 two or three times. And I never wanted to see it again. It 
 expressed utter bitterness, with the sense of failure, and per 
 haps a sort of tired look, as if one should say : " What is 
 the use of fighting any longer?" But it was gone in the 
 infinitesimal of a second, and he might well fancy that I had
 
 110 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 never seen it. He lifted his great eyebrows as if in sur 
 prise, and said: "What in the world did she mean?" 
 But he said nothing more. And I knew that he knew Avhat 
 she meant, and that the subject, whatever it was, was hate 
 ful to him. 
 
 When Thursday came, Miss Bell loitered in the breakfast- 
 room, as we left it, that she might speak to me alone. It 
 had happened that I had had no chance to talk with her by 
 herself, since the day I took her message so unconsciously 
 to George Rossiter. This morning she said, hurriedly, and 
 careful that we should not be overheard, ' ' Do you know 
 why Mr. Fisher is going to the meeting to-night, the ratifica 
 tion meeting?" I had even forgotten it was Thursday. 
 But I felt guilty at the moment, as one does when he has a 
 secret. Of course if he were going I knew why. But I 
 stumbled, as a man with a secret does, and showed her, 
 merely by my manner, that I had a secret, and perhaps that 
 it was a secret that I did not understand. I said : "Is he 
 going? I did not know it till you told me." 
 
 " He is going," said she. "He is determined to go. 
 And he will not tell me why. Yet it would be much better 
 that he should not go. He never docs go, and that makes 
 me think " here she paused, " that he knows he ought not 
 to go. You men are just so obstinate," she said, trying to 
 laugh, but with her eyes full of tears, which made, her more 
 charming than ever. Then she looked me square in the eye. 
 "And you cannot tell me why he goes." 
 
 Of course I could tell her ; and, whether I ought to tell 
 her or no, Mary Bell with her eyes full of tears could have 
 turned me round her finger. 1 told her what the crazy 
 woman had said to me.
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. Ill 
 
 Her only answer was : "I was afraid it was that. So 
 William Salter is to make the speech. Ungrateful hound !" 
 Then, as if it were another subject, " Mr Fisher will never 
 take me with him. Will you " 
 
 There was an instant when I was exquisitely happy that 
 she had asked me for such a service, but she made no pause 
 at that instant, nor indeed thought that I was fool enough to 
 be deceived. She simply showed me what a fool I was as 
 she finished it. 
 
 " Take me and Cordelia Grattan with you. We cannot 
 go alone. But we can all have one of the carriages." 
 Carriages, to be sure, as if it would not have been better to 
 have walked with her twenty miles, than to have sailed in 
 Cleopatra's barge with Cordelia Grattan and her ! Why 
 should Cordelia Grattan and her millions come in every 
 where? This was the thought which passed through my 
 mind. But, alas ! it met the other thought that, if we Avcrc 
 to walk to the meeting alone, George Rossiter might over 
 take us. 
 
 To the ratification meeting accordingly we went, taking 
 very sedulous care that John Fisher should not know we 
 were going. But, indeed, an ominous silence hung over the 
 whole day, which was quite enough to show me that there 
 was a secret, if in my own private duty I had not known it 
 perfectly well. In that house, of all the houses in Tam- 
 worth in that house, where every preparation for the elec 
 tion had been begun, not one word was said of the great 
 meeting which virtually crowned the work, which even de 
 cided by its success or failure how the work was to end. 
 We made our arrangements so as not to interfere with Mr. 
 Fisher's, and about this there proved to be no difficulty, as
 
 112 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 he had made his so as not to interfere with ours. We ar 
 rived at the hall rather early and so had tolerably good seats 
 in the gallery, which was reserved for ladies and their 
 friends. But the building soon filled up, and was crowded, 
 except on the platform, before any person appeared there. 
 To my disgust, George Rossiter saw us from below and 
 came and joined us where we sat, quite unconscious that I 
 could have wrung his neck, had the customs of society and 
 the instructions of the decalogue permitted. 
 
 A good band was playing when we went in, and continu 
 ed to play until the meeting began. But I do not think any 
 person listened for an instant to the music. It filled the 
 office of music well, if it be true that we are quite uncon 
 scious of the best. We were all watching to see who was 
 there, and wondering if this or that person were not there. 
 Just at the hour appointed, half-past seven, from a myste 
 rious side passage, the committee and dignitaries filed in up 
 on the platform. The ladies of my party watched them 
 with a good deal of feeling now of admiration, generally of 
 ridicule, and sometimes of scorn. " Little John Ryder ; he 
 does. Ward III." "Really, Mary, there is Theodore 
 Gross ! Who would have thought it ? Buttons at the 
 front. Mary, he is looking for you." " Col. Stothers ! 
 See Col. Stothers ! They ought to cheer Col. Stothers." 
 The Colonel had not been at a ratification meeting since the 
 Town Hall was built, and did not know the intricacies of 
 the platform. When he was dragged Avell to a prominent 
 seat at the front, the audience, sooner of course than the 
 ladies, took the idea, and cheered him vigorously. lie 
 had earned his cheer by withdrawing in favor of Dr. With- 
 erspoon, who appeared a moment after, and was cordially 
 received in his turn.
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 113 
 
 All this time the band was playing " Hail to the Chief," 
 as loud as it could play, but it seemed as if no one, except 
 ing a dilettante visitor like me, knew or cared that they 
 were not playing the " Dead March in Saul." 
 
 Mr Fordyce, who was their Member of Congress, presid 
 ed, and presided very well. He spoke at length on the exi 
 gency, which he really thought to be of the utmost importance 
 to the people, so that he could say so without lying, or any 
 rhetoric analogous to lying. He said that on another occa 
 sion he should like to talk to them on national politics, and 
 he hoped that they would give him an opportunity. " But 
 not to-night." He hoped that to-night Democrats and Re 
 publicans and Third Party Prohibitionists or First Party 
 Greenbackers were together to join in establishing perma 
 nently the good government of Tamworth, which they had 
 only partly won by the magnificent victory of last year. 
 That victory had been welcomed by the whole country. 
 Once and again he had been congratulated on it in Wash 
 ington. 
 
 At this point in Fordyce's speech, Mary Bell seized 
 Cordelia Grattan's arm. "There's that viper, William 
 Salter !" 
 
 " Where?" said the other, eagerly. 
 
 "The second man in the row behind him. The man 
 with something red in his button-hole. I wonder the earth 
 doesn't open under him." 
 
 I was glad to be thus far prepared for the drama. For 
 dyce was going on with his explanation of last year's vic 
 tory, and what must be done to complete it. He made a 
 very good picture of what his father and their fathers did, 
 not thirty years ago, when Tamworth was not ; Avhen there
 
 114 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 was then "only a possible Tamworth, a Tamworth of the 
 future ; and for its present, ladies and gentlemen, only a 
 swamp which no man could cross, and a creek which no 
 man could sail in and a tangle of cotton-wood which no man 
 could see through. What did my father and your fathers 
 do then? Did they array themselves in two camps, because 
 some of them came from Europe and some were born in 
 America? No! They hewed at the same tree, and they 
 lugged the same log. Did they settle, the Democrats on 
 one side the creek and the Republicans on the other ? No ! 
 My father split shingles for a man whose politics he hated, 
 and that man cooked the coon which they both ate for their 
 dinner. 
 
 " And I will not ask, gentlemen and ladies, for I see 
 we are honored by the presence of ladies ; I will not ask, 
 Where were the people who are opposing us this week? 1 
 do not know. I know they were not here. I know they 
 were not honorably building up the best interests of this 
 place or of any place. They were somewhere, where they 
 did not learn the lesson of the pioneer. They did not learn, 
 and they do not know, that every good citizen owes his first 
 endeavor to the town he lives in, that it may be wholesome, 
 pure, clean, and healthy ; that it may be a pleasure and a 
 blessing to live in it ; that its children and youth shall not be 
 led into temptation ; that its men and women shall live under 
 equal laws. When you have cared for this, gentlemen and 
 ladies, then, and not till then, may you adorn your palaces 
 and improve your gardens, may you take the luxury of your 
 libraries, and the recreation of your music. Your h'rst duty 
 is for the fair and pure and just government of the town in 
 which you live."
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 115 
 
 Mr. Fordyce had struck his key-note well. Clipsham fol 
 lowed him, who was, as it happened, a special favorite at 
 that moment, with these people. He had just returned from 
 his wedding-tour. There was some banter, which I did not 
 understand, about a speech he should have made the year 
 before, which he had made in the wrong place. The au 
 dience understood it, and cheered him heartily as he came 
 forward. His speech, like Fordyce's, was on the general 
 matter of the importance of good city government. A man 
 named Jones followed, who had the finally-revised list of 
 the School Committee and of the Aldermen, and it was his 
 business to explain it and account for its omissions. He 
 did this in a hemming and hawing sort of way from differ 
 ent papers he had, very badly arranged. But it was inter 
 esting to see that his speech was received quite as cordially 
 as was either of the two orations Ave had heard. Evidently 
 he was a man whom everybody respected, and it was under 
 stood that what he and his committee had to say was not 
 only nearly final but probably right. Evidently also some 
 people were dissatisfied. And to Mary Bell's terror and 
 Mrs. Grattan's they began to ask questions. These ladies 
 thought that such questions were ill-bred and rude, and I 
 observed that they always considered that the men who ask 
 ed them were morally wrong, and wished to break up so 
 ciety from its foundations. Women arc Monarchists of 
 nature. They only try the wild experiment of Democracy, 
 as the brave Peruvian princes mounted on Pizarro's stray 
 horses, to show that they can do this also. I tried, without 
 much success, to re-assure my friends, and to explain that 
 these inquirers had their rights in a public meeting, and, if 
 such questions were not put and answered, there was no use 
 in our being there.
 
 116 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 " I never said there was any use in our being here," said 
 Mary Bell rather tartly. " I never thought there was. 
 But, as the meeting was to be, I wanted to come." Had 
 Napoleon governed that city, by the simple appointment of 
 a Provost-marshal, and the proclamation of martial law, 
 both of them, at the outset, would not have been displeased. 
 
 A " Provost-marshal " is a ruler of a city who does what 
 he chooses, and "Martial Law" is the law which permits 
 him to do so. 
 
 But I on my side Avith Mrs. Grattan, and Mr. Rossiter on 
 his side with Miss Bell, explained again, as well as we 
 could, that, if republican government meant anything, such 
 interruptions or questions were not only to be permitted but 
 desired. How could we ratify that which we did not ex 
 plain? To which Mrs. Grattan said in reply, "There 
 should be some one to say what shall be done and what shall 
 not be done. That was the way my grandmother put it, or 
 I believe it was hers. It was in George the King's time, 
 anyway." To which all I could say was that her grand 
 mother's mother was a sad Tory, and that she appeared to be 
 another. To which she did not reply. It was clear enough 
 that the people on the platform were neither discouraged 
 nor displeased. When a demand more trenchant than usual 
 was put in form, "Why did you drop Pasteboard Tom ?" 
 you would see an intelligent smile pass from one of the 
 dignitaries to another, as much as to say : " I told you 
 you would get into trouble if you interfered there." But the 
 community has in it an element of Kentucky blood, and, as 
 my friend the Boss had told me, it was trained both to the 
 town meeting of New England and to the barbecue of Ken 
 tucky, blended together in all their wild and native frank-
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 117 
 
 ness. It was interesting and edifying to me, to see how 
 simply and frankly and courageously the members of the 
 final committee on nomination took these interpellations. 
 They were never taken by surprise. Indeed, they almost 
 courted questions. It was as if you had brought five " catch 
 ers " together on the platform, and invited all the " pitchers " 
 of the town to try their hand with them. The moment one 
 reply was made they would look round, almost eagerly, as 
 if to court another question. When it came, the man who 
 was to reply knew it was his question, and did not hesitate 
 an instant. Nor did any one else interfere with him. Thus, 
 to that dangerous question about Pasteboard Tom : 
 
 "Mr. James B. Stimson, of Ward III, is the person allud 
 ed to, I believe. If he is here, he will tell us why he is 
 called 'Pasteboard Tom.' I do not myself know. I do 
 know why I voted against him in committee ; and I suppose 
 other gentlemen agreed with me. He was absent from four 
 meetings of the Council last summer without a pair. He 
 has very curious views on the pavement of N Street, for he 
 voted for it after Tibbies bid for the contract, when he had 
 voted steadily against it before. I thought, if he wanted 
 to go after buffalo again this summer, he had better go." 
 
 Mr. Stimson's friend had taken very little by his motion, 
 for this answer was received with laughter and cheers. But 
 the committee was not always so fortunate. 
 
 Quite a large man, dressed much more carefully than the 
 most, stood up on the end of a settee, and when one interpel 
 lation had ended, with great dignity said : 
 
 " Mr. Chairman " 
 
 All other interpellants stopped ; there was a hush, and then 
 a general cry of " Green ! Green ! Green J"
 
 118 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 The chairman recognized Dr. Green with great courtesy. 
 
 " Many of the oldest residents are greatly displeased that 
 the name of our esteemed friend, Silas Backup, is dropped 
 from the school committee. I have nothing to say against 
 the very able names on the list put into my hands. They 
 are very good men. But Mr. Backup has experience long 
 experience. And I shall vote for him. Many others will 
 vote for him." And he sat down. 
 
 The committee-man whose business it was stepped for 
 ward this time without a particle of arrogance or of flip 
 pancy. All the committee had the greatest respect for Mr. 
 Backup, it seemed "their venerable friend," as he called 
 him. He remembered, himself, and he was no longer young, 
 when Mr. Backup examined him in geography in the old 
 school-house. But there seemed to be an impression, per 
 haps he might say among the younger teachers, that some 
 rotation in office was desirable, and as Mr. Backup had 
 been in service, as teacher and afterwards as committee-man, 
 now for twenty-nine years, a majority of the committee had 
 reluctantly determined to replace the name by that of a 
 younger man Col. Wintress, of the Fort Plain district. 
 The Fort Plain people had had no member on the committee 
 for five years. But he was instructed to say that, if any dis 
 satisfaction was expressed, the committee wished to refer the 
 change to the meeting, and he asked the chairman to sub 
 mit it. 
 
 " The man is an old fool," said Cordelia G rattan hastily 
 to me. " The book-sellers twist him right round their 
 fingers." 
 
 The chairman stepped forward to put the vote, amid rival 
 shouts of "Backup!" "Backup!" and "Wintress!"
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 119 
 
 " Win tress !" I observed that the gentlemen on the plat 
 form generally refrained from voting. But the show of 
 hands gave the place to the "old fool" of Mrs. Grattan's 
 vocabulary, three to one. 
 
 " Somebody has to be sacrificed," said Rossiter. " If 
 they really wanted to carry Wintress in, they should have 
 nominated Backup, and had Wintress named from the floor." 
 
 The ladies, meanwhile, now that they took the notion of 
 the interpellations, were very much interested, and wanted 
 more. Alas ! I was afraid that there would be one too many. 
 But I think that even Mary Bell had forgotten her fears in 
 the interest of this drama, as new to her as to Mrs. Grattan. 
 
 The people, however, had their little victory over a com 
 mittee, which, on the whole, they thoroughly confided in, 
 and were not disposed to carry the interpellations farther. 
 " Shutup !" " Oh, be still !" " Question, Question, Question !" 
 began to interrupt people who asked about candidates, and 
 the interest was decidedly flagging, when, on the platform 
 itself, the terrible William Salter stepped forward, and, to 
 the chairman's surprise, clearly enough addressed him. 
 
 " The traitor," said Cordelia Grattan, and for the first 
 time I knew that she knew there was some sort of danger 
 connected with him. I turned to look at Mary Bell. She 
 was no longer leaning forward with eager curiosity. She 
 was resting back, as if faint, on the seat, as pale as the 
 white rose she wore. 
 
 Mr. Salter then said, in an easy speech, almost like the 
 address of a lawyer of the first rank, who by some accident 
 finds himself patronizing a judge in an inferior court, that 
 he had waited till the meeting, which he highly respected, 
 should have determined the details of the ticket. The ticket
 
 120 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 bore many names which he valued. For some of the per 
 sons named on it he should vote. But the time had come 
 when the hollow character of the nomination should be ex 
 posed, and he was there to express the feelings of those who 
 wished to expose it. Here was all the form of a Town Meet 
 ing. Here was all the machinery of a Committee. What 
 was it for? It was all to register the decisions of one man. 
 In a work-shop which lie need not name, this man instructed 
 his vassals how they should vote. 
 
 "You shut up!" "Speak for yourself!" "Hold your 
 jaw !" "Hush ! Hush ! Hush ! let him go on !" 
 
 This from the audience. Mr. Salter was not fluttered. 
 Not he ! He said that was the sort of freedom of speech, 
 they would observe, which the myrmidons of their master 
 believed in and permitted. But this was not a gagged meet 
 ing, and he was not a man to be frightened. He was say 
 ing, when these hirelings broke in, that the whole thing was 
 cut and dried, either in the counting-room on Z Street, or in 
 the palace whose festivities were the marvel of the whole 
 West, or in one or another lodge room, so secret that even 
 an Argus-eyed press could not tell us where their dark coun 
 cils were held. From these conclaves came out certain de 
 crees, certain instructions, which the people of Tarn worth 
 were that night called upon to approve. 
 
 By this time there was a dead silence. The attack was 
 wholly unexpected, and there was an intense curiosity to 
 know what it meant and what it was coming to. John 
 Fisher, who was on the very front of the platform, sit 
 ting on the outer chair of a row which faced the speakers, 
 so that his profile was before the most of the assembly, sat 
 perfectly still, looking straight in Salter's face. He was, 
 perhaps, a little pale. Salter never turned that way.
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 121 
 
 He went on, growing nervous, I thought, as he spoke. 
 He never called a cheer, or any token of sympathy from the 
 crowd, but, from first to last, commanded absolute attention. 
 He tried to ridicule John Fisher's displays of wealth, but no 
 one laughed. He asked why he did not put his servants, 
 footmen and coachmen as he called them, in livery, and sug 
 gested the colors, "black and blue," but no one laughed. 
 I think he was wounded by the failure to draw the help of 
 any of the assembly, perhaps of some on whom he had re 
 lied. I think he fired his last shot before he meant. 
 
 "And who is this English lord, whose army of body-serv 
 ants, not in livery, carry his messages, and do their mas 
 ter's will? Whence comes this wealth, which has paid this 
 band to play ' Hail to the Chief,' when he stepped upon this' 
 platform, which pays for the roses which the school children 
 throw under his feet ? Where does the treasure come from 
 with which he suborns the press, and compels the unwilling 
 scribblers to support, not him, oh no ! he is always in the 
 background, but the Slaves of the Lamp and the Ring? 
 
 " I will tell you, gentlemen. It is not a week since I 
 came at the secret. For you and I cannot do such things. 
 If poor, mean William Halter, if I should go to a pawnbro 
 ker's with a copper ring, and tell him it was gold, and if an 
 ignorant boy took it from me and paid me for it, I should 
 go to the penitentiary. Poor Mike Flaherty was sent to the 
 County-house last week on a less offense. But when John 
 Fisher wants money, his character is above suspicion ! 
 When John Fisher's bank account is short, he sends the car 
 riage and servants and bids Madame go to the money-lenders ! 
 And Madame takes a pinchbeck gewgaw which no man here 
 would give his daughter, and, because it is John Fisher's
 
 122 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 jewel, the poor boy whom she bids pays .her I know not 
 how many thousands upon it. And when the fraud is ex 
 posed, does John Fisher go to the penitentiary? Not much, 
 gentlemen ! He comes to this meeting and asks you to vote 
 his ticket. But you will not do it. You will tear it to flin 
 ders !" 
 
 And, like a prophet, he rent the offending paper into shreds 
 and threw vhem from him in scorn. 
 
 Not one cheer, not one word of applause, however. Salter 
 was disconcerted, and said what I think he did not mean to. 
 "There is Mr. Niederkranz. His boy lent the money. 
 There is John Fisher. Ask either of them if what I say is 
 not true." 
 
 Then there was, in one corner, not cheers, but clapping 
 and stamping and pounding of canes. There was a general 
 standing up all over the Hall, to see what would come next. 
 There was a scuffle in one corner, and an excited man with 
 a red head leaped with some difficulty upon the platform from 
 the back of a settee. 
 
 The chairman, pale and surprised, called the meeting to 
 order, insisted that people should sit down, while the red- 
 haired man, held back by one or two of the Committee, was 
 shaking his fist across the platform at Mr. Salter's face. 
 This dumb show amused the crowd. There were one or 
 two cries of " Hear him ! Hear him !" 
 
 So soon as there was any return to silence, I heard Mary 
 Bell say to Cordelia Grattan, " Why, it is Jan Hooft, my 
 Dutch wire-drawer. What in the world has he to do with 
 that viper?" 
 
 "Hush, Hush!" 
 
 Hooft was still shaking his fist. " I dort I would tell dem
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 123 
 
 vot she did mid de money, you black-horned, black devil ! 
 She come mit de money to Maurice Witt, when him vader 
 was dying and you sent de sheriff to put him on de sidewalk. 
 Dat was de first time I seed dem horses you tell on. She 
 paid your man de money, twelve hundred dollar and dirty- 
 two, mit seven cents more, and she paid fifty-two cents do 
 de sheriff for de summons, and de sheriff gave dem cents 
 to my Marie, coz he said it was blood money, you hund, 
 you blackguard, blackguard, dat's what dey call him !" 
 
 And, greatly relieved, Jan Hooft rushed again toward 
 Salter, but was stopped on his way. The whole assembly 
 howled with delight ; some hoping, perhaps, for a personal 
 encounter. "Three cheers for Jan Hooft!" And they 
 gave them with a will. All this time, the poor chairman 
 was pounding and gesticulating. I do not think many per 
 sons noticed, as I did, that the man ivhom Cordelia Grattan 
 pointed out to me as Niederkranz, irreproachably dressed, 
 by the way, in full evening dress, Avas stepping across the 
 backs of settees and reached the platform. 
 
 Mr. Salter had alluded to him by name. 
 
 Other people saw him, and cried, " Niederkranz, Nieder 
 kranz !" And this hushed the tumult more than the chair 
 man. I looked, not at him, but at Mary Bell. She was 
 ghastly pale. I begged her to leave the hall, but she husli- 
 ed me, crowding her fingers tight upon my arm. 
 
 " Mr. Niederkranz !" said the chairman. 
 
 The old gentleman spoke slowly, but very clearly. 
 "The speaker called my name. I will not call him my 
 friend. He said something of a necklace which Mrs. Fisher 
 left in our safe ; and that we loaned her a trifle, confiden 
 tially, for which she chose to leave the necklace as collateral.
 
 124 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 It is all true. Does the gentleman think he has a monopoly 
 of lending money for interest? He is mistaken if he does. 
 When the proper time came, she sent us the money, and the 
 necklace, which is of priceless value to her and to her friends, 
 was returned to her. Is there more of the private business 
 of my firm, which Mr. Salter wishes to bring before this 
 meeting ?" 
 
 But Salter was not there. I had seen him take his hat 
 as soon as Jan Hooft was hustled from the platform. One 
 or two voices called, "Salter, Salter!" and the chairman 
 said, perhaps with a satirical turn, " AVill Mr. Salter come 
 forward?" But there was no William Salter. Every one 
 was talking to every one else. " The incident was exhaust 
 ed," as the French say. With some difficulty the chairman 
 pounded and screamed through a vote, confirming the nom 
 inations, and pledging support at the polls. 
 
 And so the meeting was over. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 "VTONE of us in the carriage, as we drove home, knew 
 how much the others knew. There was, therefore, 
 a certain chill over the conversation. I noticed, even before 
 we left the gallery, that Mary Bell's face was no longer pale. 
 It was blazing with color. Had this Mr. Rossiter said any 
 thing to her to excite her? He led her to the carriage, and 
 left us there. 
 
 " Shall we not look for Mr. Fisher?" said I, before the 
 carriage started. 
 
 " No," said Miss Bell promptly, " lie will be better pleas- 
 'ed if we take care of ourselves, and leave him to come when
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 125 
 
 he is ready." So we entered the carriage, and gave the 
 order for home. 
 
 After a painful pause, I ventured to say, "A scene in 
 deed. Did you guess what was coming?" 
 
 "Only half," said Mary Bell, "and that half I did not 
 dare tell you." 
 
 " Did he know it was coming?" said Mrs. Grattan. 
 
 "Yes," said I, "I gave him the warning myself." And 
 then I told her what I knew. 
 
 "Brave creature!" said Cordelia Grattan. "Shall we 
 ever understand him? Certainly we shall never understand 
 his wife. Pawning jewels for money ! When if she had 
 asked him for a million, he would have given it to her." 
 
 Mary Bell said nothing. 
 
 When AVC came to the door, John Fisher was standing 
 there. He had arrived before us. 
 
 " So you saw our little melodrama," he said, coolly, as he 
 handed the ladies from the carriage. " Virtue triumphant, 
 and vice defeated. Come up to supper ; Mrs. Edwards will be 
 raging." 
 
 " Is the man iron?" said Cordelia Grattan to me. And 
 so we passed into the breakfast-room, as for some reason, 
 not known to me, the room was called in which we generally 
 met, just before bed-time, for such refection as Mrs. Edwards 
 thought best fitted for that fifth meal of the day. 
 
 Were you happily following the pages of Dumas or of 
 Dickens, reader of mine, you would know what the entertain 
 ment on this occasion was. But, as you have learned to 
 your sorrow, this author is more reserved than they. 
 
 Fisher served us himself, and affected to be even gay.
 
 126 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 But he was not, and we all knew him so well that we knew 
 that he was not. Still, he would not " go back" on what 
 he had said at the house door. So soon as he saw us well 
 engaged in the conflict with hunger and thirst he took up the 
 same theme. 
 
 " You had all tried to forewarn me, but Cassandra herself 
 could not have told us, I think. What I am to say to my 
 wife, I am sure I do not know. ' If she brings us into scrapes, 
 her allies certainly bring us out again." 
 
 1 said that Jan Hooft, if that were his name, would certain 
 ly take any prize for oratory, even over the head of the 
 famous Mr. Clipsham. 
 
 Once more Miss Bell's face flushed crimson, as I had seen 
 it in the gallery at the hall, and as I never saw it before. I 
 was opposite to her so that I could not but see this, and 
 for a moment I thought she would rise and leave the table. 
 But she staid and pretended to sip her chocolate. " She is 
 iron, too," I said to myself. Fisher felt, I think, that he 
 had said all that needed to be said, and so led the talk into 
 a discussion of the rights and wrongs of the episode, by which 
 Col. Wintress was ousted from his place on the school com 
 mittee, and that " old fool" was put in again. 
 
 " I told them," said he, " to have Wintress named from 
 the floor. But they said I was no manager, and under 
 took to arrange things their own way." 
 
 Cordelia Grattan told him that Mr. Rossiter had made the 
 same suggestion.
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 127 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 A/IRS. FISHER did not appear at breakfast the next 
 morning. Nor did she appear before we left the 
 house. And I observed that the children, who were general 
 ly quite willing enough to discuss the scraps of local news, 
 and who were wildly interested in the canvass, which was 
 indeed, by this time, the centre of every one's thought, I 
 observed, I say, that the children made no allusion to the 
 scenes of the night before. This was the more striking, be 
 cause Bedford had been on the floor with some of his com 
 rades, and had seen with his eyes and heard with his ears. 
 
 It was again one of those days when there Avas no question 
 what we should do. It Avas what was called " Harvest 
 Day," a sort of anticipation of Thanksgiving, Avhich had 
 been intercalated for the purpose of inventing an autumn 
 holiday for the school-children. 
 
 "This year," said Mary Bell, " it is all nonsense. For 
 they had their parade and holiday the day Avhen we laid the 
 corner-stone. But the ' custom Avas introduced,' as the 
 newspapei'S say, some five years ago, by an enterprising 
 high-school teacher. Your purists would say that we can 
 not introduce a custom. But we knoAV better, and have 
 done it. And these very children in this house think there 
 has been a harvest day, and that school-rooms have been 
 decorated with wheat and barley and rice and sugar-cane, 
 ever since " Adam delved and Eve span."
 
 128 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 "Where shall we take Mr. Mellen, Cordelia? Of course 
 we must go to the High School, for Edgar speaks. But for the 
 other schools, shall it be kindergarten, introductory, primary, 
 secondary-primary, preparatory, grammar, grammar-techni 
 cal, technico-classical, classical or secondary? Shall we 
 go to the Logan School, the Harrison, the Meriwether, the 
 Tennyson, the Johnson, the Stubbs, or the La Salle?" 
 
 It was agreed that we should spend an hour at one of the 
 kindergartens, not so much, so far as I could see, for any 
 thing which we were to learn about education, but because 
 Agnes Fitch, the teacher, was " so pretty, and so nice." 
 Then we were to do two hours at the Meriwether School, be 
 cause the children were all Norwegians, and Dutch, and 
 Germans, and Bohemians, and of every other name and 
 nationality under heaven, except that of the country to which 
 they all owed allegiance. Then, promptly at twelve, the 
 carrriage was to be at the side-door of the Meriwether, and 
 we were to take two hours at the High School that we might 
 hear Edgar speak in the French dialogue in which Miss 
 Bell had been coaching him. 
 
 Like many other men, who have themselves spent a good 
 deal of time in teaching the young, and so in " getting up " 
 exhibitions, I had not felt much enthusiasm about all this, 
 and certainly I came down to breakfast with no intention of 
 going to primary, middle or secondary. I had my morning 
 work to do, and it never occurred to me that my presence was 
 necessary at either of these solemnities. 
 
 But I observed on the instant, that I was not to 
 exercise any choice on this occasion. So far as I remember 
 ed for every other party of the endless series in which the
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 129 
 
 
 
 household was involved, I had always been asked, in form, 
 whether I wished to go or no. But here my wish was taken 
 for granted. Or rather it was taken for granted that I 
 should go whether I wished it or not. This was so evident 
 from the first, that I did not even struggle. I was prevent 
 ed, fortunately, from committing myself. And I did not 
 intimate, by%dnk or by shrug, that five hours spent on crowd 
 ed school settees, at school exhibitions, were not for me the 
 very happiest hours of my life. 
 
 "What surprised me even more was to find, when we met 
 at the front door at quarter of nine, that John Fisher, dress 
 ed as for a gala day, was of the company. 
 
 "Mr. Mellen, I must put you in trim," said Cordelia 
 G rattan. " Really, you know, you are very nice, but you 
 do not look as if anybody took an interest in you. I must 
 give you one of my carnations." 
 
 And she pinned one upon my coat. I was forced to con 
 fess that I had not known that we were expected at the ex 
 hibition. 
 
 " They are all red-letter days here," said she, in an un 
 dertone, looking at Fisher, who was giving his hand, at the 
 carriage, to Miss Bell. " Whatever else is neglected in this 
 house, any honor that can be paid to the schools is render 
 ed." 
 
 And he took up her remark, as we all entered the carriage 
 and started. " Yes," he said, " any man who really wants 
 to keep in the ebb and flow of life will be wise if he keeps 
 the run of the schools. You learned people make a great 
 fuss about what you call your charities. If you could real 
 ly get at the English of the thing, it would appear that in
 
 130 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 
 
 the public-school teachers, by and large, through the country, 
 you have a staff of intermediaries between the comfortable 
 classes and those in need, such as none of your charity 
 machinery will manufacture in many years. My Miss 
 Mather and that nice Mrs. Philbrick are at the Logan, and 
 Sarah Plais ted and your friend, Mrs. Grattan, the girl that 
 squints, this Miss Fitch these are all teacher*, Mellen, and 
 they are ail sisters of charity. They know where the shoe 
 pinches, and they know how to help, and where. AVhy, 
 Sarah Plaisted showed me a drawer full of jaunty neckties, 
 which she keeps ready, so that no Mike, or Bernard, or Jack, 
 or Tom, of the crew, may be mortified because he does not 
 look as well as the best. And that favorite subject of your 
 novelists, the widow supported by her children's exertions, 
 when she exists, which is not often, always knows the 
 "teacher" and the " teacher always knows her." 
 
 " Oh, dear ! " he said laughing, " I wish I could jerk out 
 the word ' teacher,' as the little pirates do. Half of them 
 cannot remember the teacher's name. And when they 
 struggle to be mannerly to me, they invariably call me 
 ' Ma-am,' instead of ' Sir.' 
 
 " But I am not going to the exhibition," he added, " be 
 cause these good people are good almoners. I am going be 
 cause the schools are the centre of the whole concern. They ex 
 ist, by the goodness of God, and are a great deal better than 
 one could imagine they would be. Your gilt-edged people 
 are beginning to sniff at them, and the bigots would be very 
 glad to tear them to pieces, and shirks and do-nothings are 
 always trying to ruin their own children by stealing their 
 education from them. They take them from school and
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 131 
 
 send them where they can earn wages. All decent people, 
 Mellen, who want the commonwealth to endure, should do 
 what you and I are doing, and when a chance comes, show 
 an interest in the affair." 
 
 I had to confess to him, as I had to Mrs. Grattan, that I 
 had come because the rest came. " All right," said he, " so 
 you count one on the platform." 
 
 One always picks up something now at a public school, 
 and, once in the whirl of the exhibitions, I was entertained. 
 But the interesting thing of all was to see how many friends 
 one would say intimate friends John Fisher had among 
 the children. He would nod to them, and they grin at him. 
 He occasionally slipped a lozenge, by much stealth, into the 
 hand of a little tot ; once or twice he crossed the room to 
 speak to a boy or girl, and, in general, he showed much 
 more interest in the children as children than in the examina 
 tions, which showed how many facts, of more or less import, 
 had been drilled into them. As we went from room to room, 
 there would be an evident buzz of satisfaction wherever he 
 appeared. As we went from the kindergarten to the older 
 grammar school, I congratulated him upon this. I told him 
 it was the most satisfactory reward a man could have for 
 such a loyal interest as he had expressed. 
 
 "It keeps me young," said he. "That is the best re 
 ward. But, in truth," he added, with serious pleasure, 
 " Mrs. Grattan, there, calculated the other day that there 
 are twenty-two thousand young people in this world who have a 
 right to stop me in the streets, because in these fifteen years 
 past I have held some personal relation toward them in these 
 schools. I have signed their diplomas, or, perhaps, present-
 
 132 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 ed them when some one else signed them, or I have given 
 the bouquets, or they have had their dance on our green, 
 or something has correlated us, as your pundits would say. 
 Yes ; that is a pleasure to a man like me, who believes that 
 man is a gregarious animal." 
 
 A scene in the Meriwether grammar-school illustrated this 
 " correlation," and really brought the tears to his eyes. 
 
 So soon as we arrived, we were received with ceremony 
 and state, as if we had been admitted to a private show of 
 the Royal Academy in London. Handsome boys of fifteen, 
 with the orange and white, which proved to be the colors of 
 jthe schools, blazing at their button-holes in orange blossoms 
 and marigolds, escorted us up the stairs. Two head mar 
 shals, with ornamented batons, bearing the same colors, 
 gave them directions where Mr. Fisher should sit and where 
 the ladies, and where poor I, who was the inferior among 
 all. John Fisher, I need not say, was among the highest 
 dignitaries. His seat was actually next the master's 
 throne. The girls who were in the highest class were 
 prettily dressed in uniform, which showed how the 
 homes were 'subordinated' to the school. Every girl 
 wore orange and white in some form. But it was, alas, too 
 late in the season for the white frocks which belong to 
 school girls, and in which they look their prettiest. 
 
 The great hall, to which we arrived by painful climbing, 
 one of the kind which Dr. Holmes calls a " High-story-call " 
 hall, was crowded to the last corner. Dignitaries of botli 
 sexes were on the platform. Below, the favored seats were 
 filled by ladies, among whom Miss Bell and Mrs. Grattan had 
 " reserved seats," which were the grandest of all. Seats
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 133 
 
 further back, or on the sides, were filled with men, among 
 whom was I, and it was clear enough that all sorts of people 
 were making a holiday of the occasion. I was sure that 
 there was many a man who would not have left his work for 
 any less occasion than to hear Margaret sing or John speak 
 at the exhibitions. As for dress, there was nothing in color or 
 fabric to distinguish these people from the dons on the plat 
 form. 
 
 And so we went on through the programme. It is always 
 new and it is always old. For me I always cry my eyes 
 out on such an occasion ; there is something in the 
 fresh voice of girls or of boys which compels the 
 tears, even if the singing of the words shows, be 
 yond a doubt, that the sentences have been com 
 mitted to memory. And when they sing together, there is 
 a tenderness which wholly upsets me. 
 
 We were nearly done, when we came to one of the last of 
 what the newspapers call " numbers " or " events." It was 
 a trio sung by three girls, perhaps fourteen years old, at the 
 piano. One of them, a pretty blonde, of features distinctly 
 Dutch or German, sang with that sort of passion which has 
 seemed to me most often to sweep singers away, as if, at 
 least, they were less under the sway of the machinery of 
 music than other artists are under the technicalities of their 
 art. Anyhow , this child lost memory of the place and the 
 audience, and sang her part in this hymn as if none but the 
 good God heard her. And in the triumphant close, as the three 
 sang together, her voice rose above the rest, as if it must 
 rise. The whole assembly was hushed to absolute silence, 
 and when the song was finished, whole seconds passed by,
 
 134 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 with the dead, still hush upon us all, before there swooped 
 down upon the stillness the thunders of applause. 
 
 Quite without a hint, and I am sure, without any fore 
 thought, the girl who was the head of the school, who had a 
 wreath in her hand, prepared for I know not what, crossed 
 to the piano and put it on the pretty singer's head. 
 
 The child blushed, faltered, half smiled, half cried, 
 grew pale, and then very prettily ran forward, down the 
 steps, to her father, who was in the first row of men on one 
 side. He rose and kissed her, patted her forehead prettily 
 and took the garland in his hand. As he rose, I recognized 
 him at once, and so did half the assembly. 
 
 It was Jan Hooft, the Dutch worker in wire, whose speech 
 had come in so effectively the night before. 
 
 He bent down and kissed her again, and then fearlessly 
 led her across the front of the stage, up the steps to the 
 school-master's throne, and, before John Fisher knew it, the 
 girl had placed the laurel on his head ! 
 
 Of course, in an instant, he seized it and had it in his hand. 
 But the whole company knew the story of the night before, and 
 every one was clapping with all his might, if he were not 
 waving his handkerchief. Every one who knew Jan Hooft 
 told his name, and the thing gave every one a chance to ex 
 press pent-up enthusiasm for him and for his friend. 
 
 So it was, that I think I was almost the only person who 
 saw a bit of by-play in this queer, mediaeval scene. I 
 turned, of course I turned, to see what Miss Mary Bell was 
 doing or was thinking. Again her face was flushed with the 
 intense blaze with which it had flushed the night before. She 
 seemed all quivering with emotion. And, as I wondered,
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 13.3 
 
 the girl, the singer, who roused all this emotion, turned from 
 her father, passed to Miss Bell's seat, and flung herself into 
 her arms as she might have into her mother's. This scene, 
 however, was unnoticed by the assembly. As I say, they 
 were clapping and waving, while Fisher and Hooft stood 
 shaking hands and talking eagerly. Only I, who always 
 watched Miss Bell if I could watch her, knew what was 
 passing with her, and wondered what this fascinating woman 
 had to do with this remarkable child. Hooft and Fisher in 
 deed, could not have heard a word which either said. It 
 was all dumb show. And in a minute, a chair had been 
 found for the wire-drawer by John Fisher's side, and he was 
 compelled to sit in it, that so the performance might go on. 
 Meanwhile, Mary Bell soothed and petted the girl ; kissed 
 her again and again, and finally persuaded her to take her 
 seat again, her own cheeks blazing with crimson all the 
 time. 
 
 No school was allowed to hold its audience more than two 
 hours. For it was understood that the members of the 
 committee and other officials must attend at several exhibi 
 tions in succession. We left with the others, found the car 
 riage, and drove to the High School, where one of our. own 
 boys was to speak. 
 
 But, if I expected to have a word privately with Mary 
 Bell, as we left the school-house and went to the carriage, I 
 \ias disappointed.
 
 136 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 [ANOTHER INTERPOLATED CHAPTER. MR. MELLEN'S MEMOIRS 
 
 ARE FULL, BUT THERE ARE SOME POINTS WHICH HE, FOR 
 
 SOME REASON, DID NOT CARE TO ENTRUST 
 
 TO WRITING.] 
 
 A S they drove from the High School after the last speeches 
 had been spoken and the last diplomas given, it proved 
 that John Fisher had an errand in the town, in carrying out 
 which he needed Mrs. Grattan's judgment. After a little 
 discussion, it was arranged, therefore, to Mr. Mellen's great 
 joy though he had, of course, no voice in these plans 
 that, at the corner of Fremont Avenue and La Salle Street, 
 these two should leave the carriage and take a street-car for 
 their shopping, while Miss Bell and Mr. Mellen rode home 
 together, and were to announce that the other two would be 
 at home within ten or fifteen minutes. 
 
 Lucky Mr. Mellen to ride home with her and no one 
 else, with ten good minutes to say what he would, and no 
 possibility that she should escape him, even if she wished 
 it. 
 
 Alas, he did not use his time for the very best. At least 
 he thought so afterwards. 
 
 He did not mean to lose a moment's time. He began 
 with the adventure at school. 
 
 " That girl is another Jenny Lind, if one may trust the 
 Jenny Lind pictures. She came to you as if you were her
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 137 
 
 sister. How have you known her, and what is the mystery 
 of all this ? I have half the secret of the necklace ; can you 
 not tell me the whole ? " 
 
 " Secret ! Why do you call that a secret, which was pro 
 claimed before two thousand people ?" 
 
 " Because I think it was not proclaimed. I do not be 
 lieve, and I do not think you believe, that the two thousand 
 people went away much better informed than they came." 
 And Mr. Mellen added with some hesitation, because he 
 was in doubt how far he had better go : 
 
 " And I supposed ; yes, I suppose now that if you chose 
 you could tell well, that at least you could tell, if you 
 wished, more of the interior of Jan Hooft's house than you 
 did. I thought so, even when we were talking at breakfast, 
 and since the girl kissed you so eagerly and passionately, 
 why, I think so more than ever." 
 
 Mary Bell smiled, but not with her engaging or fascinat 
 ing smile. She smiled rather as if she forced herself to 
 smile, and then she said, with a little flush : 
 
 " You thought I could tell, if I chose, Mr. Mellen. And 
 what do you think I shall tell, if I do not choose ? " 
 
 Mellen saw in a moment that he had gone too far. He 
 had, in fact, put himself in the false position of a man who 
 has to begin a critical conversation with an apology. But 
 he made the apology like a man. 
 
 " I beg your pardon. But you spoil us, Miss Bell. You 
 have been, as I tell you every day, my guide, philosopher, 
 and friend, in the intricacies of this life, where I might stum 
 ble every day. You must not take it hardly if I try your 
 good nature too far."
 
 138 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 " Not my good nature," said she, not trying now to laugh 
 or to pretend to any longer. " No, you may be sure that 
 I will try to be good-natured. But my prudence, my dis 
 cretion ; if you please, my wisdom yes. Do not try them 
 too far, if you please, for I am not sure of them myself in 
 this matter, and I dare not say to myself at what moment 
 they may give way." 
 
 Mellen would have said, had he dared, that she was the 
 "wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best," and the prudentest 
 of women, as well as the most charming and to him the 
 dearest. 
 
 But he did not dare. He did say, with some hesitation : 
 
 " I would have said, Miss Bell, had I any right to say so, 
 and if I have not you must forgive me, that if any woman 
 can trust her own judgment you can ; if any woman is apt to 
 be prudent, you are. Surely, very few people would venture 
 to advise you." 
 
 She was as pale now as he had seen her once be 
 fore. And she did not look at him, but at the vacant cush 
 ion beside him, as she slowly answered : 
 
 " Yes, I have my secret, and, to be quite frank with you, 
 I shall act on the rule you taught us the first day you were 
 here : ' If you want your secret kept, keep it.' Whether I 
 were wise to have such a secret, that is a different thing. 
 But I am so glad you liked Minna Hooft. How could you 
 help it, indeed? You must ask Cordelia about her. 
 Cordelia has watched her voice with great care, and has a 
 right to be proud of it." 
 
 Mr. D'Israeli tells a story of Venetia in her childhood, that 
 she said to her nurse, "I do not want to talk about butter-
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 139 
 
 flies ; I want to talk about widows." Had Mellcn dared, he 
 would have said, "I do not want to talk about Minna Hooft ; 
 I want to talk about you, and tell you what a charming and 
 noble woman you are, and how I wish I might say more." 
 
 But a man cannot always say what he wants to. 
 
 " She does you infinite credit," he said, not impatiently. 
 "And, if for two or three years she has such guides, what 
 may not be hoped for her? But tell me, Miss Bell, what is 
 your method. How is it that your hand is in every hand ; 
 that you counsel statesmen by John Fisher's intervention, 
 that you lift Jan Hooft out of his miseries, close the 
 dying lips of that poor creature I left you with last week, 
 and, all the same, are the life of our house ; my l guide and 
 philosopher' ; nay, even poor Mrs. Fisher's protector. You 
 ought to tell your pupil how all this is done." 
 
 There was not the least frivolous shadow over what he said. 
 He said it, indeed, very eagerly. He meant what he said, 
 though he Avanted it to lead farther. And she could not 
 nay, she. would not laugh it off as compliment. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Mellen, you are asking for my autobiography. 
 How I was educated and what came of it. If we shall ever 
 take an Indian voyage together, there will be time for me to 
 tell you. Seriously, if one means to do the duty next her 
 hand, I fancy one finds no difficulty as to variety of life." 
 
 " I was not asking about variety of life. So far as I 
 see, life has only too much variety. What I want to 
 know is how to keep well the whip-hand on life as you do. 
 You are never surprised. Pardon me, you never lose your 
 temper. You never say a smart, sharp thing, even when 
 you think it." He was going on to say, " You come into a
 
 140 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 room, and all is sunshine. You talk to a fool, and he be 
 comes a man of sense." Nay, he would probably have 
 aaid, "You are the most charming and lovable Avoman in 
 the world, and you do not know it." 
 
 But she had no intention of letting his eulogy run into 
 an unmanageable stage, and she interrupted him. Once 
 more the conversation was skilfully landed in another 
 hemisphere. 
 
 " Oh, you ask to many questions. And I am the last 
 person to answer them. You must go to some of your 
 great talkers for that. Is not that the good of your Grand 
 Memoires, in ten volumes, which you men find time to 
 read, but I never. I look on those sets of books, 'Memoires 
 pour Servir,' and I wonder. But you ; you are a scholar. 
 I shall have an advantage when you come to the higher 
 education again. Was it not you who quoted Madame de 
 Genlis so skilfully to Miss Porter ? " 
 
 Mellen held his ground, though he saw, perhaps, that she 
 did not mean that he should. 
 
 "You know very well," he said, bravely, " that this is 
 no matter of books. You know that I might go through 
 some post-graduate courses, and that no professor could 
 teach me what you can. You know, also I am sure 
 you do me that justice that I am the last man in the 
 world to talk compliment to you. You know I respect you 
 too far I wish I might say I admire you too far. I am 
 grateful, now, for this chance of saying this while we are 
 alone." And, if Mary Bell had let him go on, Mr. Mellen 
 would have improved the minute he had left to go much 
 further and say much more.
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 141 
 
 It will not do to say that his mind Avas absorbed in that one 
 purpose. Minds are capable of carrying on many lines of 
 " cerebration " at once. And, while he was saying all this, 
 almost passionately, he was thinking, with equal passion, 
 " Why does this infamous Thomas, on the box, drive these 
 horses so much faster than they ever went before." 
 
 Miss Bell was pale. She was very attentive. She did 
 not lose her self-possession. At the moment when he said 
 "Alone" when he had to pause though for the least 
 instant, for a mere differential of a second she replied to 
 him as if he had waited for an answer, and with no air of 
 interrupting him. 
 
 " Indeed, Mr. Mellen, I do you full justice. Indeed, I am 
 sure you have seen that we are friends, true friends. You 
 said so within the minute, even when, in joke, you called 
 me a philosopher, which we both know that I am not. Mrs. 
 Grattan and I have been saying, only to-day, that we were 
 glad you determined to stay into next Aveek, because well 
 because we were glad/' There was a faint blush, as if 
 she had trifled, and indeed she had. But he Avas to have no 
 chance to take up his broken thread. " She is grateful I 
 am grateful that there is one man Avho comes to this house 
 who has not an axe to grind, who has no college to endow, 
 no Avater-fall to develop, no city to found, no invention to 
 explain. More grateful are AVC that this strange visitor 
 pays us the first of compliments by treating us as if we were 
 Avomen of sense. Why, we had a man here who told Mrs. 
 Grattan that orthography meant good spelling, and another 
 told me that Mr. D'Israeli was the leader of the Tory 
 party."
 
 142 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 Not one chance did she give to Mr. Mellen, as she talked 
 on. And probably she would have gone on with her illus 
 trations, but,, at this moment, this Jehu Tom swept round 
 the curve of the avenue, and drew up at the front door of the 
 house. 
 
 Whether he would or no, Mr. Mellen had to step from 
 the carriage and offer her his hand. 
 
 She mounted the steps rapidly before him. But he fol 
 lowed as rapidly. And, as she led the way across the ample 
 hall, he said, with true courage, in a voice which could not 
 but be heard : 
 
 "Pray do not go up-stairs. Step for a moment into the 
 parlor." 
 
 She was too brave not to obey, and she turned. He led 
 the way this time into an elegant satin-bedecked room of 
 state, into which, in that house of comfort, nobody ever 
 went, unless there was a great evening party. She followed 
 him, as he asked her to do. She took the chair he offered 
 her, qxiite behind the door. He was dead in earnest, it was 
 easy to see that. He even closed the door as he passed 
 it. 
 
 " You do not do me justice," he said. "You talk of 
 Mrs. Grattan as if you and she were the same persons to 
 me. I respect Mrs. Grattan. I admire her. But, with 
 all her wealth, and with that ease which I suppose money 
 brings with it, she does not work your miracles. If no one 
 else tells you so, I will tell you so." 
 
 She looked on the carpet, and was thoroughly attentive 
 now. 
 
 "I do not want to talk about Mrs. Grattan ; I want to
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 143 
 
 talk well, about myself and about Miss Mary Bell. And 
 I want to talk of both together." 
 
 And here he tried to smile. 
 
 "I have asked you to come in here, because I have a favor 
 to ask. You do not know me, I think I hope as well as 
 I could wish that you knew me. I am sure that I know 
 you that is, I say so to myself every morning, and then 
 every night I am sure that I know something of you which 
 I never knew before. We are never alone, and that is the 
 reason why I am so bold now. If you will believe " 
 
 "Are you two here?" cried Mrs. Fisher, entering at this 
 moment, from a little room, which was called the morning- 
 room. "I have been roaming all round this empty house, 
 to find some sort of society. One might as well live in a log- 
 cabin. And here you have been talking temperance all the 
 morning." 
 
 Mr. Mellen, who would have gladly thrown her out of the 
 window, repressed himself so far as to say that they had but 
 that moment come in ; that they had come from the school 
 exhibitions. 
 
 U I know that very well," said Mrs. Fisher, who had just 
 before said she supposed something else. "I know where 
 you all went. Mary told me. And, because I happened to 
 breakfast up-stairs, no one could tell me in time. Because, 
 I suppose, it is my pet pleasure of the year to go and hear 
 these little things speak and sing, it had to be kept a dead 
 secret from me. I came down just as you had gone, and 
 found the house empty as usual." 
 
 Mr. Mellen hastened to say that a message from her maid 
 gave Mr. Fisher the impression that she did not wish to go.
 
 144 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 "I do not know what I said to Mary. My head was 
 cracked with pain. I was not fit to sit up. And I should 
 not have got up, but that everything goes wrong the minute 
 I stay in bed fifteen minutes later than usual. 
 
 "Ah, Mr. Mellen, no man will ever understand what the 
 care of a great household is, where one has, beside, the 
 families of twelve hundred work-people to look after." And 
 she sank, in her most helpless and confiding attitude, on the 
 sofa by poor Mellen's side, and began with him, just as if 
 she had never begun before, as if he were an entire stranger, 
 and were wholly new to the story of her sufferings, her lone 
 liness, and of what it was to be misunderstood or not under 
 stood at all. 
 
 " Now, take to-day," she said, in her most confidential 
 tone. She was so confidential that Miss Bell rose, and said, 
 " I will run up-stairs, and be ready for dinner. Cordelia 
 will be here in five minutes, Mrs. Fisher, and your husband 
 with her." 
 
 And poor Mellen such is the fate of men in highly-civilized 
 society could not rush after her, and beg her to give him 
 some chance to show her what man he was. He would 
 have been so glad to say everything to her. Of what she 
 had been to him already, and could be forever, if she would 
 let him. And such is destiny instead of this, he must sit 
 and share the wayward sorrows of his wayward hostess. 
 
 ' Yes, Mr. Mellen," said Mrs. Fisher, so soon as Mary 
 Bell had gone. "I was saying that this was one of the 
 mornings when I felt specially well. I dressed myself with 
 that feeling you know what it is, dear Mr. Mellen of 
 exulting joy that I was in the world. Well, yes, I want-
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 145 
 
 ed to measure myself with the Avorld. You understand me, 
 I am sure, Mr. Mellen, though so few people do understand 
 me. I felt as if poor I, also, could be of some use. 
 
 " And then, think of it. No, you cannot think of it. 
 Without the experience of it, even you would not imagine it. 
 To come down-stairs, ready for action, as I heard you say 
 yesterday or was it Mr. Rossiter who said it to come 
 down and find yourself quite left out and forgotten. That 
 nobody wonted you, and all plans had been made without 
 you." 
 
 She stopped, and suppressed a sob. 
 
 " Well, I shall be used to it some day, I suppose. Do 
 not let us talk of that. Let us talk of something more im 
 portant. You speak to-night, I think. May I go with 
 you, dear Mr. Mellen? Interested as I am in everything 
 which relates to the people, do not think that it is I who 
 brings all the frivolity into this house. The girls well, of 
 course, Cordelia and Mary must spend their time as they 
 will, and I am the last person to hinder them. But if I 
 could, if well, you know, dear Mr. Mellen, I will out 
 with it. If it did not seem like flying in my poor husband's 
 face, I would fill this house with such people as well as you." 
 
 Mr. Mellen hastened to assure her that the society he had 
 met in the house had been such as he had enjoyed and 
 profited by. 
 
 " You are very kind. But I do think, sometimes, that 
 if I ever had a well day if I were not such a wretched 
 wreck 
 
 At this moment they heard the front-door open, and 
 John Fisher's voice, as cheery as if there had never been a 
 cross to his life .
 
 146 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 " All aboard ! Who's at home? The prodigals have re 
 turned, and are all starving." And Mr. Mellen gladly left 
 his companion, to meet Mr. Fisher and Mrs. Grattan in the 
 hall. 
 
 M 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 [MR MELLEN RESUMES THE PEN.] 
 
 Y visit was drawing to an end. I had engagements to 
 speak in Illinois, and this life of luxury and variety 
 could not last forever. Our great election was to come off 
 on Tuesday, and I was to be one of many speakers at the final 
 caucus of the friends of order on Monday night. On 
 Saturday night the same senate which I had met once before, 
 and but once before, at John Fisher's, was to meet again in 
 his library for his last consultation. 
 
 " We ought to know the result to-night as well as if we 
 waited for the slow marching of the vote," said Fisher, as 
 we met in the cheerful room where the various chiefs of sec 
 tions were to appear. " Generally you do. With a can 
 vass as good as ours we know within fifty votes where we 
 shall be, and we know about as well about the other side. 
 But this year everything is confused, broken to pieces ; there 
 are signs of a row in their camp." 
 
 He always spoke, as I have said, of ' ; their" as he might 
 have said " the Trojans," or " the Greeks," as if " They " 
 were a proper name, and " their" its possessive case. 
 
 " But they know how to keep secrets, which is more than
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 147 
 
 we do. We wash our dirty linen in the most public ways 
 we can find. 
 
 " Besides this, nobody knows what these third party 
 people will do. /.Then there is this old greenback division, 
 as if the question of paper or silver could be connected with 
 the questions of purity or devildom. So that, in short, our 
 most trusty prophets will be careful of their utterances this 
 evening. 
 
 " I have met these men when they were ready to wave 
 their handkerchiefs and to hurrah when they came into the 
 room, and again there are years when every man sits down 
 at this conclave cross and blue, and says he is going to sell 
 his house and move to Florence or Geneva for the rest of 
 his life. 
 
 " But they never do move. They always stay here for 
 one fight more. They stand up, like boxers, for one more 
 round, and are sure, as Grant was at Donelson, that the 
 other side must be as much demoralized as his own." 
 
 Our friends were very punctual ; generally speaking they 
 were in good spirits, aud those who had bad reports to make 
 took, in very good part, the chaffing of the others. As be 
 fore, we had one representative of every ward. And the 
 clock had hardly struck when the last man appeared. 
 
 At the moment, the whole party, who had been standing, 
 took seats. It was clear that no moment was to be lost. I 
 was the only outsider. 
 
 Silence fell over the company, all so gay in chatter but a 
 moment before, and without the least formality, John Fisher 
 said, turning to Ward I's man : 
 
 " How do we stand, Mr. Barnett? "
 
 148 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 " Really," said Barnett, " it is much my old story. The 
 athletic meeting was a great good fortune for us. We 
 buried no end of hatchets. If you had time, you would like 
 to know how important it was or seemed that the Glazier's 
 nine should beat the Boot-tree men. Anyway it healed some 
 very bad jealousies. I will not brag of my figures, but my 
 reports give 'them ' 473 votes ; say, to be sure, 480. We 
 have 611, with some five chances for sick men and absen 
 tees. We are quite sure." 
 
 "How much cherry pectoral, John?" This from the 
 other side of the room. It was an old joke, referring to 
 some occasion when Barnett had taken a sick voter to the 
 polls in a carriage, and had, or was said to have, a bottle of 
 cherry pectoral to stop his coughing when he was exposed to 
 the air. 
 
 With such reports, now favorable, now unfavorable, AVC 
 went on. I should not make a reader understand, if I 
 tried to give the detail, which, indeed, I did not always 
 understand myself. That complicated matter on the Hill 
 was entirely healed over. Indeed we gained full two hun 
 dred votes from elegants who did not generally condescend 
 to turn out at what they called ward elections. Dr. 
 Witherspoon's candidacy was a very fortunate element, so 
 far. We needed these votes on the general ticket, though 
 in his own ward he would have been handsomely chosen 
 without them. 
 
 Biit some hopes of the earlier meeting had been wholly 
 blighted. Thus, in Ward VII, Varick had been quite sure, 
 when we met before, that the Norwegians would insist on 
 their own ticket, that the regular ticket which " They " sup
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 149 
 
 ported would materially suffer from the defection, and that 
 if " We " could put up an absolutely faultless ticket we 
 might run in between the two factions of a broken enemy. 
 Varick had evidently favored the sedition of the Norwegians 
 to the best and the last. He had had Norwegian speakers 
 from Wisconsin, and circulated endless copies of flyers in 
 pure Norse. But, on Tuesday, his messengers had told him 
 that the whole bolt had caved in. The leaders of it, on 
 whom he had relied most, had sold out. One of them was to 
 have a billiard-room, rent free, and the other was to be 
 chosen for that ward on the school committee, where, till 
 this time, "They" had been Avilling to keep a very pure 
 and noble Catholic priest. 
 
 " That is all we have gained," said poor Varick, crest 
 fallen. " This hound of a Knabe in the school-board instead 
 of dear old Father Managhan ; and three councilmen any 
 one of whom ought to be in the penitentiary." 
 
 Ward IX was as uncertain as the beginning of the fifth 
 act of a sensational drama. Whether the third party would 
 throw up its ticket at the end, and accept our men, or our 
 offer to take their nominations for street commission arid gas- 
 inspector, or whether they meant to ruin the whole ward, and 
 let the enemy carry everything, no one would know until 
 Monday. Indeed, it all seemed to depend on the state of a 
 certain Tom Conner's digestion Monday noon. So at least 
 Wooster said, who reported for Ward IX. But the general 
 verdict was that if wheat rallied at Chicago before Monday, 
 Tom Conner would be all right and good-natured, and 
 would direct things sensibly. But if wheat continued to de 
 cline, Conner would be ' ' mad " and would ' ' break the 
 slate."
 
 150 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 With many elements of doubt it was clear that we should 
 carry the Mayor ; we had a strong man with a backbone, 
 who meant to succeed, himself, and had made a very favorable 
 impression on the stump. Our canvass gave him 9,211 
 votes, and gave McCaull, who was on the other side, 7,800 
 in round numbers. 
 
 But with this stiff preponderence in the city, the wards were 
 more doubtful. The wards had been skilfuly re-divided, 
 the last time " They" had the power. The Hill, which was 
 dead against them, alone absorbed 3,000 of our votes, while a 
 decent average Avard had but 1,400 votes all told. Then 
 there was another ward, four miles long and thirty rods 
 across, which gave us 1,300 votes against 121. Similar 
 contrivances had so bewitched the ward lines that we were 
 sure of but four. It was clear that ' ' They " were sure of 
 four in any contingency. 
 
 In the IVth, the Vlllth, and the Xllth, we could make no 
 prophecy even now. We should need every vote in each of 
 them. If we only won three we should have but seven 
 wards against five, and every one felt that, with as compact 
 an opposition as "They" always made, this would be a 
 very hollow victory. 
 
 CHAFfER XXIII. 
 
 I observed at breakfast that Mrs. Fisher's appetite was 
 such as must encourage her friends. I sat next her, and 
 her occasional comments on her food, as her plate was
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 151 
 
 changed, or as some new dish was brought to her, made it 
 impossible, even for the most unobserviug, to be quite 
 ignorant of her selections. 
 
 I was a little surprised, therefore, when, after an unusual 
 term of silence, her second cup of coffee was brought to her, 
 with some kidneys and mushrooms, which followed upon the 
 broiled chicken she had been at work upon, to hear her say 
 that she had" lain awake all night with a raging neuralgic 
 attack. " Every clock in this house did I hear strike every 
 hour, Mr. Mellen," she said, pathetically. " And it seem 
 ed as if there were forty of them. And when that hateful 
 cuckoo at the head of the stairs stepped out relentlessly, and 
 yelled all the quarters at me, I wanted to rush out of the 
 room and wring his neck for him. But I need not describe it, 
 dear Mr. Mellen. You know what neuralgia is.." 
 
 1 said I was afraid I did not know. That if it was like 
 what used to be called old-fashioned jumping toothache, I 
 know very well what that was in old times, but that I had 
 generally had courage enough to go to Dr. Handvise and let 
 him pull the offender out. I found I had touched an irrita 
 ble nerve. 
 
 " That's just what Cordelia there, and Mr. Fisher are for 
 ever saying to me. As if neuralgia were not one thing, and 
 toothache wholly different. Mr. Mellen, believe me, I have 
 not an unsound tooth in my head. Yet every night, now, 
 since that miserable lawn party which I gave to the base-ball 
 people, have I lain without a wink of sleep, while this 
 shower of fire, I call it ; shower of pain, you would call it, 
 streams from my eyelids over my face on both sides. I 
 have simply to bear it and bear it. ' Bear and forbear,' is
 
 152 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 not that what you men say of women? I believe that is 
 what you think AVC are made for." 
 
 "Is there no sort of sedative?" said I, with all proper 
 sympathy. " Hops, bromine, or this new xylopogon from 
 Bolivia?" 
 
 "Mr. Mellen, if you have a friend you love, warn them 
 against such appliances, internal or external. Trust me, 
 for I know. No ; tell your friend, if she is a woman, to 
 endure. Tell her to endure to the end," she added, in a 
 certain studied and rather artistic seriousness, to indicate 
 that she knew that the words came from the Bible. They 
 sounded well, and she repeated them. "Yes; let her en 
 dure to the end ; there is no saying how soon that blessed 
 end may come ;" this with a certain rapturous sigh, as if one 
 saw an open heaven before her. 
 
 I had been unsuccessful in both my ejaculations of sym 
 pathy, and tried another line : " You must lose strength," 
 I said, " if you lose sleep, and how shall one talk of en 
 durance, if one have no strength with which to endure?" 
 
 " I do not know. I do not know. There is resolution, 
 of course resolution ! Who shall say how far resolution 
 may carry one, if one truly resolves. If one truly resolves ; 
 if one truly resolves." 
 
 This repetition, once or twice, of an axiom, is supposed 
 to give it a certain oracular power, as if one and another 
 nymph, according and sympathizing, flung it back, endorsed 
 " Seen and approved," in the glad echoes of their different 
 chancelries. 
 
 " If one truly resolves. If one truly resolves." 
 
 I hastened to say that for such resolution there needed a
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 153 
 
 balance of all the faculties, and that I hoped she might gain 
 some help from a ride. The morning was beautiful ; the air 
 invigorating, and perhaps an hour or two's air-bath might 
 prove an advantage. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Mellen ; I sometimes think that you men have 
 neither hearts nor souls. You do not know what it is to 
 feel ; if to feel be to feel deeply, and to live well, to live 
 profoundly. My husband, there, is always saying what 
 you do. ' Will not a ride do?' or, ' Would you not like a 
 cup of tea?' or, 'Perhaps I can send you a slice of toast.' 
 You are always prescribing physical remedies, when the dif 
 ficulty is deeper down. It is a difficulty, Mr. Mellen, of 
 that well, we call it Life, because we have no better name 
 for it, it has no name, and I ought not wonder that I can 
 not speak of it so that any one can understand me. But 
 take an instance. Here am I. A common-place, every-day 
 woman. Thousands of women are exactly like me ; shop 
 girls, factory-girls, actresses, milliners, women on the prai 
 ries yonder, hoeing their husband's cabbages. We are all 
 women, though we dress in one or another sort of finery, and 
 lead different external careers. Still at heart we are women. 
 So far we lead one life. I call it Life, because, you know, 
 there is no better name for it. One day there will be, I 
 hope. Or, rather, I suppose that one day we shall be able 
 to name Life without speaking of it. 
 
 " Now for this Life, there comes some check, some hin 
 drance. You understand me." 
 
 I bowed, and so far lied, if a lie can be expressed by a 
 gesture. If the bow meant, however, that I wished she 
 would gabble on, without requiring me to contribute to the 
 conversation, it was a very true bow, and virtuous.
 
 154 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 "There comes some hindrance, some difficulty. Unut 
 terable, if you please ; what is utterance? It is like it is 
 like the shimmer on the wheat when it rises to the sun in 
 June. What is the shimmer? Is it more wind ; is it less 
 wind? I do not know. You do not know ; no one knows. 
 And this check comes on Life, if I must call it Life, this 
 difficulty, this hindrance, and then you men send for a doc 
 tor and expect him to give belladonna, or castor oil ; or the 
 most sympathizing of you, you yourself, dear Mr. Mellen, 
 talk of appetite or going to drive." 
 
 I was going to make some apology, when she went on : 
 
 " No, Mr. Mellen, when you have bathed in agony, as I 
 have now for eight nights, you do not rise in the morning to 
 fall to sweeping, and cooking, and writing letters, and re 
 ceiving visits, and returning them, as if the machinery of 
 life needed no oil. You talk of food " 
 
 In fact, I had said no word of food. 
 
 " I do assure you, Mr. Mellen, that this bit of toast with 
 the mushroom sauce upon it which I ate just now, uncon 
 sciously, while I was talking to you, is the only food that 
 has passed my lips, without a struggle, since that fatal day of 
 the athletics. Indeed, I might say it is all that I have eaten, 
 excepting some boiled rice on Tuesday no, Wednesday 
 and my regular Murdock's food at noon, which I force down, 
 and my toast- water before going to bed. I take that toast- 
 water from a superstition, but the pain is just the same." 
 
 All this went on in an undertone at our end of the table. 
 The children beyond us were carrying on the thorough-going 
 business of breakfast. Beyond them was John Fisher him 
 self, joking with them, while Mrs. Grattan's seat and Miss 
 Bell's were empty. For them to be late was unusal.
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 155 
 
 When they did come in, breakfast, for the rest of us, was 
 nearly finished. Their morning dresses were so pretty, and 
 their flowers so fresh, and both of them in such gay spirits, 
 that John Fisher rallied them on their delay. He said they 
 had some scheme of conquest before them, and that, like 
 many a great general, they had taken so much time for prep 
 aration that they had lost the battle before it began. " The 
 chickens are cold," he said ; " the kidneys are eaten up, the 
 coffee is cold, and, what is worse, by this time Mary is inev 
 itably cross. She will send up word that there is not an 
 egg in the house, that no coffee came from Ward's yesterday, 
 and that we have had the last ; she will say that she has just 
 put coal upon the range, and that nothing can be heated. No, 
 if you can satisfy yourself with a cracker, they say it is from 
 Boston, Miss Mary, and a pickle, I think there is, you will 
 do. Possibly we can find an olive." 
 
 Mary Bell laughed at her very prettiest ; the sunniest 
 laugh, it seemed to me, that ever passed over a lovely face. 
 "It is Cordelia's fast-day, I believe, in her church. Is it 
 not St. Anthony's day, or St. Barbara's day, Cordelia? I 
 think Mr. Mellen has some crisp codfish by him. As for 
 me, I spoke to Ellen Kideau as I came down-stairs. I 
 told her that I should live Avith just an omelette, and some 
 cream-toast, and a quail, if there was one, and some Indian 
 cakes, if Mary would send up a chop and some buckwheats 
 afterwards. Ellen is my friend, and here the omelette is.'' 
 
 In fact Ellen appeared with their breakfast at the moment. 
 
 " But all this does not explain," said John Fisher, " why 
 you are both so late. Have you been out to church any 
 where? We are so very catholic and cosmopolitan here
 
 156 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 that I am always on the look-out for some new rite. Has 
 Dr. Witherspoon instituted morning vespers, or midnight 
 nones or trines, or anything else, by way of helping on his 
 canvass for alderman ? And have you to be off every time 
 the third Monday before the second Tuesday after the seventh 
 Sunday after midsummer falls on a full moon ?" 
 
 "Mr Fisher," said Cordelia, "you shall hold your peace. 
 1 should think no one was ever down-stairs two seconds late 
 in this house before. If you will have the Amphions, and 
 John Caruthers, with his magnificent tenor, and the Chicago 
 quintette playing in the moonlight all night, what do you ex 
 pect of two music-mad girls in the morning?" 
 
 " Amphions !" cried John Fisher, aghast. 
 
 " John Caruthers !" cried Mrs. Fisher. 
 
 And even the children stopped their chatter in amaze 
 ment. The amazement was too evident for any one to sus 
 pect acting. And it was Mrs. Grattan's turn to be amazed, 
 and Mary Bell's. 
 
 " Do you mean that you slept all through the serenade?" 
 
 "Serenade!" said John Fisher. "Do you tell me that 
 all these people have been on my lawn last night, and have 
 not had a bit of cheese or a biscuit?" 
 
 " Surely you heard them, Mrs. Fisher. I saw the light 
 in your room," said Mrs. Grattan. 
 
 "I heard them, Cordelia? How can you ask? You 
 know that just in those heavy hours of my first sleep I hear 
 nothing. It is a comatose state, I believe. I am dead, or 
 might be." And she went on with some details of the physi 
 ology of sleep, which would have surprised Dr. Hammond. 
 
 But I am afraid no one listened.
 
 MY FRIEXD THE BOSS. 157 
 
 " I am ashamed of you, John Fisher, " said Mrs. Grattan. 
 "And you, Mr Mellen. To be sure, your room is out of 
 the way. No ; I am ashamed of myself, that I did not go 
 round the house with, a watchman's rattle, which I brought 
 from Cincinnati with me. Or, really, we had better have a 
 gong. Mr. Fisher, you must have a gong to hang at the 
 door of my room, if you do mean to have the first musicians 
 in America come at night to play on your lawn." 
 
 "I do not care so much for the playing," said Fisher, 
 "as I do for the supper. Mary will kill me in the first 
 place ; or, if I escape her, I shall not dare look in the face 
 any cornet- a-piston for ten years. ' Page, squire and groom ;' 
 that there was no one my halls have nursed to give those 
 poor fellows a graham cracker, or a cup of water. Who 
 do you say was here, and what did they play?" 
 
 Then it appeared that, a little after midnight, the stillness 
 had been broken by an exquisite song by Caruthers, whose 
 perfect tenor, in those years, had no equal this side the 
 ocean, or the other. Then the Quintette Club, which was 
 passing through Tarn worth on a visit, played something ex 
 quisite, but the ladies were not agreed what it was. By this 
 time, they had both been on the alert ; had their gas lighted, 
 and were in communication with each other. They had 
 agreed that it would be a shame to call Mrs. Fisher, if by 
 good fortune she were asleep. This was the form by which 
 they now expressed themselves. I suppose that in fact they 
 knew she would take it ill, whatever they did, and so that 
 they elected the simplest course. 
 
 " As for you, Cousin John, as the serenade was right in 
 front of your room, and so that, even if we had peeped out,
 
 158 MY FRIEND THE BOSS, 
 
 we could not have seen Mr. Caruthers, unless he came round 
 to look for us, and as the orchestra was at least twenty 
 pieces, we did not think that we must come and knock a 
 tattoo on your door. Another time we will." 
 
 " Another time !" groaned poor John Fisher. " Do you 
 think they will ever come this side of Clarion street? Not 
 a doughnut, or a piece of custard pie for them ! They must 
 have been in a hurry. Were going over to some Turner 
 Hall, perhaps." 
 
 " Hurry? It was not what I call hurry. I looked at my 
 watch when I put on my wrapper and it was then half-past 
 twelve. When I got into bed again, the cuckoo was singing 
 two and a quarter. Why, Caruthers sang four or five times, 
 the Amphions sang that round they sang at the concert ; they 
 sang Korner's battle-hymn ; they sang that weird air James 
 wrote for the Alcestis. Oh, they sang, five, six I do not 
 know how many times ! Then the quintette people had al 
 ways something between the choruses. Why, John, it was 
 a regular concert !" 
 
 "And I snoring in harmony," said he, lugubriously. 
 " And these fine fellows reduced to refreshing themselves 
 with lager, and cursing me for my stinginess. Well, I will 
 organize a night watch, if you girls stay any longer here, to 
 detect serenades. But then nobody will ever serenade this 
 house again." 
 
 And he turned to his newspaper for his consolation. The 
 older children began persecuting the ladies for details. 
 "How did Mr. Caruthers look? Did he stand up, or did 
 he sit on one of the piazza chairs?" 
 
 "My child, you do not suppose that I stood at the win-
 
 MY FUIEND THE BOSS. 159 
 
 (low throwing kisses to Mr. Caruthers, or that I peeped from 
 behind a curtain. The utmost which we dared do was to 
 light the gas. I opened Mary's door and found her lighting 
 hers. Then we had to be very careful about the shadows. 
 Yon have to have some shadows on a curtain in a serenade, 
 but as the professor told us, at Yassar, they must be sug 
 gestive shadows, or indicative, and not too realistic. There 
 must not be an exact profile of a night-cap, or of a dishev 
 eled head, but there must be something that indicates life 
 and motion. Indeed, it should also indicate joy or enthu 
 siasm, mingled with repose and a sense of refreshment. We 
 practiced last night on the wall. Mary had a feather duster, 
 and I had a warming-pan, which we tried effects with, but 
 none of them succeeded. At last, however, Mary got some 
 fine broad effects to move across the curtain by putting out 
 her gas, and carrying a candle backward and forward be 
 hind a rocking-chair." 
 
 Mary Bell only laughed, as her reckless friend rattled on. 
 To this moment, I believe there were some shadows, I know 
 not what, manufactured for the occasion. 
 
 John Fisher roused from his newspaper. 
 
 "And all the hospitality this house could offer to thirty 
 of the first artists in the country was a set of shadows on a 
 curtain." Then he filing down his paper in scorn. But his 
 eye rested on its title. 
 
 " Registered as second-class matter," he said. " I would 
 give them a certificate that it was fifth-class matter, if they 
 asked me, and low grade at that. If there were but one of 
 them, I would send it to the museum as a curiosity ; but so 
 many, each more stupid than another, there is no room in
 
 160 MY FRIEND- THE BOSS. 
 
 any museum for them all. But there is one piece of news, 
 Mary ; it will interest your friend Mr. Rossiter." 
 
 Why did her face flush crimson, just as I saw it that night 
 Jn the gallery of the town hall, when the Dutchman was 
 speaking. She tried to speak calmly. 
 
 " What has happened to Mr. Rossiter?" 
 
 " Oh, nothing has happened to him, strictly speaking. 
 What I meant was that old Mr. Shearman is dead. He has 
 been in Europe for his health, which means that he has been 
 in Florence and Switzerland dying. He died day before 
 yesterday, it seems. That means promotion in the Life 
 office. Haggerston will be the president, all of them will be 
 pushed up a peg, and Rossiter, who provides brains for 
 the crowd, will have a decent salary, which he has been 
 earning now for four or five years, without receiving it." 
 
 Mary Bell knew she mu&t say something. ' ' He certainly 
 seems to work very hard." I do not think John Fisher ob 
 served that she spoke with special interest or difficulty. But 
 I did. Fisher had done with his newspaper. Every one 
 had finished breakfast. And as he rose he said, " I should 
 think he did. Take him for all in all, Rossiter is one of the 
 finest fellows who tread shoe-leather." 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 nPHE mystery, if I may call it so, of Mary Bell's crimson 
 blush was revealed to me before night, and I learned 
 some other things which, had I been wiser, or less conceited, 
 I might have guessed at before.
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 161 
 
 I had vainly tried to gain a private interview Avith her. 
 I did not mean to be foiled by Mrs. Fisher, as I had been 
 once before, when I had thought that I could bring Miss 
 Bell to say whether she cared for me more than for any other 
 man, and whether she knew that life was very little to me, 
 unless it were all knit in with the thought of her. 
 
 But Miss Bell was out almost all day to-day. Nor had 
 there been any excuse by which I could attach myself to her 
 goings or comings. 
 
 An hour before tea-time, as I was writing in my own room, 
 the servant brought me a card. Mr. Rossiter was down 
 stairs and would like to see me. 
 
 AVhat in the world did he want to see me for ? If there 
 was any one in the world whom I did not want to see it was 
 Mr. Rossiter. I had even fondly wished that Mr. Fisher, 
 with that same long arm of his, which had sent to Antwerp 
 a candidate who stood in the way of reform, might take up 
 George Rossiter and lift him to Yokohama, and establish 
 him there permanently at the head of a Life company. More 
 than once, when the carnal man was to much for me, had I 
 felt willing to wring George Rossiter's neck and throw his 
 head out of the window. Yet I knew he was an excellent 
 fellow. I could even see he was a most agreeable man. If it 
 had not been so, I should have liked him better ; strange to 
 say, I had never got well over my surprise when Miss Bell 
 sent for him on an exigency. Why could not I do as well 
 as he? 
 
 What did Mr. Rossiter want of me now? 
 
 He was not in the parlors. The servant led me to what 
 we called the small book-room.
 
 162 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 Rossiter met me, a little pale, but with a smile which 
 tried to be cordial. Still it was clear that he was high- 
 strung, and that he was ill at ease. 
 
 " I asked them I told them to show me here, because 
 yes, well because I wanted to speak with you alone." 
 
 I happened to remember that only a few days before Mrs. 
 Fisher sailed in on me in one of the elegant satin saloons, 
 where I had never seen any one in the daytime before. I 
 said, gravely, that we should be alone here unless Mrs. 
 Fisher came in. 
 
 He smiled, with rather a sickly smile. 
 
 "Mr. Mellen," he said, "really you must pardon me. 
 You will not understand my coming to you as I do. But I 
 am strangely without friends here in Tamworth. In my 
 own home, in Binghamton, I should have more than one 
 person to turn to." 
 
 " Heavens !" I said to myself, " this fine young fellow is 
 hard up, and wants to borrow money." Ah ! if it had been 
 that, I should have known what to say then. 
 
 He evidently spoke with difficulty ; had found difficulty in 
 bringing himself to speak. But he was resolute, and meant 
 to put through what he had to say, difficulty or no. 
 
 "I asked for Miss Bell," he said, "but she is not in. 
 Do you know where-she is gone, or if she will be in soon?" 
 
 This was cool, to say the least, and it took me on a weak 
 spot. But I did not mean to give myself away. I answered, 
 with as little fierceness as possible, that I did not know. I 
 conquered the temptation to say, "I thought you were the 
 man who knew her plans ; I do not interfere with them." 
 
 " It is foolish in me to ask," he said. "But drowning
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 163 
 
 men catch at straws. I want to see her. I want to see her 
 to-day. And yet," he said after a pause, " I do not know 
 that I ought to see her, and that is the reason why I made 
 courage to send for you, Mr. Mellen. I say I made courage, 
 for I certainly had none to spare." 
 
 I was amazed, and began to be curious. Nay, I had cer 
 tain hopes. Had Mary Bell rejected his suit, and was he 
 going to consult her or me as to whether he should cut his 
 throat or drink laudanum? I bowed, with that fatuous, be 
 nevolent look of a man who is complimented when his ad 
 vice is asked, does not wonder that it is asked, and his bow 
 and smile intimates that he will give advice, now it is asked, 
 of the very first quality. Mr. Rossiter went on : 
 
 " It is absurd for me to suppose that you do not know 
 every one knows and may well know for all me how 
 entirely I admire Miss Bell. To you, Mr. Mellen, who are 
 I know, my friend, it is almost a pleasure to say it aloud 
 to hear myself saying it that she is the noblest woman and the 
 dearest in the world, though she gives me no chance to say 
 so to her, and though I do not know if she cares a straw for 
 me." 
 
 There was this resemblance between Mr. Rossiter's posi 
 tion and mine that I could not but be half amused even 
 while I was provoked, that he should bring me to this un 
 usual and unnecessary confidence. Was every stripling who 
 admired Mary Bell to come and tell me so ? I should have 
 my hands full. But I had no disposition to say this or any 
 thing unkind to him. Nay, the thought flashed across me, 
 and for an instant it was rapture, that he had detected in 
 his close watch of her that she prized some other man
 
 164 MT FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 more than she did him, and that, with a manliness which I 
 had heard of in romances, the fine fellow had come to say so. 
 
 Under this fleeting thought I listened to him with much 
 more interest. 
 
 " The truth is, Mr. Mellen, that I have had no right, till 
 to-day, to make any advances to Miss Bell. She has been 
 kind to me, she is kind to every one. But she treats me 
 well she treats me as she treats Mr. Fisher, or you, Mr. 
 Mellen, or any other gentleman whom she respects. Now, 
 to-day, I have a right to speak to her. Had I found her at 
 home, I should have known before now, and I should not 
 trouble you. But you are older than I you know men 
 
 and women you are not in love " And here he tried 
 
 to laugh, with that sickly failure that he made before. 
 
 "You will tell me, I think, fairly and kindly, whether 
 what I have to say to her is absurd." He gave me no chance 
 to answer. "Till to-day," he said, " I have been living 
 from week to week on a copying clerk's salary. If Mr. 
 Shearman came back, I might be discharged any instant, 
 if he wanted my place for a son or a nephew. To-day all 
 is changed. The directors offered me, an hour since, a fix 
 ed salary of fifteen hundred dollars. The moment the office 
 closed, I came to ask Miss Bell to share it with me, and to 
 be the joy and light of my life. Now, tell me, is this ab 
 surd ? Have I any right to ask such a woman as that to 
 give me everything, when I can give her so little ?" 
 
 Really, till that moment, I had thought, fool that I was : 
 first, that in an impulse of generosity the young man was going 
 to tell me that the field was, perhaps, mine ; and when that 
 thought faded away, I had thought that lie was going to ask
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 165 
 
 if it were mine, that he might be spared mortification. And 
 it seemed that neither thought had crossed his mind ! 
 
 Possibly it was I that was the fool, and not he. 
 
 I had to say something, such are the exigencies of con 
 versation. And I did say, "What can I tell you? Why 
 do you come to me ? " I think he was too eager to see that 
 I was cool. 
 
 ' ' To you ? I come to you because you are kind to me 
 always ; you are older and have experience ; you see the 
 game from the outside and you can tell. Mark you, I do 
 not ask whether Miss Bell will accept me. That she must 
 tell me herself. I want to know whether a poor clerk, with 
 fifteen hundred a year, has any right to ask her. She is com 
 fortable, she is happy. Is it an insult to ask her to leave a life 
 of luxury such as Mr. Fisher gives her here, to share a life 
 of work and well, not privation, but economy, parsimony, 
 if you please, like mine? You know the world. You know 
 what men expect and women expect. Am I a fool to ask ? 
 Is it wrong to ask? When she was not here, I thought I 
 might strengthen myself by asking you." 
 
 The poor dog had come to ask me, because I was an un 
 prejudiced adviser ! I was sitting serene on the heights 
 above such follies, and could not be warped by any ten 
 derness ! Had it come to this ? I looked round to see if 
 there was a mirror, to find if he had rated me at seventy 
 or at eighty. Once more I parried his eager question. 
 
 " Ask her by all means, if you feel as you do. You can 
 put to her your own questions. Or Mrs. Grattan, might 
 you not advise with her ?" 
 
 "Mrs. Grattan! Do not play with me, Mr. Mellen.
 
 166 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 You must understand me. "When you asked your wife to 
 marry you, did you, could you say to her that, because you 
 loved her, you wanted her to share well, as humble a life 
 as a man could well live in, with such means as I offer this 
 lady?" 
 
 " As to that," said I, rather grandly this time, " there is 
 no Mrs. Mellen, so that I cannot answer your question as 
 you put it. There never has been any. But this is certain, 
 my dear Mr. Rossiter. Women do not think of such things 
 as men do. Go and ask her yourself. That is her right ; 
 nay, it is yours. If Miss Bell loves you, she will marry you, 
 though your income be the dividend on two cents invested in 
 Arkansas bonds." His face beamed on me, as if it had 
 been the face of an angel. " If she do not love you, you 
 will find it out. She will not give you a hint of encourage 
 ment, not if your salary be as much as Mr. Vanderbilt's 
 capital. 
 
 " No, dear Mr. Eossiter, it is a thing where no man can 
 advise, not even a man as old and as experienced as I." 
 
 Did he see that he had wounded me? Or was he so 
 eager in the hope of meeting her that the interview already 
 annoyed him, though he had brought it on? 
 
 I do not know. I only know that he rose, thanked me 
 cordially and went away. 
 
 And I was left to reflect, that all my delicate attentions to 
 Miss Bell had been so very delicate that an intelligent 
 young man, keen and quick to observe, had not so much as 
 noticed them ; that while I had hated him as a rival, almost 
 since I saw him, he had never dreamed that I was in the 
 race ; and to recollect that it had been squarely said to me
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 167 
 
 that I had passed too far along in the course of life, that I 
 was not to be counted as interested in its passion. I had 
 been distinctly told that I was henceforth not a participator 
 but a judge or an adviser. 
 
 If he thought that, what would Miss Bell think and say ? 
 
 I could not read, after this. I could not write. After 
 chafing over it for an hour, I determined to walk out, and 
 take my chances of meeting her on her return. 
 
 I did meet her. But he had met her before me. They 
 were talking together in the most animated way. But I 
 could not catch his eye as they passed me. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 A ND at last Tuesday came, the fatal Teusday which was to 
 decide between THEM and us ; between cheap govern 
 ment and reckless waste : between a quiet town, minding its 
 own business, and the rowdyism and recklessness and plund 
 er of It. 
 
 Of course I had no vote, nor had little Stepney, who had 
 spent the night with us, having come over to speak at the 
 farewell mass meeting of the night before. But John Fisher 
 drove us both down town, at eight in the morning, in the 
 open wagon, which he was to use all day. He gave himself 
 personally to the canvass, and we had all breakfasted early, 
 that he might be at his precinct at the very beginning. The 
 ladies, excepting Mrs. Fisher, who sent word that she had a 
 bad headache, were with us. And before the day was over,
 
 168 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 I found it was quite as busy a day with them, as with the 
 men. 
 
 At Fisher's precinct everything was quiet at that hour, 
 but the forces were gathering. On window- seats in the 
 corners of the room were already piles of " stickers," 
 separate ballots for individuals, with gum on the back that 
 they might at once be fastened over the printed names on 
 regular tickets. I saw bottles of mucilage, ready for similar 
 use, left by one or another Independent voter, who wanted 
 to facilitate Independency, and ran the risk of its telling 
 against his friends. The vote distributors of the several 
 parties were on perfectly good terms with each other ; I 
 fancy, indeed, that in that precinct, IT had put forward its 
 best-appearing men, in the hopes to conciliate a few votes 
 from bolters who would not respect the final decisions of 
 "Ouii" committee. There was no wrangling there, and 
 Fisher told me afterwards, that there was none all day. 
 Even at this early hour a hackney coach would arrive once 
 in every few minutes, from which descending a neatly- 
 dressed rallying man, with our colors, blue and white, in his 
 button-hole, would carefully lift out a lame man, or a man 
 with his face tied up in a handkerchief, once a man ac 
 companied by two daughters, who, in quite dramatic fashion, 
 attended the invalid to the rail, where he dropped his vote. 
 Then the two Hebes looked scornfully at us men, as if to 
 say, " Why did you not let us vote in his place?" For 
 my part I did not know, and do not, why we had not sent a 
 man to his door, with a book in which he could register his 
 vote over his autograph signature. 
 
 Stepney and I staid long enough to see the mechanism of
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 169 
 
 the thing, which almost always differs a little in one state 
 from another. As we walked away, we passed, what I had 
 not noticed before, the Woman's Rallying Office. A little 
 blue and white flag hung over the door with the invitation 
 " Come in," and what Avas more certain, two bright girls on 
 the door-step said, "Will you not have a cup of coffee?" 
 
 We both went in, and sure enough, there were a dozen 
 little tables, with our ballots scattered over them, a vase of 
 gentians and candy-tuft on each table, and at least half of 
 them, men sitting, who had been lured in by these sirens, 
 and. perhaps, by the memory of faultless coffee, served there 
 in years before. Behind a counter at the end of the room, 
 I saw several ladies whom I knew, among others Mrs. 
 Grattan and Miss Bell. They were all dressed in uniform, 
 with natty white caps and aprons, with rosettes of blue and 
 white. " Pretty waiter-girls," from the very best ranks of 
 Tamworth social order, were flying backward and forward 
 and filling the cups of the men who were talking politics. 
 Mrs. Tristum beckoned us to join a group of ladies who 
 w^re sitting near the door. 
 
 "Have you come to help us, or are you only loafers?" 
 said she. " If you will help, you shall have coffee, though 
 you are but poor sticks anyway, both of you, seeing you had 
 no more votes then women. But you shall each have one 
 cup, in memory of last night's speeches. Mr. Stepney, you 
 converted one man. I heard him say this morning, that 
 that little fellow who told the war-story fixed him." 
 
 I asked what they were doing, and what they were ex 
 pecting. 
 
 " My dear Mr. Mellen, we are at least showing our
 
 170 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 colors, and that is one comfort. We are not chafing at 
 home, and wondering how the battle goes. Then we have 
 an eye on things here. There is not a young lawyer, nor a 
 young doctor, nor a young engineer, nor a young dry-goods 
 clerk in this ward who will forget to vote to-day. Some 
 woman would say to him, the first time she met him, 'We 
 might have lost the fourth ward by one vote, Mr. Smith ; 
 pray where were you ? ' So far we do something. What is 
 more, is, that we do catch an undecided man sometimes, and 
 we make him see that there can be a decent drinking-room 
 without It ; at least he sees that decent people are in earnest," 
 
 And she told me that I should find a rallying room like 
 hers at any precinct ; there were forty-four in all. They 
 had done this, now for three years, and were sure good came 
 of it. The men on duty told them so. In fact, before the 
 day was over, I guessed that there were a good many more 
 " men on duty" than there would be had there not been 
 such comfortable quarters for them. "You can take your 
 lunch here, you know," said Frank Heron to me about noon. 
 But it did seem to me that he was more interested in that 
 pretty Clara Orth, than he was in the lunch he was waiting 
 for. 
 
 Things were by no means so Arcadian and elegant in 
 other wards, Before the day was over, Stepney and I look 
 ed in upon almost every precinct ; though we missed some, 
 we were in every ward, and saw almost all the humorous, 
 not to say passionate struggles of the day. It had its head 
 quarters, as well as We ; and if whiskey and lager were paid 
 for, it was certainly not by retail payment at these places. 
 J could see here, however, that there was method in the
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 171 
 
 madness which ruled there. More than once, when some 
 drunken dog stepped up, with his most dignified air, to the 
 man who dispensed one drink or another, his hopes were 
 sharply, not to say profanely, crushed. " What business 
 had he there, when he had neglected to register, or had 
 never been naturalized?" 
 
 Free liquor was not for men without votes. It drew the 
 line somewhere, and It drew it there. Indeed, I was amus 
 ed to see how much care was exercised in such matters. It 
 seemed as if there was fear that the supplies might give 
 out. 
 
 In Boston, they used to let them have a keg of beer be 
 hind the voting-rail, for the use of the inspectors of votes, 
 so that they might keep their sight clear to the end, and 
 their faculties for counting. But this was not tolerated in 
 the simpler conditions of Tamworth. 
 
 In three different wards, we saw a very pretty fete, as 
 Jan Hooft, at the head of the wire-men, who made a regi 
 ment of nearly four hundred, came round, that the men 
 might vote together. The regiment, if I may call it so, 
 escorted in this manner its own members to the several 
 precincts. I was told that they had men in eleven different 
 precincts, and they went to all. These men, only the year 
 before, had scattered their votes among all the candidates. 
 But Jan's brilliant speech had made him a hero. Some 
 injudicious thing said about Dutchmen, by a Norwegian 
 orator, had closed up the ranks of the Sons of Holland, so 
 that they voted as one man ; and here were all the workmen 
 from Kellert's establishment, and from the Cooperative, 
 wearing blue gentians tied with white ribbon, and march-
 
 172 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 ing with a band of music to vote our ticket in their respect 
 ive wards. Salter had taken very little by his motion the 
 evening when he called Jan Hooft forward as a leader of 
 the people. 
 
 The women knew about what time this cohort would 
 appear in each ward. And they made special preparation for 
 its arrival. It was not to be expected that it should break 
 ranks so long that the men could take turns in drinking in 
 doors. Indeed, I hope nobody expected that each of four 
 hundred men should drink forty-four cups of anything as 
 that day went round. But, with stronger force than that of 
 "pretty waiter-girls," they "policed" a part of their side 
 walk, and had tubs of lemonade, and pails of coifee, ready 
 mixed with its milk and sugar, so that as the procession halted, 
 .and the platoons for that place voted, the men in the others 
 stepped out and refreshed themselves. Perhaps cockades 
 or button-hole bouquets were pinned on at the same time, by 
 canvassers, in defiance of civil service regulations. Jan 
 Hooft himself, before the day was over, was one moving 
 mass of white and blue. 
 
 Once and again, as the day went by, we met John Fisher 
 himself, as he brought to the polls some man of lonely work, 
 who would hardly have left his little office or his lonely 
 store, and locked the door, to sacrifice to his country the 
 chance of the customer who might come in his absence of 
 half an hour. 
 
 But it was quite a different thing when John Fisher 
 came round to his place cheerily : " How is business, Mr. 
 Broadcloth? " or, "All right, Dr. Molar; I have brought 
 you my friend Mr. Titus, who will stay, and see that nobody
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 173 
 
 steals anything, till we come back. We will soon get you 
 to the polls." Indeed, neither Mr. Broadcloth nor Dr. 
 Molar was displeased to have a chance to drive behind 
 John Fisher's bays, and to discuss the political chances 
 with him. On his part, he was as well pleased to test in a 
 day the real feeling of the bone and sinew of the communi 
 ty which he was trying to serve. 
 
 There had been no announcement at breakfast of any 
 hour for lunch at home. It seemed to be expected that we 
 should find our meat and drink where we did our work. 
 And that day no one in our little circle affected to attend to 
 anything but this election. Fisher told me that his works 
 were open, and the engines running all day. " But 
 then," he said, "every man is allowed four hours for 
 voting, and they are as much excited about it well, as I 
 am ; so that we shall not show a great deal of ' subduing 
 brute matter,' as I think you call it, in to-day's work there. 
 The brute matter we shall subdue to-day is somewhere 
 else." 
 
 The day Avas fine, and there was no pretence that bad 
 weather kept any one at home. As sundown drew near, 
 lugubrious peals on the church bells summoned any lag 
 gards, as if to a funeral. But there were but few laggards. 
 I happened to be, however, at a precinct which was just 
 opposite the Grand Junction station of the Cattaraugus 
 and Opelousas Road, when this tolling began. An instant 
 more and I heard cheering, and, with Stepney, I ran out 
 from Miss Water's comfortable head-quarters to see what 
 was passing. An engine, without baggage car, and with 
 only one passenger car attached, engine and car both fes-
 
 174 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 tooned with blue and white, dashed in, amid the cheers of 
 fifty people. Some twenty young men, wearing our colors, 
 jumped out. They had engaged this special car to brinur 
 them from Chicago, so that they might arrive two hours 
 before the regular train, and a few minutes before the polls 
 closed. A dozen wagons were waiting to take them to 
 their precincts. Much opening and shutting of watches 
 made it clear that, even at number three in Ward VII, they 
 would be in time. They all dashed off amid the cheers of 
 admiring loafers, the crowd melted away, and the station 
 was left as dull and stupid as it usually was. 
 
 Stepney and I waited to see the votes counted, and sealed, 
 and to hear the public proclamation made in that precinct. 
 When the messenger was dispatched to the central precinct 
 in that ward, we walked across to Ward IV where we had 
 begun the day. Fisher was waiting for us. " There is no 
 good of staying here any longer," he said ; " we shall know 
 the news at home sooner than we shall here." I saw he 
 was disturbed, in a moment. For me, I had been made 
 thoroughly cheerful by the activity of the day, and, in my 
 optimistic way, I had taken for granted that so much good 
 work on the right side could not have been done in vain. 
 As we rode home I sounded him. But he could not well 
 tell why he was anxious. In that ward all was well. But 
 they had known it would be. It had done better, for that 
 matter, than their canvass promised. 4 All the high and dry 
 people, who would not help in the canvass at all, because 
 they were so bigoted about purity of elections, and who 
 would not commit themselves in advance, lest on the morn 
 ing of the election, some angel froxn heaven should tell them
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 175 
 
 that drunkenness and lying and stealing were cardinal 
 virtues, all these people had, at the last, voted with " Us," 
 so that the returns looked better than our canvassers dared 
 to predict. '' But this was no evidence, not the least," he 
 said, " for the out-lying wards." Whether he had private 
 advice of which he would .not speak, or whether this was 
 the depression which comes over a strong man, because he 
 cannot be everywhere, I could not guess. But it aifected 
 us all three. And, after a little effort, we drove home in 
 silence. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 But, as we turned into the avenue, with the change of 
 scene our spirits rose at once. 
 
 Mrs. Fisher, and Cordelia Grattan, and Miss Bell, were all 
 on the portico, waving handkerchiefs. The flag had been 
 flying on the top of the house all day. But a smaller flag 
 was now twined in, somehow, with the vines on the trellis. 
 And, as we came near enough to hear, Mary Bell cried, 
 ' ' Victory ! Victory ! " We did not know what they were 
 cheering about. But, as John Fisher threw his reins to the 
 groom, she gave him a despatch. " All is, we have carried 
 the Bloody Third," she cried, " and you owe it to the 
 women ! " 
 
 "Carried the Third?" said John Fisher with scorn. 
 " Give us news that we can believe for a second, at least." 
 
 " Read, read, read ! incredulous man ! Read it on the 
 housetops." And he read aloud :
 
 176 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 "I hope that I am the first to tell you that we have car 
 ried the Third by seven votes. They could not stand 
 against the women, to whom we owe nineteen votes at 
 least. I will come up and tell you when the votes are 
 sealed. GEORGE ROSSITER." 
 
 " Who is this to?" said John Fisher. 
 
 "It is to me," said Mary Bell, proudly enough, though 
 perhaps provoked a little, both with herself and with 
 him, that he had forced the avowal. But the joy of 
 the moment was something behind and beyond all personal 
 annoyances. 
 
 " Carried the Third ! " repeated Fisher, almost as if he 
 talked to himself. " Miracles are beginning! I should as 
 soon and Rossiter must be right. He is an inspector 
 there, with two of these hounds against him. They would 
 have died hard. But Rossiter is never fooled. Carried the 
 Third, indeed ! " 
 
 And he ran in, to his own telephone-box. 
 
 " Hello ! Give me 219." Then, after a pause : 
 
 ' ' Who is there ? " And again : 
 
 "Ask Frank if he knows we have carried the Third." 
 And after Frank's reply, inaudible to us, he continued : 
 
 ' It is impossible, but all the same we have done it. We 
 have seven majority." Another pause, while he listened, 
 and then he said 
 
 " No ; there is no possible mistake. Rossiter is there, 
 and we have this from him." 
 
 In an instant this miracle had changed the man. "I 
 hope you asked your friend to dine, Mary. The man who 
 sends us such news ought to be crowned with laurels."
 
 MY FKIEND THE BOSS. 177 
 
 And when she said that she had done no such thing, 
 he sent a servant to the public telephone with a message to 
 Mr. Rossiter that he must come up as soon as they could 
 spare him. He would not use his own wire for anything 
 but to receive news. 
 
 Such was the beginning of three hours of intense anxiety, 
 and curiosity, hope rising and hope deferred and hope pros 
 trated under foot, fear and surprise alternating, such as can 
 not be forgotten, but as I cannot pretend to describe. By 
 common consent, we gathered in his own den, where 
 was the telephone wire. When the oracle spoke he 
 was almost always the Python, if one may say so, 
 who did what Pythonesses should do when oracles 
 are speaking. But sometimes he deputed Mary Bell, if, as 
 would happen, he was writing or calculating, when the 
 telephone bell rang. 
 
 The first news was a set of black reactions from Rossiter's 
 jubilant despatch. Mrs. Edwards had furnished late after 
 noon tea, and we were still discussing the possible causes of 
 our success in the Bloody Third, when from precinct some 
 thing in the Fifth comes this dark omen : 
 
 "We are nineteen behind our canvass. They are 
 seventy-two ahead of theirs. No one knows why." 
 
 " Can you give us the figures?" Fisher replied. 
 
 " Two ninety-seven ; five thirty-one ; nineteen scatter 
 ing." 
 
 There seemed to be no necessity to tell for whom these 
 numbers had voted. Nor was there. Fisher wrote them 
 on the blank sheet he had ready ruled for the forty-lour pre 
 cincts.
 
 178 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 " Bad enough," he said to us. " For the other precincts 
 will do worse. And this was at best but a doubtful ward." 
 And then, with his tea, again he tried to explain to Mrs. 
 Grattan what was the matter there, when the bell struck 
 again. 
 
 " Worse and worse," he said, after he had listened. " We 
 shall lose another hundred in the Slab Bridge precinct. 
 That means we lose the Fifth ward." And he sat down 
 again to his cooler tea, and again tried to explain. 
 
 Mary Bell put down the figures on the sheet, and asked : 
 " Perhaps their first precinct will do better. May I not 
 ask?" 
 
 "Ask? Oh, no ! It would only bother them. Harts 
 horn is there ; he will tell as soon as he has anything to tell. 
 He is making them count again, because things look so 
 badly. He has heard from two, and three, and four. 
 Four is of no great account, anyway." 
 
 As it happened, precinct four spoke at that moment. 
 And, as before, he repeated the figures. She wrote them 
 from his lips. " Two hundred ninety-one ; three hundred 
 seventy-four ; twenty-one scattering." 
 
 " Twenty-one fools in that precinct and only nineteen in 
 William's. How do you account for that, Mary?" This 
 was Fisher's grim comment. She asked what she should 
 put down for Slab Bridge. " Oh, nothing, nothing, till 
 you have the exact numbers ! These guesses are nothing." 
 
 Then he explained to me and to Stepney, seeing that we 
 were strangely new to all this, that of course we generally 
 received the news from the small precincts first, because 
 those are most easily counted. This is the reason why the
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. j. /!> 
 
 first news of our elections is so often undecisive, or, as an 
 ignorant public supposes, not confirmed afterwards. The 
 news is true enough. But the small precincts, of which the 
 vote can be counted most quickly, though they are first 
 reported, are not usually those which decide things. 
 
 ' ' Not but that a small precinct may be the last to 
 come in. They may have a bad counting-board, and 
 one man may make things come out 211, and another 1102, 
 and so you may have to begin all over again. If you have 
 a drunken inspector, or a man who likes to quarrel, 
 you may be all night before the votes are counted and 
 sealed. 
 
 " We hold to the old New England traditions," he said, 
 " and we count the votes in ' open meeting,' where any ono 
 can see. Of course we take care that, in each precinct, 
 three or four men, who do not drink or steal or lie, shall be 
 looking on." 
 
 At this moment a cab rolled up to the door, and George 
 Rossiter joined us. Till this moment I had permitted my 
 self to doubt as to the issue of his walk and talk t,he 
 last night with Miss Bell. But from this moment I knew. 
 Not that she stepped forward. No. She stepped back, 
 Not that he sought her even with his eye. But that his 
 face and air were of glad, calm certainty. He need rot 
 seek her. She was his, without more seeking. I dared to 
 look at her. Again her face was crimson. But her smile 
 of welcome was of absolute pride and joy. 
 
 " Where are the laurels for the hero?" This was John 
 Fisher's welcome. And he gave the hero both hands. 
 
 "I do not see why I should be called the hero. I
 
 180 MY FKIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 only bring the good news. The heroes are Mr. Stepney, 
 who makes the converts ; Mr. Meilen who meets the enemy, 
 and you, Mr. Fisher, who direct the campaign." 
 
 "As to that," said poor John Fisher, ruefully, " I feel 
 like a general in the war, when the scattered fire tells 
 him that his right is lost in the fog, and his left has 
 given way. Your ' Bloody Third ' is all very fine, and we 
 thank you for your news. But what if we lost the 
 Fifth?" 
 
 "Lose the Fifth!" cried Rossiter. "Impossible! As 
 well tell me that you have lost the Hill." 
 
 Then Mr. Fisher made him look at the fatal figures. 
 And, at this moment, the telephone bell rang, and other 
 figures, which seemed even worse, came from other pre- 
 cints. George Rossiter entered these, very silent, on 
 the sheet prepared. He looked pale with distress and 
 surprise. 
 
 "And we hear of nothing from our friends," said Mrs. 
 Grattan, because she wanted to say something. 
 
 " No need to hear from them. Of some things we 
 are sure, or ought to be. As sure as I was of the Hill an 
 hour ago, when I was blue enough, while we were rid 
 ing home, Meilen." This was Fisher's grim and melan 
 choly answer. " What is it, Bruce ? Is Mrs. Edwards dead, 
 or has the kitchen burned down? Bad news comes at 
 once." 
 
 Bruce smiled respectfully, and announced dinner. 
 
 "Dinner? It is an hour too early." But no; dinner 
 had come, as it generally will come. 
 
 "We will wait on ourselves, Bruce. Stay here and call 
 me when the bell rings."
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 181 
 
 So we went in to dinner. And literally, before dinner 
 was over, Fish p r or Rossiter ran to seventeen calls, as so 
 many different precincts announced the totals which were 
 proclaimed successively. The reader should understand 
 that when this proclamation had been made " in open meet 
 ing," a certified copy of it, with the parcels of votes sealed 
 carefully, were sent to the ward-room of the ward, 
 where the respective ward officers prepared the full state 
 ment of the result. Sometimes there were three precincts 
 in a ward, sometimes four, and sometimes even five. 
 
 But till dinner was over, though we had twenty-nine 
 precincts of the forty-four returned, we could only make up 
 two ward returns. And these, oddly enough, reversed 
 exactly the definite canvass on which we had placed so 
 much reliance. We had gained the " Bloody Third," 
 which nobody expected to gain. But we had certainly 
 lost the First, which we carried a year before, and had 
 a fair chance of carrying now. The breweries had been too 
 much for us. 
 
 ' ' They naturalized two hundred men there since 
 August," said Fisher, " and there has been free lager and 
 free whisky on tap for a fortnight." 
 
 Actually at half-past eight o'clock, when we left the din 
 ner table, where we had spent much more time in calculat 
 ing than in dining, we were more in doubt than we were 
 when we breakfasted that morning. And this, although we 
 knew the result in two-thirds of the city. 
 
 "It is just the other third which we do not know," said 
 John Fisher, ruefully. 
 
 We gathered, almost of course, in the telephone room
 
 182 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 again, as if there were any satisfaction in being a few 
 inches nearer to the whispers which sealed our fate. We 
 had scarcely entered, when the bell rang. Fisher put 
 his ear to the voice. 
 
 " It is Harkness," he said, laughing. And then his face 
 kept the smile as it listened. He put his mouth to the tube 
 and said, "Good for the loyal Seventh! Such figures 
 were never heard of! My love and congratulations to Dr. 
 Witherspoon, and to yourself, my dear boy." Then he 
 listened, and in reply said, " We cannot tell, but you have 
 done your part. Good-by." 
 
 " Such figures were never heard of," he said again, as 
 he turned to the paper and put them down, taking Hark- 
 ness's full return, and caring no longer for the votes of separate 
 precincts. "WE" had 2897, and "THEY" had only 674. 
 " See, Mellen, one ward giving thirty-six hundred votes, 
 when the whole city will not give thirty thousand. There 
 is a gerrymander for you. Because the pirates know we 
 could poll four to their one there. Thirty-six hundred 
 and ninety votes in all. And they have not in the ward 
 thirty-eight hundred on their register. That is what hap 
 pens when Col. Stothers is willing to soil his gloves, and 
 Dr. Witherspoon to stand as alderman." 
 
 And at this moment we heard a carriage drive up at the 
 door. No one rang. The door flew open, and Mr. 
 Jackson rushed in, unannounced. I had seen him at the 
 house at more than one gathering. 
 
 " Have you heard do you know? I asked Williams to 
 let me bring the news. That is why he did not speak." 
 
 " We have heard a great deal," said Fisher. " Some 
 things we did not want to hear,"
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 183 
 
 "We have the Fifth after all! Sixteen clear majority 
 over everything ! They were sure of it, and we gave it up, 
 after Slab Bridge caved in so awfully. But your Dutch 
 friends, Mrs. Fisher, came up magnificently in that little 
 precinct by Ofterdorn's brewery. That precinct gave us 
 three hundred square, where we expected less than nothing, 
 and the Fifth is clean ours, aldermen, pig-wardens, school- 
 committee, and all. Mrs. Fisher, the victory is yours." 
 
 Poor Mrs. Fisher was of all colors ; so was John Fisher. 
 Mary Bell was blazing red, and Cordelia Grattan was ashy 
 pale. Mrs. Fisher only said : 
 
 " No, no ; I did what I could. But I am only a woman. 
 And I speak German so ill." 
 
 But by this time even the taciturn Jackson, now so 
 voluble, had forgotten her. He was beside himself in his 
 account of the revulsion of feeling at the ward-room. 
 
 " We waited, and we waited, blue enough, I can tell you. 
 You know how bad it was in Slab Bridge, and number four 
 was as bad." 
 
 " That was the first vote I had," said Fisher. 
 
 "The first any of us had. And we had all the large 
 precincts. Each worse than the other, for I see you have 
 them here. Square one hundred and ninety against 
 us, and Ofterdom's to come in. And the fellows 
 from there knew nothing. The whole uay had been quiet, 
 and these Dutchmen you see are not wire-men. They are 
 in the leather shops, and no one seems to have known. 
 Why, when the count was over there, look at it : 464 to 
 159. Where we expected nothing and worse ; why the fel 
 lows on the spot did not believe it. xhey would not believe
 
 184 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 it. They re-counted three times, and they would be count 
 ing now, but your hero, Mrs. Fisher, Jan Hooft, came in 
 with his band, and he swore he would hang them if they 
 did not make up the return and seal the votes. And they 
 could not help it, for four times it had come out the same 
 way. The figures are burned into my brain, 464 to 159. 
 
 " When that came up to us, with twenty people to 
 explain, was not the laugh on the other side? See our 
 totals, Mr. Fisher. We have one thousand and sixty-three. 
 They have nine hundred and forty-five and there are one 
 hundred and two scattering. You cannot be everywhere, 
 Mr. Fisher, but you should have been in our ward-room." 
 
 And this was the beginning of victory. All the time, 
 aow, the telephone bell was ringing, or the door-bell. 
 Rossiter or Fisher or Miss Bell were listening at the tele 
 phone, or one or other of us was receiving eager canvassers, 
 who knew they should be welcome. Often, indeed, their 
 news had come before them, but no one was so cruel as to 
 tell them that. Before half-past nine, the whole house was 
 sure of the result. Every maid had blue and white ribbons 
 pinned on her pretty dress, and Avas dressed as for 
 company. All the men had fresh gentians, tied with white 
 satin in their button-holes. Every face was smiling. Bruce 
 and Barnard, with the Fisher boys and girls assisting, were 
 putting candies in the windows, and by ten o'clock the 
 whole front of the house was illuminated. I found they had 
 all the facilities for this in readiness. The large dining- 
 room was lighted, and wagons began to drive up from 
 the confectioners and caterers, who had been suddenly sum 
 moned by wire to send up stores for an impromptu feast- 
 for which even Mrs. Edwards was not ready.
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 185 
 
 " He would have been very angry," she said to me in an 
 aside, ' if I had made the ices when I was not sure." 
 
 And people poured in so fast that I could see that all such 
 preparations would not be amiss. 
 
 Briefly, we had carried nine wards out of twelve. Some 
 we had swept cleanly, as we were meant to do when the 
 town was districted. Some we had carried by a hair's 
 breadth, as the " Bloody Third," and this fickle Fifth. 
 Even one of the enemy's wards had broken on the aldermen 
 and school-committee, and we had saved good Father 
 O'Reilly, who had been put off their ticket by an infernal 
 conspiracy, as Jackson told me. The victory was complete. 
 Our mayor, who last year only squeezed in by a thousand 
 or so, when the brewery was divided, had a fair majority of 
 five thousand over everything. But this was little, if his 
 hands had been tied. Instead of that, we had the best 
 school-committee we had chosen for years, we had nine out 
 of twelve aldermen, with councilmen in a proportion even 
 larger. One by one, ladies from the neighborhood dropped 
 in. One by one, all the gentlemen I had met at the meet 
 ings for consultation dropped in. There had gathered a 
 party of a hundred of the most cheerful people in the world, 
 when a band of music was heard and we all went out upon 
 the large piazza to welcome a delegation. Fisher and the 
 ladies of the house, with the children, stood together in the 
 portico. 
 
 It was the same procession of the wire-workers which we 
 had seen in the morning at the polling places. But, to 
 night, in a barouche close following the band of music, sat 
 the newly-elected mayor, the president of the Amphions,
 
 186 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 Jan Hooft and Jan Hooft's daughter, the child whose sing 
 ing had so delighted me at the school anniversary. The 
 band passed the portico, halted and continued playing till 
 they had come quite to the end of the Lohengrin wedding 
 march, which they played magnificently. A policeman of 
 immense grandeur, who felt the full importance of his 
 position, flung open the door of the carriage, and then 
 waited till the music was finished. 
 
 Then the mayor stepped out, handed out Jan Hooft and 
 the little girl, and Mr. Beekman followed them. 
 
 Fisher stepped forward and shook hands with all. 
 
 The mayor said but a word : "Mr. Fisher, we owe this 
 victory, first to Mr. Jan Hooft, and next to you. It is 
 with pleasure that I see you two join your hands. In such 
 a union Tamworth is safe." Turning to the crowd, he 
 cried, " Three cheers for Jan Hooft and John Fisher ! " 
 
 And band and crowd cheered with a will. 
 
 Jan Hooft almost crushed Fisher's hand in his eager grasp. 
 
 " Herr Fisher," he said, and he stopped. " Herr 
 Fisher," and he stopped again. " Herr Fisher, Dutchmen 
 be poor, but they know they friends. They be honest, Herr 
 Fisher. They hate lies, Herr Fisher. I have come mit 
 my daughter, mit all dem people, to dank Madame Fisher 
 for all she am done for dem Dutchmen, when dey was sick 
 and poor, Herr Fisher." 
 
 And he looked round, wistfully. He looked at Mrs. 
 Fisher with surprise. Then he saw Mary Bell, cowering 
 behind that lady. 
 
 ' ' I see her," he cried gladly ; ' ' she shall not be hided. 
 Come, come, come, Elspeth."
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 187 
 
 And the child by this time caught his wish, rushed for 
 ward between Mr. Fisher and Mrs. Fisher, and hid herself, 
 as she had done on the day of the school celebration, in 
 Mary Bell's arms. 
 
 In a moment more, she remembered that she was to give 
 the magnificent bouquet she brought to her benefactress. 
 She did so. 
 
 "She be one little girl, Mrs. Fisher," said Jan Hooft 
 to Mary Bell. "She cannot say notting, she be so happy. 
 But all de Dutch Avomen in the town, Frau Fisher, know 
 who be de friend who saved me, wen dat hund had me 
 under he foot, Frau Fisher, and de Dutch men, who be poor, 
 Frau Fisher, but be honest, and de Dutch women, Frau 
 Fisher, dey send you dem flowers, Frau Fisher, mit deir 
 love, Frau Fisher, und deir danke." 
 
 John Fisher recovered himself in this long speech. Mary 
 Bell kissed the child, and led her into the house. 
 
 Fisher stepped forward and cried, "Three cheers for Jan 
 Hooft and all honest men ! " and the crowd cheered lustily. 
 
 "Now come in, men," he said more colloquially. 
 " Come in ! Come in ! Have something to eat. We have 
 no lager, Walter," he said to one of them, " but I believe 
 there is cold water." 
 
 And the crowd passed in. Not one person in a hundred 
 knew what had passed, or understood the incident. 
 
 From that time till midnight, we were shaking hands, 
 congratulating, welcoming and being welcomed. Every 
 man who had a right arm was carrying out pails of coffee, 
 and lemonade, and drinks without a name, but without 
 spirit, upon the piazza.
 
 188 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 " Have you forgiven me, Beekman, that I slept so sound 
 ly the night you serenaded us, or was it the ladies you 
 serenaded? They heard you, as I think you know." This 
 was John Fisher's apology to the Amphions. 
 
 And Beekman intimated, with a laugh, that in the joy of 
 the victory, all was forgiven and forgotten. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII, AND LAST. 
 
 I SLEPT wretchedly that night. Were it not that I 
 remember, too well, Mrs. Fisher's exaggerations, in speaking 
 of such matters, I should say that I did not sleep at all. 
 
 Was it that I had drunk too often, from the fragrant Mocha ? 
 at the forty-four Ladies' Rallying Rooms which I had visit 
 ed? Or had I forgotten my own rules, when tempted in the 
 evening by Mrs. Edwards' handiwork, at our own house ? 
 
 Was the victory such a marvel that I must lie awake all 
 night to think over the details ? 
 
 Or, alas, was it that, to my careful watchfulness, the 
 triumphant evening left no longer one quiver of uncertain 
 hope as to Miss Bell's likes or dislikes among her admirers ? 
 
 Or, alas, again ; was it this mystery which connected her 
 so certainly with the affair of the necklace? Was she 
 capable of pawning a tinsel gewgaw for money, even if she 
 had the excuse that she was to use the money for the noblest 
 purpose? And had she not willingly left me in the notion 
 which she knew I had, as Jan Hooft had, that it was Mrs. 
 Fisher had done that bad thing?
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS- 189 
 
 All together, I did not sleep, or I lid not think I did. 
 Had there been a serenade that night, I should surely have 
 been the first to know it. 
 
 And I was, naturally enough, the first in the breakfast- 
 'oom. 
 
 But John Fisher joined me soon. He was radiant. 
 
 " Surely life is worth living," he said, " when things can 
 be done so cleanly and thoroughly. How can anybody doubt 
 of the people, if you only make the people to care for itself?' 
 
 I stammered out some congratulation. He really did not 
 observe that I was so dull. 
 
 " I am used to surprises," he said. " The unexpected is 
 what happens. But not the unexpected all along the line. 
 Our ladies are late," he said, "and as for the children, I 
 would not have them called. Once a year, and after a 
 glorious victory, they may sleep over." 
 
 At that moment one of the maids came in to say that Mrs. 
 Grattan was in the conservatory and sent word that she 
 would be in, in a few minutes, when Donald had given her 
 some more roses. 
 
 "Mrs. Fisher will not be down," he said, "but where is 
 Miss Bell?" The girl smiled, and said she saw Miss Bell 
 go out in the garden. 
 
 "Oh, then it is all right," said Fisher, laughing. 
 ' ' Rossiter breakfasts with us and they will be in by the time 
 the coffee is cold." And he rang for breakfast. 
 
 We were alone together, and I might as well make him 
 solve my mysteries. 
 
 ' ' Mr. Rossiter and Miss Bell understand each other very 
 well," I said, doubtfully. 
 
 " I do not see why there should be any mystery to you,"
 
 190 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 
 
 he said. " I am not at liberty to say anything. But I can 
 not help your guessing what you choose. He is a fine 
 fellow and she is a queen among women. Nothing could be 
 better if they choose to engage themselves," he added, as if 
 to save himself from telling anything. 
 
 " Yet I cannot understand," blundered I. "You would 
 not have thought, that even for such a purpose, she would 
 have pawned a necklace." 
 
 " Mary Bell pawn the necklace !" Poor Fisher looked as 
 if I had struck him. "She never saw the necklace. Yet 
 but for her, it would have ruined us all." 
 
 " She certainly used the money," I said coolly. " She 
 certainly paid Jan Hooft's debts." 
 
 "And why should she not pay his debts if she choose to? 
 Miss Bell's fortune is three millions, if it is a cent. Her 
 charities are not of the advertised kind, but no woman in 
 America handles money more freely and more wisely. Is it 
 possible you did not know this before?" 
 
 I said no, and the reader knows that this was so. I said 
 that something he said to me in the mill had taught me 
 that Mrs. G-rattan was a rich woman, but I had supposed 
 that his niece, if Miss Bell were his niece she often called 
 him Uncle John, owed her home to his kindness, and to 
 the same kindness owed her freedom from daily toil and from 
 anxiety. 
 
 John Fisher looked at me with amazement as I said all 
 this, and then said very frankly : 
 
 " That looks well for her and for you," he added, after 
 a pause. 
 
 " I am not the only person so deceived," I said. " Mr.
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. 191 
 
 Rossiter took my advice on Monday, as to whether, with 
 fifteen hundred dollars a year, he could make a home which 
 should be fit for her." 
 
 "Did Rossiter ask that? By Jove! I like him better 
 than ever. Hush ! Here they are." 
 
 Here they were. She came in radiant with beauty and 
 happiness. 
 
 George Rossiter was radiant with manly pride. They 
 held each other's hands for one moment in the hall. Then 
 she turned abruptly to me. 
 
 "Mr. Mellen, we need have no secrets from you. You 
 have been our true friend, and we know you will be." 
 
 At this moment, Cordelia Grattan pinned a bunch of ex 
 quisite roses in the breast of her dress. 
 
 And I was able, in a blundering way, to say I knew their 
 life would be very happy. 
 
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 I. H. N. PINS, silver, 25 cents; $2.75 per dozen. 
 Same styles in coin silver, 50 cents each; $5.40 per dozen.
 
 WORKS OF EDWARD E. HALE. 
 
 EASTER. A collection consisting of twelve Sermons and twelve Easter 
 Poems, carefully selected. By EDWARD E. HALE. Small quarto; attrac 
 tive style. A very pretty gift-book. Cloth, $0.50; full gilt, $0.75. 
 
 RED AND WHITE. The Christmas Gift of 1887. 42 pages. Paper, 
 $0.20; cloth, $0.40. 
 
 DAILY BREAD. A Story of the Snow Blockade. Paper, $0.20; 
 cloth, $0.40. 
 
 WHAT IS THE AMERICAN PEOPLE? An Address deliv 
 ered before the Phi Beta Kappa of Brown University, 1885. Paper, $0.20. 
 
 HOW THEY LIVED IN HAMPTON. Cloth, $1.00. 
 
 In this story Mr. HALE considers all the present problems of the relations 
 of workmen to their employers. We anticipate for it as wide a circulation as 
 was attained by his well-known books, " In His Name," " Back to Back," 
 " Ten Times One Is Ten," and " The Man Without a Country." 
 
 MY FRIEND THE BOSS. (In Press.) Cloth, $1.00. 
 Mailed postpaid on receipt of the price by the publishers, 
 
 J. STILMAN SMITH & CO., 
 
 3 Hamilton Place, 
 
 Boston, Mass.
 
 THE FOLLOWING WORKS BY 
 
 EDWARD E. HALE 
 
 may be had of us as well as the publishers, on 
 receipt of the price. 
 
 Lights of Two Centuries $2.00 
 
 Life of George Washington 1.75 
 
 History of Spain 1.50 
 
 Chautatiquan History of the United States, i.oo 
 
 Philip Nolan's Friends 1.50 
 
 Back to Back {paper cover) . . . . .25 
 
 THE FAMILY FLIGHT SERIES. 
 
 By E. E. HALE and SUSAN HALE. Cloth, $2.25 ; 
 boards, #1.75. 
 
 Fresh, piquant, graphic, full of delicate humor, marked by grace in dic 
 tion and thorough scholarship, these books are not only unsurpassed, but 
 unequalled by any books of similar character. 
 
 A Family Flight through Mexico. 
 A Family Flight around Home. 
 A Family Flight over Egypt. 
 
 A Family Flight through Spain. 
 
 A Family Flight through France. 
 
 J. STILMAN SMITH & CO., 
 3 Hamilton Place, Boston, Mass. 
 
 4
 
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