ey
hired halls, opened committee-rooms, made speeches, and thundered
against municipal iniquities in the daily press; but Jacob Metzger,
when he discovered that this was all, possessed his soul in peace, and
even got a good deal of quiet fun out of the canvass. He did not take
the trouble to be angry at the men who were denouncing him, and
supplied Farnham with beefsteaks unusually tender and juicy, while the
young reformer was seeking his political life.

"Lord love you," he said to Budsey, as he handed him a delicious
rib-roast the day before election. "There's nothing I like so much as
to see young men o' property go into politics. We need 'em. Of course,
I wisht the Cap'n was on my side; but anyhow, I'm glad to see him
takin' an interest."

He knew well enough the way the votes would run; that every grog-shop
in the ward was his recruiting station; that all Farnham's tenants
would vote against their landlord; that even the respectable Budsey and
the prim Scotch gardener were sure for him against their employer.
Farnham's conscience which had roused him to this effort against
Metzger's corrupt rule, would not permit him to ask for the votes of
his own servants and tenants, and he would have regarded it as simply
infamous to spend money to secure the floating crowd of publicans and
sinners who formed the strength of Jacob.

His failure was so complete and unexpected that there seemed to him
something of degradation in it, and in a fit of uncontrollable disgust
he sailed for Europe the week afterward. Metzger took his victory
good-naturedly as a matter of course, and gave his explanation of it
to a reporter of the "Bale-Fire" who called to interview him.

"Mr. Farnham, who led the opposition to our organize-ation, is a young
gen'l'man of fine talents and high character. I ain't got a word to say
against him. The only trouble is, he lacks practical experience, and he
ain't got no pers'nal magn'tism. Now I'm one of the people, I know what
they want, and on that line I carried the ward against a combine-ation
of all the wealth and aristocracy of Algonkin Av'noo."

Jacob's magnanimity did not rest with merely a verbal acknowledgment of
Farnham's merits. While he was abroad some of the city departments were
reorganized, and Farnham on his return found himself, through Metzger's
intervention, chairman of the library board. With characteristic
sagacity the butcher kept himself in the background, and the committee
who wa