e brought the bill, who
listened with austere patience to our arguments in favor of the State
establishing a park, and then conclusively answered us by the question,
"But, gentlemen, why should we spend the people's money when just as
much water will run over the Falls without a park as with it?" Then
there were a couple of members from New York and Brooklyn, Mike Costello
and Pete Kelly.

Mike Costello had been elected as a Tammany man. He was as fearless as
he was honest. He came from Ireland, and had accepted the Tammany Fourth
of July orations as indicating the real attitude of that organization
towards the rights of the people. A month or two in Albany converted him
to a profound distrust of applied Tammany methods. He and I worked
hand in hand with equal indifference to our local machines. His machine
leaders warned him fairly that they would throw him out at the next
election, which they did; but he possessed a seasoned-hickory toughness
of ability to contend with adverse circumstances, and kept his head well
above water. A better citizen does not exist; and our friendship has
never faltered.

Peter Kelly's fate was a tragedy. He was a bright, well-educated young
fellow, an ardent believer in Henry George. At the beginning he and I
failed to understand each other or to get on together, for our theories
of government were radically opposed. After a couple of months spent in
active contests with men whose theories had nothing whatever to do with
their practices, Kelly and I found in our turn that it really did not
make much difference what our abstract theories were on questions that
were not before the Legislature, in view of the fact that on the actual
matters before the Legislature, the most important of which involved
questions of elementary morality, we were heartily at one. We began to
vote together and act together, and by the end of the session found that
in all practical matters that were up for action we thought together.
Indeed, each of us was beginning to change his theories, so that even
in theory we were coming closer together. He was ardent and generous; he
was a young lawyer, with a wife and children, whose ambition had tempted
him into politics, and who had been befriended by the local bosses
under the belief that they could count upon him for anything they really
wished. Unfortunately, what they really wished was often corrupt. Kelly
defied them, fought the battles of the people with ardor and go