t."

"You are so popular in the ward?" asked Leonore.

"I think so, I find kind words and welcome everywhere. But then I have
tried very hard to be popular. I have endeavored to make a friend of
every man in it with whom one could be friendly, because I wished to be
as powerful as possible, so that the men would side with me whenever I
put my foot down on something wrong."

"Do you ever tell the ward how they are to vote?"

"I tell them my views. But never how to vote. Once I came very near it,
though."

"How was that?"

"I was laid up for eight months by my eyes, part of the time in Paris.
The primary in the meantime had put up a pretty poor man for an office.
A fellow who had been sentenced for murder, but had been pardoned by
political influence. When I was able to take a hand, I felt that I could
do better by interfering, so I came out for the Republican candidate,
who was a really fine fellow. I tried to see and talk to every man in
the ward, and on election day I asked a good many men, as a personal
favor, to vote for the Republican, and my friends asked others. Even
Dennis Moriarty worked and voted for what he calls a 'dirty Republican,'
though he said 'he never thought he'd soil his hands wid one av their
ballots.' That is the nearest I ever came to telling them how to vote."

"And did they do as you asked?"

"The only Republican the ward has chosen since 1862 was elected in that
year. It was a great surprise to every one--even to myself--for the ward
is Democratic by about four thousand majority. But I couldn't do that
sort of thing often, for the men wouldn't stand it. In other words, I
can only do what I want myself, by doing enough else that the men wish.
That is, the more I can do to please the men, the more they yield their
opinions to mine."

"Then the bosses really can't do what they want?"

"No. Or at least not for long. That is a newspaper fallacy. A relic of
the old idea that great things are done by one-man power. If you will go
over the men who are said to control--the bosses, as they are called--in
this city, you will find that they all have worked their way into
influence slowly, and have been many years kept in power, though they
could be turned out in a single fight. Yet this power is obtained only
by the wish of a majority, for the day they lose the consent of a
majority of the voters that day their power ends. We are really more
dependent than the representatives, for they are elec