them at all
times. When I go among them, I don't try to show off my grammar, or talk
about the Constitution, or how many volts there is in electricity or
make it appear in any way that I am better educated than they are. They
wouldn't stand for that sort of thing. No; I drop all monkeyshines.
So you see, I've got to be several sorts of a man in a single day, a
lightnin' change artist, so to speak. But I am one sort of man always
in one respect: I stick to my friends high and low, do them a good
turn whenever I get a chance, and hunt up all the jobs going for my
constituents. There ain't a man in New York who's got such a scent for
political jobs as I have. When I get up in the mornin' I can almost
tell every time whether a job has become vacant over night, and what
department it's in and I'm the first man on the ground to get it. Only
last week I turned up at the office of Water Register Savage at 9
A.M. and told him I wanted a vacant place in his office for one of my
constituents. "How did you know that O'Brien had got out?" he asked me.
"I smelled it in the air when I got up this mornin'," I answered. Now,
that was the fact. I didn't know there was a man in the department named
O'Brien, much less that he had got out, but my scent led me to the Water
Register's office, and it don't often lead me wrong.

A cosmopolitan ain't needed in all the other districts, but our men are
just the kind to rule. There's Dan Finn, in the Battery district, bluff,
jolly Dan, who is now on the bench. Maybe you'd think that a court
justice is not the man to hold a district like that, but you're
mistaken. Most of the voters of the district are the janitors of the big
office buildings on lower Broadway and their helpers. These janitors are
the most dignified and haughtiest of men. Even I would have trouble in
holding them. Nothin' less than a judge on the bench is good enough for
them. Dan does the dignity act with the janitors, and when he is with
the boys he hangs up the ermine in the closet and becomes a jolly good
fellow.

Big Tom Foley, leader of the Second District, fits in exactly, too. Tom
sells whisky, and good whisky, and he is able to take care of himself
against a half dozen thugs if he runs up against them on Cherry Hill or
in Chatharn Square. Pat Ryder and Johnnie Ahearn of the Third and Fourth
Districts are just the men for the places. Ahearn's constituents are
about half Irishmen and half Jews. He is as popular with one race