he executive department.
The people have known nothing of what was going on at City Hall.
Now and then, we have attempted to lift the veil, but we all have
been lax and easily turned aside. We confess it with shame; but
we promise, as for this newspaper, to do better; and we publicly
declare ourselves this morning as in sympathy with the new Reform
Club. From now on The Atlas will champion the candidacy of Miss
Gertrude Van Deusen as mayor of Roma, just as, for many years, we
were proud to hold aloft the banner of her father, the late
Senator Van Deusen."

When Gertrude read this she sat half-dazed for a moment, and then
clapped her hands with gleeful surprise.

"What is it?" asked her cousin.

"The Atlas has come out for me. It endorses the Reform Club--and me.
That's some of Bailey's work."

"Yes. I hope you appreciate what Bailey is doing for you," said Miss
Craig. "He would make a good mayor, himself."

"There are a dozen men in Roma who would be good mayors," answered
Gertrude, "if they would. But they will not. Hence--well, I'm going to a
caucus tonight. Are you going with me?"

"Oh, no, I think not. I'll go when and where it is necessary to cast my
vote for you, Gertie," said Miss Craig. "But for the rest--excuse me."

Mrs. Bateman and the Judge accompanied Miss Van Deusen, however, to the
nearly empty room where the first primary was being held. It was in an
outlying ward, and the few men who stood about were wonder-stricken at
the presence of women,--although they had seen the sex out on election
days in plenty.

"Now you are seeing just how politics in Roma has been managed for a
decade past. Right there in that corner," said the Judge, "you find a
door with a slit in it through which you deposit your ballot. No record
is kept of your vote, and behind the door sit the leaders of the ring,
already making up the returns, which show, without doubt, as this is a
hostile ward, that your delegates were defeated by an overwhelming
majority. Tomorrow the ring newspaper, which prints all the legal
notices of the county and receives a generous income through the
advertisement of corporations allied with the ring, and whose proprietor
is promised a commissionership by the governor who is backing the ring,
will notify its readers that the selfish office-seekers, who had
contested in the primaries, have received a stinging rebuke at the hands
of the voters, and their villainous