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Sheeny Joe was a handy man to Big Kennedy. He owned no rank; but voluble, active, well dressed, and ready with his money across a barroom counter, he grew to have a value. Not once in those years which fell in between our encounter on the dock and this time I have in memory, did Sheeny Joe express aught save friendship for me. His nose was queer of contour as the result of my handiwork, but he met the blemish in a spirit of philosophy and displayed no rancors against me as the author thereof. On the contrary, he was friendly to the verge of fulsome.
Sheeny Joe sold himself to the opposition, hoof and hide and horn. Nor was this a mock disposal of himself, although he gave Big Kennedy and myself to suppose he still held by us in his heart. No, it wasn’t the money that changed him; rather I should say that for all his pretenses, his hankerings of revenge against me had never slept. It was now he believed his day to compass it had come. The business was no more no less than a sheer bald plot to take my life, with Sheeny Joe to lie behind it – the bug of evil under the dark chip.
It was in the early evening at my own home. Sheeny Joe came and called me to the door, and all in a hustle of hurry.
“Big Kennedy wants you to come at once to the Tub of Blood,” said Sheeny Joe.
The Tub of Blood was a hang-out for certain bludgeon-wielding thugs who lived by the coarser crimes of burglary and highway robbery. It was suspected by Big Kennedy and myself as a camping spot for “repeaters” whom the enemy had been at pains to import against us. We had it then in plan to set the Tin Whistles to the sacking of it three days before the vote.
On this word from Sheeny Joe, and thinking that some new programme was afoot, I set forth for the Tub of Blood. As I came through the door, a murderous creature known as Strong-Arm Dan was busy polishing glasses behind the bar. He looked up, and giving a nod toward a door in the rear, said:
“They want you inside.”
The moment I set foot within that rear door, I saw how it was a trap. There were a round dozen waiting, and each the flower of a desperate flock.
In the first surprise of it I did not speak, but instinctively got the wall to my back. As I faced them they moved uneasily, half rising from their chairs, growling, but speaking no word. Their purpose was to attack me; yet they hung upon the edge of the enterprise, apparently in want of a leader. I was not a yard from the door, and having advantage of their slowness began making my way in that direction. They saw that I would escape, and yet they couldn’t spur their courage to the leap. It was my perilous repute as a hitter from the shoulder that stood my friend that night.
At last I reached the door. Opening it with my hand behind me, my eyes still on the glaring hesitating roughs, I stepped backward into the main room.
“Good-night, gentlemen,” was all I said.
“You’ll set up the gin, won’t you?” cried one, finding his voice.
“Sure!” I returned, and I tossed Strong-Arm Dan a gold piece as I passed the bar. “Give’em what they want while it lasts,” said I.
That demand for gin mashed into the teeth of my thoughts like the cogs of a wheel. It would hold that precious coterie for twenty minutes. When I got into the street, I caught the shadow of Sheeny Joe as he twisted around the corner.
It was a half-dozen blocks from the Tub of Blood that I blew the gathering call of the Tin Whistles. They came running like hounds to huntsman. Ten minutes later the Tub of Blood lay a pile of ruins, while Strong-Arm Dan and those others, surprised in the midst of that guzzling I had paid for, with heads and faces a hash of wounds and blood and the fear of death upon them, were running or staggering or crawling for shelter, according to what strength remained with them.
“It’s plain,” said Big Kennedy, when I told of the net that Sheeny Joe had spread for me, “it’s plain that you haven’t shed your milk-teeth yet. However, you’ll be older by an’ by, an’ then you won’t follow off every band of music that comes playin’ down the street. No, I don’t blame Sheeny Joe; politics is like draw-poker, an’ everybody’s got a right to fill his hand if he can. Still, while I don’t blame him, it’s up to us to get hunk an’ even on th’ play.” Here Big Kennedy pondered for the space of a minute. Then he continued: “I think we’d better make it up-the-river – better railroad the duffer. Discipline’s been gettin’ slack of late, an’ an example will work in hot an’ handy. The next crook won’t pass us out the double-cross when he sees what comes off in th’ case of Sheeny Joe.”
CHAPTER VIII – THE FATE OF SHEENY JOE
BIG KENNEDY’S suggestion of Sing Sing for Sheeny Joe did not fit with my fancy. Not that a cropped head and a suit of stripes would have been misplaced in the instance of Sheeny Joe, but I had my reputation to consider. It would never do for a first bruiser of his day to fall back on the law for protection. Such coward courses would shake my standing beyond recovery. It would have disgraced the Tin Whistles; thereafter, in that vigorous brotherhood, my commands would have earned naught save laughter. To arrest Sheeny Joe would be to fly in the face of the Tin Whistles and their dearest ethics. When to this I called Big Kennedy’s attention, he laughed as one amused.
“You don’t twig!” said he, recovering a partial gravity. “I’m goin’ to send him over th’ road for robbery.”
“But he hasn’t robbed anybody!”
Big Kennedy made a gesture of impatience, mixed with despair.
“Here!” said he at last, “I’ll give you a flash of what I’m out to do an’ why I’m out to do it. I’m goin’ to put Sheeny Joe away to stiffen discipline. He’s sold himself, an’ th’ whole ward knows it. Now I’m goin’ to show’em what happens to a turncoat, as a hunch to keep their coats on right side out, d’ye see.”
“But you spoke of a robbery!” I interjected; “Sheeny Joe has robbed no one.”
“I’m gettin’ to that,” returned Big Kennedy, with a repressive wave of his broad palm, “an’ I can see that you yourself have a lot to learn. Listen: If I knew of any robbery Sheeny Joe had pulled off, I wouldn’t have him lagged for that; no, not if he’d taken a jimmy an’ cracked a dozen bins. There’d be no lesson in sendin’ a duck over th’ road in that. Any old woman could have him pinched for a crime he’s really pulled off. To leave an impression on these people, you must send a party up for what he hasn’t done. Then they understand.”
For all Big Kennedy’s explanation, I still lived in the dark. I made no return, however, either of comment or question; I considered that I had only to look on, and Big Kennedy’s purpose would elucidate itself. Big Kennedy and I were in the sanctum that opened off his barroom. He called one of his barmen.
“Billy, you know where to find the Rat?” Then, when the other nodded: “Go an’ tell the Rat I want him.”
“Who is the Rat?” I queried. I had never heard of the Rat.
“He’s a pickpocket,” responded Big Kennedy, “an’ as fly a dip as ever nipped a watch or copped a leather.”
The Rat belonged on the west side of the town, which accounted for my having failed of his acquaintance. Big Kennedy was sure his man would find him.
“For he grafts nights,” said Big Kennedy, “an’ at this time of day it’s a cinch he’s takin’ a snooze. A pickpocket has to have plenty of sleep to keep his hooks from shakin’.”
While we were waiting the coming of the Rat, one of the barmen entered to announce a caller. He whispered a word in Big Kennedy’s ear.
“Sure!” said he. “Tell him to come along.”
The gentleman whom the barman had announced, and who was a young clergyman, came into the room. Big Kennedy gave him a hearty handshake, while his red face radiated a welcome.
“What is it, Mr. Bronson?” asked Big Kennedy pleasantly; “what can I do for you?”
The young clergyman’s purpose was to ask assistance for a mission which he proposed to start near the Five Points.
“Certainly,” said Big Kennedy, “an’ not a moment to wait!” With that he gave the young clergyman one hundred dollars.
When that gentleman, after expressing his thanks, had departed, Big Kennedy sighed.
“I’ve got no great use for a church,” he said. “I never bought a gold brick yet that wasn’t wrapped in a tract. But it’s no fun to get a preacher down on you. One of’em can throw stones enough to smash every window in Tammany Hall. Your only show with the preachers is to flatter ‘em; – pass’em out the flowers. Most of ‘em’s as pleased with flattery as a girl. Yes indeed,” he concluded, “I can paste bills on ‘em so long as I do it with soft soap.”
The Rat was a slight, quiet individual and looked the young physician rather than the pickpocket. His hands were delicate, and he wore gloves the better to keep them in condition. His step and air were as quiet as those of a cat.
“I want a favor,” said Big Kennedy, addressing the Rat, “an’ I’ve got to go to one of the swell mob to get it. That’s why I sent for you, d’ye see! It takes someone finer than a bricklayer to do th’ work.”
The Rat was uneasily questioning my presence with his eye. Big Kennedy paused to reassure him.
“He’s th’ straight goods,” said Big Kennedy, speaking in a tone wherein were mingled resentment and reproach. “You don’t s’ppose I’d steer you ag’inst a brace?”
The Rat said never a word, but his glance left me and he gave entire heed to Big Kennedy.
“This is the proposition,” resumed Big Kennedy. “You know Sheeny Joe. Shadow him; swing and rattle with him no matter where he goes. The moment you see a chance, get a pocketbook an’ put it away in his clothes. When th’ roar goes up, tell th’ loser where to look. Are you on? Sheeny Joe must get th’ collar, an’ I want him caught with th’ goods, d’ye see.”
“I don’t have to go to court ag’inst him?” said the Rat interrogatively.
“No,” retorted Big Kennedy, a bit explosively. “You’d look about as well in th’ witness box as I would in a pulpit. No, you shift th’ leather. Then give th’ party who’s been touched th’ office to go after Sheeny Joe. After that you can screw out; that’s as far as you go.”
It was the next evening at the ferry. Suddenly a cry went up.
“Thief! Thief! My pocketbook is gone!”
The shouts found source in a broad man. He was top-heavy with too much beer, but clear enough to realize that his money had disappeared. The Rat, sly, small, clean, inconspicuous, was at his shoulder.
“There’s your man!” whispered the Rat, pointing to Sheeny Joe, whose footsteps he had been dogging the livelong day; “there’s your man!”
In a moment the broad man had thrown himself upon Sheeny Joe.
“Call the police!” he yelled. “He’s got my pocket-book!”
The officer pulled him off Sheeny Joe, whom he had thrown to the ground and now clung to with the desperation of the robbed.
“Give me a look in!” said the officer, thrusting the broad man aside. “If he’s got your leather we’ll find it.”
Sheeny Joe was breathless with the surprise and fury of the broad man’s descent upon him. The officer ran his hand over the outside of Sheeny Joe’s coat, holding him meanwhile fast by the collar. Then he slipped his hand inside, and drew forth a chubby pocketbook.
“That’s it!” screamed the broad man, “that’s my wallet with over six hundred dollars in it! The fellow stole it!”
“It’s a plant!” gasped Sheeny Joe, his face like ashes. Then to the crowd: “Will somebody go fetch Big John Kennedy? He knows me; he’ll say I’m square!”
Big Kennedy arrived at the station as the officer, whose journey was slow because of the throng, came in with Sheeny Joe. Big Kennedy heard the stories of the officer and the broad man with all imaginable patience. Then a deep frown began to knot his brow. He waved Sheeny Joe aside with a gesture that told of virtuous indignation.
“Lock him up!” cried Big Kennedy. “If he’d slugged somebody, even if he’d croaked him, I’d have stuck to him till th’ pen’tentiary doors pinched my fingers. But I’ve no use for a crook. Sing Sing’s th’ place for him! It’s just such fine workers as him who disgrace th’ name of Tammany Hall. They lift a leather, an’ they make Tammany a cover for th’ play.”
“Are you goin’ back on me?” wailed Sheeny Joe.
“Put him inside!” said Big Kennedy to the officer in charge of the station. Then, to Sheeny Joe, with the flicker of a leer: “Why don’t you send to the Tub of Blood?”
“Shall I take bail for him, Mr. Kennedy, if any shows up?” asked the officer in charge.
“No; no bail!” replied Big Kennedy. “If anyone offers, tell him I don’t want it done.”
It was three weeks later when Sheeny Joe was found guilty, and sentenced to prison for four years. The broad man, the police officer, and divers who at the time of his arrest were looking on, come forward as witnesses against Sheeny Joe, and twelve honest dullards who called themselves a jury, despite his protestations that he was “being jobbed,” instantly declared him guilty. Sheeny Joe, following his sentence, was dragged from the courtroom, crying and cursing the judge, the jury, the witnesses, but most of all Big Kennedy.
Nor do I think Big Kennedy’s agency in drawing down this fate upon Sheeny Joe was misunderstood by ones with whom it was meant to pass for warning. I argue this from what was overheard by me as we left the courtroom where Sheeny Joe was sentenced. The two in conversation were walking a pace in advance of me.
“He got four spaces!” said one in an awed whisper.
“He’s dead lucky not to go for life!” exclaimed the other. “How much of the double-cross do you guess now Big Kennedy will stand? I’ve seen a bloke take a slab in th’ morgue for less. It was Benny the Bite; he gets a knife between his slats.”
“What’s it all about, Jawn?” asked Old Mike, who later sat in private review of the case of Sheeny Joe. “Why are you puttin’ a four-year smother on that laad?”
“It’s gettin’ so,” explained Big Kennedy, “that these people of ours look on politics as a kind of Virginny reel. It’s first dance on one side an’ then cross to th’ other. There’s a bundle of money ag’inst us, big enough to trip a dog, an’ discipline was givin’ way. Our men could smell th’ burnin’ money an’ it made ‘em crazy. Somethin’ had to come off to sober ‘em, an’ teach ‘em discipline, an’ make ‘em sing ‘Home, Sweet Home’!”
“It’s all right, then!” declared Old Mike decisively.
“The main thing is to kape up th’ organization! Better twinty like that Sheeny Joe should learn th’ lockstep than weaken Tammany Hall. Besides, I’m not like th’ law. I belave in sindin’ folks to prison, not for what they do, but for what they are. An’ this la-ad was a har-rd crackther.”
The day upon which Sheeny Joe went to his prison was election day. Tammany Hall took possession of the town; and for myself, I was made an alderman by a majority that counted into the skies.
CHAPTER IX – HOW BIG KENNEDY BOLTED
BEFORE I abandon the late election in its history to the keeping of time past, there is an episode, or, if you will, an accident, which should find relation. Of itself it would have come and gone, and been of brief importance, save for an incident to make one of its elements, which in a later pinch to come of politics brought me within the shadow of a gibbet.
Busy with my vote-getting, I had gone to the docks to confer with the head of a certain gang of stevedores. These latter were hustling up and down the gangplanks, taking the cargo out of a West India coffee boat. The one I had come seeking was aboard the vessel.
I pushed towards the after gangplank, and as I reached it I stepped aside to avoid one coming ashore with a huge sack of coffee on his shoulders. Not having my eyes about me, I caught my toe in a ringbolt and stumbled with a mighty bump against a sailor who was standing on the string-piece of the wharf. With nothing to save him, and a six-foot space opening between the wharf and the ship, the man fell into the river with a cry and a splash. He went to the bottom like so much pig-iron, for he could not swim.
It was the work of a moment to throw off my coat and go after him. I was as much at ease in the water as a spaniel, and there would be nothing more dangerous than a ducking in the experiment. I dived and came up with the drowning man in my grip. For all his peril, he took it coolly enough, and beyond spluttering, and puffing, and cracking off a jargon of oaths, added no difficulties to the task of saving his life. We gained help from the dock, and it wasn’t five minutes before we found the safe planks beneath our feet again.
The man who had gone overboard so unexpectedly was a keen small dark creature of a Sicilian, and to be noticed for his black eyes, a red handkerchief over his head, and ears looped with golden earrings.
“No harm done, I think?” said I, when we were both ashore again.
“I lose-a my knife,” said he with a grin, the water dripping from his hair. He was pointing to the empty scabbard at his belt where he had carried a sheath-knife.
“It was my blunder,” said I, “and if you’ll hunt me up at Big Kennedy’s this evening I’ll have another for you.”
That afternoon, at a pawnshop in the Bowery, I bought a strange-looking weapon, that was more like a single-edged dagger than anything else. It had a buck-horn haft, and was heavy and long, with a blade of full nine inches.
My Sicilian came, as I had told him, and I gave him the knife. He was extravagant in his gratitude.
“You owe me nothing!” he cried. “It is I who owe for my life that you save. But I shall take-a the knife to remember how you pull me out. You good-a man; some day I pull you out – mebby so! who knows?”
With that he was off for the docks again, leaving me neither to hear nor to think of him thereafter for a stirring handful of years.
It occurred to me as strange, even in a day when I gave less time to thought than I do now, that my first impulse as an alderman should be one of revenge. There was that police captain, who, in the long ago, offered insult to Anne, when she came to beg for my liberty. “Better get back to your window,” said he, “or all the men will have left the street!” The memory of that evil gibe had never ceased to burn me with the hot anger of a coal of fire, and now I resolved for his destruction.
When I told Big Kennedy, he turned the idea on his wheel of thought for full two minutes.
“It’s your right,” said he at last. “You’ve got the ax; you’re entitled to his head. But say! pick him up on proper charges; get him dead to rights! That aint hard, d’ye see, for he’s as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. To throw him for some trick he’s really turned will bunco these reform guys into thinkin’ that we’re on th’ level.”
The enterprise offered no complexities. A man paid that captain money to save from suppression a resort of flagrant immorality. The bribery was laid bare; he was overtaken in this plain corruption; and next, my combinations being perfect, I broke him as I might break a stick across my knee. He came to me in private the following day.
“What have I done?” said he. “Can I square it?”
“Never!” I retorted; “there’s some things one can’t square.” Then I told him of Anne, and his insult.
“That’s enough,” he replied, tossing his hand resignedly. “I can take my medicine when it’s come my turn.”
For all that captain’s stoicism, despair rang in his tones, and as he left me, the look in his eye was one to warm the cockles of my heart and feed my soul with comfort.
“Speakin’ for myself,” said Big Kennedy, in the course of comment, “I don’t go much on revenge. Still when it costs nothin’, I s’ppose you might as well take it in. Besides, it shows folks that there’s a dead-line in th’ game. The wise ones will figger that this captain held out on us, or handed us th’ worst of it on th’ quiet. The example of him gettin’ done up will make others run true.”
Several years slipped by wherein as alderman I took my part in the town’s affairs. I was never a talking member, and gained no glory for my eloquence. But what I lacked of rhetoric, I made up in stubborn loyalty to Tammany, and I never failed to dispose of my vote according to its mandates.
It was not alone my right, but my duty to do this. I had gone to the polls the avowed candidate of the machine. There was none to vote for me who did not know that my public courses would be shaped and guided by the organization. I was free to assume, therefore, being thus elected as a Tammany member by folk informed to a last expression of all that the phrase implied, that I was bound to carry out the Tammany programmes and execute the Tammany orders. Where a machine and its laws are known, the people when they lift to office one proposed of that machine, thereby direct such officer to submit himself to its direction and conform to its demands.
There will be ones to deny this. And these gentry of denials will be plausible, and furnish the thought of an invincible purity for their assumptions. They should not, however, be too sure for their theories. They themselves may be the ones in error. They should reflect that wherever there dwells a Yes there lives also a No. These contradictionists should emulate my own forbearance.
I no more claim to be wholly right for my attitude of implicit obedience to the machine, than I condemn as wholly wrong their own position of boundless denunciation. There is no man so bad he may not be defended; there lives none so good he does not need defense; and what I say of a man might with equal justice be said of any dogma of politics. As I set forth in my preface, the true and the false, the black and the white in politics will rest ever with the point of view.
During my years as an alderman I might have made myself a wealthy man. And that I did not do so, was not because I had no profit of the place. As the partner, unnamed, in sundry city contracts, riches came often within my clutch. But I could not keep them; I was born with both hands open and had the hold of money that a riddle has of water.
This want of a money wit is a defect of my nature. A great merchant late in my life once said to me:
“Commerce – money-getting – is like a sea, and every man, in large or little sort, is a mariner. Some are buccaneers, while others are sober merchantmen. One lives by taking prizes, the other by the proper gains of trade. You belong to the buccaneers by your birth. You are not a business man, but a business wolf. Being a wolf, you will waste and never save. Your instinct is to pull down each day’s beef each day. You should never buy nor sell nor seek to make money with money. Your knowledge of money is too narrow. Up to fifty dollars you are wise. Beyond that point you are the greatest dunce I ever met.”
Thus lectured the man of markets, measuring sticks, and scales; and while I do not think him altogether exact, there has been much in my story to bear out what he said. It was not that I wasted my money in riot, or in vicious courses. My morals were good, and I had no vices. This was not much to my credit; my morals were instinctive, like the morals of an animal. My one passion was for politics, and my one ambition the ambition to lead men. Nor was I eager to hold office; my hope went rather to a day when I should rule Tammany as its Chief. My genius was not for the show ring; I cared nothing for a gilded place. That dream of my heart’s wish was to be the power behind the screen, and to put men up and take men down, place them and move them about, and play at government as one might play at chess. Still, while I dreamed of an unbridled day to come, I was for that the more sedulous to execute the orders of Big Kennedy. I had not then to learn that the art of command is best studied in the art of obedience.
To be entirely frank, I ought to name the one weakness that beset me, and which more than any spendthrift tendency lost me my fortune as fast as it flowed in. I came never to be a gambler in the card or gaming table sense, but I was inveterate to wager money on a horse. While money lasted, I would bet on the issue of every race that was run, and I was made frequently bankrupt thereby. However, I have said enough of my want of capacity to hoard. I was young and careless; moreover, with my place as alderman, and that sovereignty I still held among the Red Jackets, when my hand was empty I had but to stretch it forth to have it filled again.
In my boyhood I went garbed of rags and patches. Now when money came, I sought the first tailor of the town. I went to him drawn of his high prices; for I argued, and I think sagaciously, that where one pays the most one gets the best.
Nor, when I found that tailor, did I seek to direct him in his labors. I put myself in his hands, and was guided to quiet blacks and grays, and at his hint gave up thoughts of those plaids and glaring checks to which my tastes went hungering. That tailor dressed me like a gentleman and did me a deal of good. I am not one to say that raiment makes the man, and yet I hold that it has much to do with the man’s behavior. I can say in my own case that when I was thus garbed like a gentleman, my conduct was at once controlled in favor of the moderate. I was instantly ironed of those rougher wrinkles of my nature, which last, while neither noisy nor gratuitously violent, was never one of peace.
The important thing was that these clothes of gentility gave me multiplied vogue with ones who were peculiarly my personal followers. They earned me emphasis with my Red Jackets, who still bore me aloft as their leader, and whose favor I must not let drift. The Tin Whistles, too, drew an awe from this rich yet civil uniform which strengthened my authority in that muscular quarter. I had grown, as an alderman and that one next in ward power to Big Kennedy, to a place which exempted me from those harsher labors of fist and bludgeon in which, whenever the exigencies of a campaign demanded, the Tin Whistles were still employed. But I claimed my old mastery over them. I would not permit so hardy a force to go to another’s hands, and while I no longer led their war parties, I was always in the background, giving them direction and stopping them when they went too far.
It was demanded of my safety that I retain my hold upon both the Tin Whistles and the Red Jackets. However eminent I might be, I was by no means out of the ruck, and my situation was to be sustained only by the strong hand. The Tin Whistles and the Red Jackets were the sources of my importance, and if my voice were heeded or my word owned weight it was because they stood ever ready to my call. Wherefore, I cultivated their favor, secured my place among them, while at the same time I forced them to obey to the end that they as well as I be preserved.
Those clothes of a gentleman not only augmented, but declared my strength. In that time a fine coat was an offense to ones more coarsely clothed. A well-dressed stranger could not have walked three blocks on the East Side without being driven to do battle for his life. Fine linen was esteemed a challenge, and that I should be so arrayed and go unscathed, proved not alone my popularity, but my dangerous repute. Secretly, it pleased my shoulder-hitters to see their captain so garbed; and since I could defend my feathers, they made of themselves another reason of leadership. I was growing adept of men, and I counted on this effect when I spent my money with that tailor.
While I thus lay aside for the moment the running history of events that were as the stepping stones by which I crossed from obscurity and poverty to power and wealth, to have a glance at myself in my more personal attitudes, I should also relate my marriage and how I took a wife. It was Anne who had charge of the business, and brought me this soft victory. Had it not been for Anne, I more than half believe I would have had no wife at all; for I was eaten of an uneasy awkwardness whenever my fate delivered me into the presence of a girl. However earnestly Anne might counsel, I had no more of parlor wisdom than a savage, Anne, while sighing over my crudities and the hopeless thickness of my wits, established herself as a bearward to supervise my conduct. She picked out my wife for me, and in days when I should have been a lover, but was a graven image and as stolid, carried forward the courting in my stead.
It was none other than Apple Cheek upon whom Anne pitched – Apple Cheek, grown rounder and more fair, with locks like cornsilk, and eyes of even a deeper blue than on that day of the docks. Anne had struck out a friendship for Apple Cheek from the beginning, and the two were much in one another’s company. And so one day, by ways and means I was too much confused to understand, Anne had us before the priest. We were made husband and wife; Apple Cheek brave and sweet, I looking like a fool in need of keepers.
Anne, the architect of this bliss, was in tears; and yet she must have kept her head, for I remember how she recalled me to the proprieties of my new station.
“Why don’t you kiss your bride!” cried Anne, at the heel of the ceremony.
Anne snapped out the words, and they rang in my delinquent ears like a storm bell. Apple Cheek, eyes wet to be a match for Anne’s, put up her lips with all the courage in the world. I kissed her, much as one might salute a hot flatiron. Still I kissed her; and I think to the satisfaction of a church-full looking on; but I knew what men condemned have felt on that journey to block and ax.
Apple Cheek and her choice of me made up the sweetest fortune of my life, and now when I think of her it is as if I stood in a flood of sunshine. So far as I was able, I housed her and robed her as though she were the daughter of a king, and while I have met treason in others and desertion where I looked for loyalty, I held her heart-fast, love-fast, faith-fast, ever my own. She was my treasure, and when she died it was as though my own end had come.
Big Kennedy and the then Chief of Tammany, during my earlier years as alderman, were as Jonathan and David. They were ever together, and their plans and their interests ran side by side. At last they began to fall apart. Big Kennedy saw a peril in this too-close a partnership, and was for putting distance between them. It was Old Mike who thus counseled him. The aged one became alarmed by the raw and insolent extravagance of the Chief’s methods.
