ghed at me, and told me that politics were "low"; that the
organizations were not controlled by "gentlemen"; that I would find them
run by saloon-keepers, horse-car conductors, and the like, and not by
men with any of whom I would come in contact outside; and, moreover,
they assured me that the men I met would be rough and brutal and
unpleasant to deal with. I answered that if this were so it merely meant
that the people I knew did not belong to the governing class, and that
the other people did--and that I intended to be one of the governing
class; that if they proved too hard-bit for me I supposed I would have
to quit, but that I certainly would not quit until I had made the effort
and found out whether I really was too weak to hold my own in the rough
and tumble.

The Republican Association of which I became a member held its meetings
in Morton Hall, a large, barn-like room over a saloon. Its furniture was
of the canonical kind: dingy benches, spittoons, a dais at one end with
a table and chair and a stout pitcher for iced water, and on the walls
pictures of General Grant, and of Levi P. Morton, to whose generosity
we owed the room. We had regular meetings once or twice a month, and
between times the place was treated, at least on certain nights, as a
kind of club-room. I went around there often enough to have the men get
accustomed to me and to have me get accustomed to them, so that we began
to speak the same language, and so that each could begin to live down in
the other's mind what Bret Harte has called "the defective moral quality
of being a stranger." It is not often that a man can make opportunities
for himself. But he can put himself in such shape that when or if the
opportunities come he is ready to take advantage of them. This was what
happened to me in connection with my experiences in Morton Hall. I soon
became on good terms with a number of the ordinary "heelers" and even
some of the minor leaders. The big leader was Jake Hess, who treated
me with rather distant affability. There were prominent lawyers and
business men who belonged, but they took little part in the actual
meetings. What they did was done elsewhere. The running of the machine
was left to Jake Hess and his captains of tens and of hundreds.

Among these lesser captains I soon struck up a friendship with Joe
Murray, a friendship which is as strong now as it was thirty-three years
ago. He had been born in Ireland, but brought to New York by