became a personage of
considerable importance, for the simple reason that he was weak. Stener
had been engaged in the real estate and insurance business in a small
way before he was made city treasurer. He was one of those men, of whom
there are so many thousands in every large community, with no breadth
of vision, no real subtlety, no craft, no great skill in anything. You
would never hear a new idea emanating from Stener. He never had one in
his life. On the other hand, he was not a bad fellow. He had a stodgy,
dusty, commonplace look to him which was more a matter of mind than of
body. His eye was of vague gray-blue; his hair a dusty light-brown and
thin. His mouth--there was nothing impressive there. He was quite tall,
nearly six feet, with moderately broad shoulders, but his figure was
anything but shapely. He seemed to stoop a little, his stomach was the
least bit protuberant, and he talked commonplaces--the small change of
newspaper and street and business gossip. People liked him in his own
neighborhood. He was thought to be honest and kindly; and he was, as far
as he knew. His wife and four children were as average and insignificant
as the wives and children of such men usually are.

Just the same, and in spite of, or perhaps, politically speaking,
because of all this, George W. Stener was brought into temporary public
notice by certain political methods which had existed in Philadelphia
practically unmodified for the previous half hundred years. First,
because he was of the same political faith as the dominant local
political party, he had become known to the local councilman and
ward-leader of his ward as a faithful soul--one useful in the matter
of drumming up votes. And next--although absolutely without value as
a speaker, for he had no ideas--you could send him from door to door,
asking the grocer and the blacksmith and the butcher how he felt about
things and he would make friends, and in the long run predict fairly
accurately the probable vote. Furthermore, you could dole him out a few
platitudes and he would repeat them. The Republican party, which was the
new-born party then, but dominant in Philadelphia, needed your vote; it
was necessary to keep the rascally Democrats out--he could scarcely have
said why. They had been for slavery. They were for free trade. It never
once occurred to him that these things had nothing to do with the local
executive and financial administration of Philadelphia. Supposin