Mayor McGrath entered the premises of the Thomas
Jefferson Club, which was situated in the rear end of a saloon and pool
room far down in the town.

"Boys," he said to Alderman O'Hooligan and Alderman Gorfinkel, who were
playing freeze-out poker in a corner behind the pool tables, "you want
to let the boys know to keep pretty dark and go easy. There's a lot of
talk I don't like about the elections going round the town. Let the
boys know that just for a while the darker they keep the better."

Whereupon the word was passed from the Thomas Jefferson Club to the
George Washington Club and thence to the Eureka Club (coloured), and to
the Kossuth Club (Hungarian), and to various other centres of civic
patriotism in the lower parts of the city. And forthwith such a
darkness began to spread over them that not even honest Diogenes with
his lantern could have penetrated their doings.

"If them stiffs wants to make trouble," said the president of the
George Washington Club to Mayor McGrath a day or two later, "they won't
never know what they've bumped up against."

"Well," said the heavy mayor, speaking slowly and cautiously and eyeing
his henchman with quiet scrutiny, "you want to go pretty easy now, I
tell you."

The look which the mayor directed at his satellite was much the same
glance that Morgan the buccaneer might have given to one of his
lieutenants before throwing him overboard.

* * * * *

Meantime the wave of civic enthusiasm as reflected in the conversations
of Plutoria Avenue grew stronger with every day.

"The thing is a scandal," said Mr. Lucullus Fyshe. "Why, these fellows
down at the city hall are simply a pack of rogues. I had occasion to do
some business there the other day (it was connected with the assessment
of our soda factories) and do you know, I actually found that these
fellows take money!"

"I say!" said Mr. Peter Spillikins, to whom he spoke, "I say! You don't
say!"

"It's a fact," repeated Mr. Fyshe. "They take money. I took the
assistant treasurer aside and I said, 'I want such and such done,' and
I slipped a fifty dollar bill into his hand. And the fellow took it,
took it like a shot."

"He took it!" gasped Mr. Spillikins.

"He did," said Mr. Fyshe. "There ought to be a criminal law for that
sort of thing."

"I say!" exclaimed Mr. Spillikins, "they ought to go to jail for a
thing like that."

"And the infernal insolence of them," Mr. Fyshe continued. "I went d