gh a
bit heavy. His eyes were everywhere. He was the first to notice
Rafferty. He nodded with a familiar,

"Hello, Dan."

Dan seized my arm and dragged me forward:

"I want ye to meet me frind, Mister Carleton," he said.

Sweeney rested his grey eyes on me a second, saw that I was a
stranger here, and stepped forward instantly with his big hand
outstretched. He spoke without a trace of brogue.

"I'm very glad to meet you, Mr. Carleton," he said.

I don't know that I'm easily impressed and I flattered myself that I
could recognize a politician when I saw one, but I want to confess
that there was something in the way he grasped my hand that instantly
gave me a distinctly friendly feeling towards Sweeney. I should have
said right then and there that the man wasn't as black as he was
painted. He was neither oily nor sleek in his manner. We chatted a
minute and I think he was a bit surprised in me. He wanted to know
where I lived, where I was working, and how much of a family I had. He
put these questions in so frank and fatherly a fashion that they
didn't seem so impertinent to me at the time as they did later. Some
one called him and as he turned away, he said to Rafferty,

"See me before you go, Dan."

Then he said to me,

"I hope I'll see you down here often, Carleton."

With that Dan took me around and introduced me to Tom, Dick and Harry
or rather to Tim, Denny and Larry. This crowd came nearer to the
notion I had of ward politicians. They were a noisy, husky-throated
lot, but they didn't leave you in doubt for a minute but what every
mother's son of them was working for Sweeney as though they were one
big family with Daddy Sweeney at the head. You could overhear bits of
plots and counter plots on every side. I was offered a dozen cigars in
as many minutes and though some of the men rather shied away from me
at first a whispered endorsement from Dan was all that was needed to
bring them back.

There was something contagious about it and when later the meeting
itself opened and Sweeney rose to speak I cheered him as heartily as
anyone. By this time a hundred or more other men had come in who
looked more outside the inner circle. Sweeney spoke simply and
directly. It was a personal appeal he made, based on promises. I
listened with interest and though it seemed to me that many of his
pledges were extravagant he showed such a good spirit back of them
that his speech on a whole produced a favorable effect.