ts. When supper was half over, and I was congratulating myself
that I had got out of the _cotillon_, even with you, for it meant
dancing with a lot of others, my host took me firmly by the arm and
marched me up-stairs. He informed me that he was 'bored stiff,' could
see that I was, and had 'coralled' a few more choice spirits. We went,
not to the smoking or billiard-room, but to his own bedroom, and here I
found four or five more of your strenuous millionaires, the reform
editor, and the lawyer that looks like a bull-dog waiting for the word
to spring at the throat of the Boss and his whole vile crew.

"Here we sat and smoked until the air inside was as thick as the fog
that blotted out the lights of the city and towns opposite. Of course
the talk was of the rotten state of San Francisco. I never heard the
whole story before, and it made my hair stand on end. I knew that vice
flaunted itself more openly here than elsewhere, but I did not guess
that the thousand and one establishments of every sort, from the lowest
negro dive under the sidewalk, and the snares for the very young of both
sexes, straight up to the most gaudy 'French restaurants,' as well as
Chinatown, Barbary coast, and all the rest, paid tribute to the gang of
political ruffians that have got control of the city. No wonder the last
have developed a preternatural sharpness that makes it next to
impossible to bring the charges home, for they will all be rich enough
in time to move to Europe and buy up such salable scions of
improverished houses as happen to be on the market. The thing is as well
known as I know that you are my third cousin, but, although the
second-rate grafters are brazen enough, it is not worth while to attack
them until the Boss is done for, and so far he has proved much too
clever to be caught. A college man, although of low origin, and an
accomplished lawyer of a sort, he pockets huge sums from these
disreputable establishments, for himself and his minion, the mayor, and
calls them attorney's fees. Naturally the panderers to vice won't admit
they are blackmailed: they are between the devil and the deep sea; if
the fight came on in earnest, and they gave evidence against the Boss,
and the Boss won, he would clean them all out and put others in. The
Reformers, if they won, would clean them out too; so, naturally, they
hold their tongues and hope this reform movement will peter out as so
many others have done. So do the Board of Supervisor