ather shamefaced at my catching him at it. I do not
believe that a soul has ever heard of the case from him to this day.

My friend is a Tammany boss, and I shall not be accused of partiality
for him on that account. During that same cold spell a politician of the
other camp came into my office and gave me a hundred dollars to spend as
I saw fit among the poor. His district was miles up-town, and he was
most unwilling to disclose his identity, stipulating in the end that no
one but I should know where the money came from. He was not seeking
notoriety. The plight of the suffering had appealed to him, and he
wanted to help where he could, that was all.

Now, I have not the least desire to glorify the boss in this. He is not
glorious to me. He is simply human. Often enough he is a coarse and
brutal fellow, in his morals as in his politics. Again, he may have some
very engaging personal traits that bind his friends to him with the
closest of ties. The poor man sees the friend, the charity, the power
that is able and ready to help him in need; is it any wonder that he
overlooks the source of this power, this plenty,--that he forgets the
robbery in the robber who is "good to the poor"? Anyhow, if anybody got
robbed, it was "the rich." With the present ethical standards of the
slum, it is easy to construct a scheme of social justice out of it that
is very comforting all round, even to the boss himself, though he is in
need of no sympathy or excuse. "Politics," he will tell me in his
philosophic moods, "is a game for profit. The city foots the bills."
Patriotism means to him working for the ticket that shall bring more
profit.

"I regard," he says, lighting his cigar, "a repeater as a shade off a
murderer, but you are obliged to admit that in my trade he is a
necessary evil." I am not obliged to do anything of the kind, but I can
understand his way of looking at it. He simply has no political
conscience. He has gratitude, loyalty to a friend,--that is part of his
stock in trade,--fighting blood, plenty of it, all the good qualities of
the savage; nothing more. And a savage he is, politically, with no soul
above the dross. He would not rob a neighbor for the world; but he will
steal from the city--though he does not call it by that name--without a
tremor, and count it a good mark. When I tell him that, he waves his
hand toward Wall Street as representative of the business community, and
toward the office of his neighbor, the p