verflowing. Matt was there, bandaged and sore, but sorrowful; and
Jimmie, artful and scheming in the past, but now thoroughly subdued. He
was all sorrow, and sniveled and blubbered and wept hot, blinding tears
through the dark, leathery fingers of his hands.

"Misha Rook! Misha Rook!" I heard him say, as they bore the body in; and
when they carried it out of the church, he followed, head down. As they
lowered it to the grave he was inconsolable.

"Misha Rook! Misha Rook! I work-a for him fifteen year!"

_A Mayor and His People_

Here is the story of an individual whose political and social example,
if such things are ever worth anything (the moralists to the contrary
notwithstanding), should have been, at the time, of the greatest
importance to every citizen of the United States. Only it was not. Or
was it? Who really knows? Anyway, he and his career are entirely
forgotten by now, and have been these many years.

He was the mayor of one of those dreary New England mill towns in
northern Massachusetts--a bleak, pleasureless realm of about forty
thousand, where, from the time he was born until he finally left at the
age of thirty-six to seek his fortune elsewhere, he had resided without
change. During that time he had worked in various of the local mills,
which in one way and another involved nearly all of the population. He
was a mill shoe-maker by trade, or, in other words, a factory shoe-hand,
knowing only a part of all the processes necessary to make a shoe in
that fashion. Still, he was a fair workman, and earned as much as
fifteen or eighteen dollars a week at times--rather good pay for that
region. By temperament a humanitarian, or possibly because of his own
humble state one who was compelled to take cognizance of the
difficulties of others, he finally expressed his mental unrest by
organizing a club for the study and propagation of socialism, and later,
when it became powerful enough to have a candidate and look for
political expression of some kind, he was its first, and thereafter for
a number of years, its regular candidate for mayor. For a long time, or
until its membership became sufficient to attract some slight political
attention, its members (following our regular American, unintellectual
custom) were looked upon by the rest of the people as a body of harmless
kickers, filled with fool notions about a man's duty to his fellowman,
some silly dream about an honest and economical administration