ays Mr. O'Meagher, with great promptness.

[Illustration: "JUST SO," SAYS MR. WIMPLES, "JUST SO."]

"Just so," says Mr. Wimples, "just so."

"And you've called to pay it," says Mr. O'Meagher, taking up his list
and his pencil. "I've been expecting you."

"Ah, yes, to be sure, of course. I was going to propose
a--er--settlement."

"A what?" says Mr. O'Meagher sharply.

Mr. Wimples mops his brow. "The fact is," he says, "I don't happen to
have so considerable a sum as $20,000 at the--er--moment, and I was
thinking of suggesting that I just pay you, say, $10,000 down, and give
you two--er--notes."

"'Twont do," says Mr. O'Meagher, shaking his head and fetching his
pencil down upon the table with a smart tap, "'twont do at all."

"Eh? Indorsed, you know, by--"

"Mr. Wimples, that $20,000 in hard cash must be in my hands by six
o'clock to-night, or your name goes off the ticket."

"O--er--Lud!" says Mr. Wimples, sadly.

"By six P. M."

"But, my dear Mr. O'Meagher--"

"Or your name goes off the ticket."

Mr. Wimples groaned, grasped the whisky bottle, poured out a copious
draught, tossed it down his throat, bowed meekly, and withdrew. In the
vestibule he met the Hon. Perfidius Ruse, the Mayor of the city, whose
term of office was about to expire, and as to whose renomination there
was going on a heated controversy. Mr. Ruse was a reformer. It was as a
reformer that he had been elected two years before. At that time Mr.
O'Meagher found himself menaced by a strange peril. It had been alleged
by jealous enemies that he was corrupt, and they called loudly for
reform. At first, Mr. O'Meagher experienced some difficulty in
understanding what was meant by corrupt and what by reform. His mission
in life, as he understood it, was to name the individuals who should
hold the city's offices and to control their official acts in the
interest of Tammany Hall, and he had great difficulty in comprehending
how it could be anybody's business that he had grown rich performing his
mission. But perceiving that a large and dangerous class of voters was
clamoring for a reformer, he concluded to humor it if he could find a
good safe reformer on whom he could rely. In this emergency he had
produced the Hon. Perfidius Ruse.

It cannot be said that Mr. O'Meagher regarded the Ruse experiment as
entirely satisfactory. Mr. Ruse had certainly reformed several things,
and with considerable adroitness and skill, but there were many who sai