THE HON. DOYLE O'MEAGHER.
At this particular moment the Hon. Doyle O'Meagher is a busy man. Tammany Hall's nominating convention is shortly to be held, and Mr. O'Meagher is putting the finishing touches upon the ticket which he has decided that the convention shall adopt. The ticket, written down upon a sheet of paper, is before him, together with a bottle of whisky and a case of cigars, and the finishing touches consist of little pencil-marks placed opposite the candidates' names, indicating that they have visited Mr. O'Meagher and have duly paid over their several campaign assessments—a preliminary formality which Mr. O'Meagher enforces with strict impartiality. The amount of each assessment depends entirely upon Mr. O'Meagher's sense of the fitness of things. To dispute Mr. O'Meagher's sense in this particular is looked upon as treason and rebellion. In the case of the Hon. Thraxton Wimples, the intended candidate for the Supreme Court, the assessment is $20,000.
Mr. Wimples is a little man of profound learning and ancient lineage. Mr. O'Meagher is a man of indifferent learning and no lineage to speak of. Mr. Wimples's grandfather had signed the Declaration of Independence, and had moved on three separate occasions that the Continental Congress do now adjourn, while no reason whatever existed, other than the one most obvious but least apt to occur to any one, for supposing that Mr. O'Meagher had ever had a grandfather at all. And yet, as Mr. Wimples, though on the threshold of great dignity and power, walks into Mr. O'Meagher's presence, he find himself all of a tremble, and glows and chills chase each other up and down his spinal column.
"Ah, Mr. O'Meagher," he says, "good-morning! Good-morning! Happy to see you so—er—well. Charming day, so warm for the—er—season."
"Yes," says Mr. O'Meagher, "so it be."
"I received your notification of the high—er—honor, you propose to confer on me."
"Yes," says Mr. O'Meagher, "you're the man for the place."
"So kind of you to—er—say so. You mentioned that the—er—assessment was—"
"Twenty thousand dollars," says Mr. O'Meagher, with great promptness.
"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 said that his reforms had all been made with an eye single to the glory of the Hon. Perfidius Ruse, and with a view to the establishment of a personal influence hostile to the man who made him. The time had now come for the test of strength. Concerning his ultimate intentions, the Hon. Doyle O'Meagher was cold, silent, and reserved.
"How are you, Mr. Mayor?" said the crestfallen Mr. Wimples, as he came upon the reformer in the vestibule. "Going up to see the—er—Boss?"
"I was thinking of it, yes. How's he feeling?"
"Ugly. He's in a dev'lish uncompromising—er—humor. If you were going to ask anything of him I advise you to—er, not."
"Thank you. I only intend to suggest some matters in the interest of reform."
"I wish you well. But—er—go slow."
Mr. O'Meagher did not rise to greet his distinguished visitor. He simply drew a chair close to his own, poured out a glass of whisky, and said, "Hello!"
"I thought I'd just drop in, Mr. O'Meagher," said the Mayor, "to say a word or two about the situation. What are the probabilities?"
"As regards which?"
"H'm, well, the nominations?"
"WHO CAN TELL?" EJACULATED MR. O'MEAGHER.
"Who can tell," ejaculated Mr. O'Meagher. "Who can tell? What is more uncertain, Mr. Ruse, than the action of a nominating convention?"
"To be sure," responded Mr. Ruse. "What, indeed?" Whereupon each statesman looked at the other out of the corners of his eyes.
"There's only one thing I care about," continued Mr. Ruse, "and that is reform. If my successor is a reformer, I shall be satisfied."
"Make yourself easy," replied Mr. O'Meagher. "He'll be a reformer. I've been paying some attention during the last two years to the education of our people in the matter of reform. My success has been flattering. I think I can truthfully say now that Tammany Hall has a reformer ready for every salary paid by the city, and that there's no danger of our stock of reformers giving out as long as the salaries last."
Mr. Ruse hesitated a moment, as if reflecting how he should take these observations. Finally he laughed in a feeble way and said, "Good, yes, very." Then he added, "But, speaking seriously, I do feel that my duty to the public requires me to exert all the influence I have for the protection of reform."
"I feel the same way," said Mr. O'Meagher, "exactly the same way. I'm just boiling over with enthusiasm for reform."
"Then our sympathies and desires are common. Now, if I could feel sure that I ought to run again in the interest of reform—"
"You've done so much already," Mr. O'Meagher hastily put in, "you've sacrificed so heavily that I don't think it would be fair to ask it of you."
"N-no," said the Mayor, dubiously, "I suppose it wouldn't, now, would it?"
"Of course not."
"And yet I don't like to run away from the call, so to speak, of duty."
"Don't be worried about that."
"But I am worried, O'Meagher. I can't help it. By every mail I am receiving hundreds of letters from the best citizens of New-York, urging me to let my name be used. Deputations wait on me constantly with the same request, and, as you know, they are going to hold a mass-meeting to-morrow night, and they threaten to nominate me, whether or no. What can I do? I tell them I don't want to run, that my private business has already suffered by neglect, but they answer imploring me not to desert the cause of reform just when it needs me most. It is very embarrassing."
"Very," said Mr. O'Meagher. "It's astonishing how thoughtless people are. But they wouldn't be so hard on you if they knew how you were fixed."
"That's just it. They don't know, and I don't want to appear selfish."
Mr. O'Meagher coughed, not because he needed to cough, but for want of something better to do.
"The Tammany ticket," Mr. Ruse continued, "will be hotly opposed this year, and I'm bound to say that I don't think it is sufficiently identified with reform. They tell me you are going to nominate Wimples for the Supreme Court. Wimples is a good lawyer, but he has no reform record. Neither has Colonel Bellows, whom you talk of for District-Attorney. McBoodle for Sheriff does not appeal to reformers. Bierbocker for Register might get the German vote, but how could reformers support a common butcher? I don't know whom you think of for my place, but it seems to me that there's only one way to save your ticket from defeat and that is to indorse the candidate for Mayor presented by the citizens' mass-meeting to-morrow night. That would make success certain. The public would praise your noble fidelity to reform, and you'd sweep the city! Think of it, Mr. O'Meagher! What a glorious, what a golden opportunity!"
"My eyes are as wide open as the next man's for golden opportunities, Mr. Ruse," replied Mr. O'Meagher. "But the question is, who will be nominated."
"Well, 'hem! of course I can't definitely say. I'm trying to get them to take some new man. But if they should insist on nominating me, I'm afraid I'd have to—h'm, what—what do you think I'd have to do?"
"Well, being a pious man and a reformer, I should think you'd at least have to pray over it."
The Hon. Perfidius Ruse gave a keen, quick glance at the Hon. Doyle O'Meagher, and slightly frowned.
"I should certainly consider it with care," he said stiffly.
"So should I."
"Is that all you will say?"
"No, I'll say more," and he picked up the sheet of paper on which he had written the names of the Tammany candidates. "Look here," he continued. "This is my list of nominees. The space for the head of the ticket is still blank. I have not told any one whom I mean to present for the Mayoralty, but I will promise you now to insert there the name of the man nominated by your Citizens' meeting to-morrow night."
"Whoever he may be?"
"Whoever he may be."
"I SHOULD CERTAINLY CONSIDER IT WITH CARE," HE SAID STIFFLY.
"Did I ever tell you anything you couldn't rely on?"
"No."
"All right. Good-by."
They shook hands, and Mr. Ruse departed wearing an expansive smile. As he left the room, Mr. O'Meagher smiled also and picked up his pen. "I may as well fill in the name now," he said softly, "and save time," and with great precision he proceeded to write: "For Mayor, the Hon. Doyle O'Meagher. Assessed in the sum of—" but there he stopped. "We'll consider that later," he said.
The personal history of the Hon. Doyle O'Meagher strikingly proves how slight an influence is exerted in this young republic by social prestige and vulgar wealth, and how inevitably certain are the rewards of virtue, industry, and ability. I am credibly told that Mr. O'Meagher first opened his eyes in a little ten by twelve earth cabin in the County Kerry, Ireland, though I can not profess to have seen the cabin. Being from his earliest youth of a reflective disposition, he became impressed, when but a small lad, with the conviction that thirteen people, three pigs, seven chickens, and five ducks formed too numerous a population for a cabin of those dimensions. In the silent watches of the night, with his head on a duck and a pig on his stomach, he had frequently revolved this idea in his young but apt mind, and at last, though not in any spirit of petulance, he formed the resolution which gave shape and purpose to his later career.
He had communicated to his father his peculiar views about the crowded condition of the cabin.
"Begob, Doyley, me bye," the old man had replied, "Oi've bin thinkin' o' that. Whin the ould sow litters, Doyley, it's sore perplexhed we'll be fer shlapin' room. Divil a wan o' me knows how fer to sarcumvint the throuble widout we takes you, Doyley, an' the young pigs, an' shtrings ye all up o' nights ferninst the wall."
Doyle waited developments with a heavy heart, and when they came and he found that it required all the fingers on both his hands wherewith to calculate their number, he took down his hat, dashed the unbidden tear from his eyes, and made the best of his way to Queenstown.
The opportunity is not here afforded for an extended review of the stages of progress by which Mr. O'Meagher, having landed in New York, finally secured almost a sovereign influence in its municipal affairs, and yet they are too interesting to justify their entire omission. He first won a place in the hearts of the American people by discovering to them his wonderful fistic attainments. From small and unnoted rings, he steadily and grandly rose until the newspapers overflowed with the details of his battles with the eminent Mr. Muldoon, with Four-Fingered Jake, with the Canarsie Bantam, with Billy the Beat, and with other equally distinguished gentlemen of equally portentous titles, and at last none was to be found capable of withstanding the onslaught of the aroused Mr. O'Meagher. When he went forth in dress-array, belts and buckles and chains and plates of gold armored him from head to heel, and diamonds as large as pigeons' eggs blazed resplendently from every available nook and corner all over his muscular expanse.
Mr. O'Meagher's retirement from the ring was rendered inevitable by the fact that no one would enter it with him, and he found himself compelled to employ his talents in other fields of labor. Reduced to this extremity, he resolved to go into politics, and as an earnest of this intention he fitted up a new and gorgeous saloon. It was a novelty in its way, with its tiled floors, its decorated walls, its costly and beautiful paintings, its rare tapestries, its statues in bronze and marble, its heavy, oaken bar, and its pyramid of the finest cut glass—and when he threw it open to the public he celebrated the occasion by formally accepting a Tammany nomination for Congress.
In the halls of the National Legislature, Mr. O'Meagher soon let it be known that he cared not who made the country's laws, so long as a fair proportion of his constituents were supplied with places and pensions, and his aggressive and successful championship of this principle soon won for him a proud position in the councils of his party. He was a friend of the common people, and the commoner the people the friendlier he was, until, having clearly established his claims to leadership, in obedience to the summons of his organization, he gave himself up to the management of its destinies.
It was as the Boss of Tammany Hall that Mr. Doyle O'Meagher's genius attained its largest and highest development. Notwithstanding the opposition of rival factions engaged in bitter competition with Tammany, Mr. O'Meagher contrived to let out the offices at larger commission rates than Tammany had ever received before. Under no previous Boss had Tammany's heelers enjoyed such vast opportunities for "business." It was all in vain that envious and less-gifted bosses sought to undermine and depose him. Steadily and courageously he pursued his policy of reducing the labor of self-government to individual citizens until he had placed their taxes at a maximum and their trouble at a minimum. They had but to pay, Mr. O'Meagher did all the piping and all the dancing too.
He was in capital humor now as he dropped the pen with which he had written his own name as that of the Mayoralty candidate for whom he had finally decided to throw his important influence, and when a boy entered with the information that Major Tuff was below, the Hon. Doyle O'Meagher was actually whistling.
"Tuff," he said. "Good, I'm wanting Tuff. Send Tuff up."
Tuff entered. Tuff's hat was new and high and shiny. Tuff's hair was all aglow with bear's grease. Tuff's eyes were small and snappy. Tuff's nose was flat and wide and snubby. Tuff's cheeks were big and bony. Tuff's cigar was long and black. Tuff's lips were thick and extensive. Tuff's neck was huge and short. Tuff's coat was a heavy blue one that did for an overcoat, too. Tuff wore diamonds as big as his knuckles. Tuff's scarf was red. Tuff's waistcoat was yellow, and every color known to the spectroscope was employed to make up Tuff's copious trousers.
"Well," said Tuff, "I'm on deck."
"Thank you, Major. How are things looking?"
"Dey couldn't be better. I got t'irty-six tenement houses wid at leas' two hundered woters to de house. Dey's two t'ousan' Eyetalians, five hunered niggers, more'n a t'ousan' Poles, and de res' is all kinds. An' every dern one of em's eddicated!"
"Educated! Really, you don't mean it?"
"WELL," SAID TUFF, "I'M ON DECK."
"Eddicated! You kin betcher boots. De performin' dogs in the circus aint a patch to dem free and intelligent Amerikin citerzens. I got 'em trained so dat at de menshun of de word 'reform' dey all busts out in one gran' roar er ent'oosiasm. I had eight hunered of 'em a-practisin' in de assembly rooms over Paddy Coogan's saloon las' night. I tole 'em de louder dey yelled when I said de word 'reform' de more beer dey'd get w'en de lectur was done. Some of 'em was disposed ter stick out for de beer fust, an' said dey could do deir bes' shoutin' w'en dey was loaded. But my princerple is work fust, den go ter de cashier. So I made 'em a speech.
"I sez: 'Feller-citerzens: Dis is de lan' er de free an' de home er de brav,' an' den I give a motion wot means 'stamp de feet.' Dey all stamped like dey was clog-dancers. Den I cleared me t'roat an' perceeded: 'Dis is de haven of de oppressed, de pore an' de unforchernit from all shores.' I give de signal wot means cheers, an' dey yelled for two minits. 'Dis is our berloved Ameriky!' sez I, 'where no tyrant's heel is ever knowed,' sez I, 'where all men is ekal,' sez I, 'an' where we, feller-citerzens, un'er de gallorious banner of REFORM—' an' at dat word, dey all jes' got up on deir feet an' stamped, an' yelled, an' waved deir hats an' coats till you'd er t'ought dey was a Legislatur' of lunatics. Oh, I got 'em in good shape—doncher bodder about me."
"Ahem," said Mr. O'Meagher thoughtfully, as he cracked his finger-joints and puffed on his cigar. "You've done well, Tuff, excellent. Ah, Tuff, there's going to be a meeting in the Cooper Union to-morrow night. The people that are getting it up—er, well, I'm afraid they're not very friendly to me, Tuff. The doors open at seven. Now, do you think the proceedings would be interesting enough to your friends for them to attend in such numbers as will fill the hall, Tuff?"
"Say no more, Mr. O'Meagher, dey'll be dere."
"In large numbers, Tuff?"
"Dey'll jam de hall."
"Early, Tuff?"
"By half-past six."
"Good. I think you'll find the policemen on duty there very good fellows. You might see me to-morrow morning, Tuff, and I'll have something for you."