The Boss, and How He Came to Rule New York

by Alfred Henry Lewis

It was one evening at my own door, when that judge who once sought to fix upon me the murder of Jimmy the Blacksmith, came tapping for an interview. His term was bending towards the evening of its close, and the mean purpose of him was none better-than to just plead for his place again. I will not say the man was abject; but then the thought of his mission, added to a memory of that relation to each other in which it was aforetime our one day's fate to have stood, choked me with contempt. I shall let his conduct go by without further characterization; and yet for myself, had our fortunes been reversed and he the Boss and I the Judge, before I had been discovered in an attitude of office-begging from a hand I once plotted to kill, I would have died against the wall. But so it was; my visitor would labor with me for a renomination.

My first impulse was one of destruction; I would put him beneath the wheel and crush out the breath of his hopes. And then came Big Kennedy's warning to avoid revenge when moved of nothing broader than a reason of revenge.

I sat and gazed mutely upon that judge for a space; he, having told his purpose, awaited my decision without more words. I grew cool, and cunning began to have the upper hand of violence in my breast. If I cast him down, the papers would tell of it for the workings of my vengeance. If, on the quiet other hand, he were to be returned, it would speak for my moderation, and prove me one who in the exercise of power lifted himself above the personal. I resolved to continue him; the more since the longer I considered, the clearer it grew that my revenge, instead of being starved thereby, would find in it a feast.

“You tried to put a rope about my neck,” said I at last.

“I was misled as to the truth.”

“Still you put a stain upon me. There be thousands who believe me guilty of bloodshed, and of that you shall clear me by printed word.”

“I am ever ready to repair an error.”

Within a week, with black ink and white paper, my judge in peril set forth how since my trial he had gone to the ends of that death of Jimmy the Blacksmith in its history. I was, he said, an innocent man, having had neither part nor lot therein.

I remember that over the glow of triumph wherewith I read his words, there came stealing the chill shadow of a hopeless grief. Those phrases of exoneration would not recall poor Apple Cheek; nor would they restore Blossom to that poise and even balance from which she had been shaken on a day before her birth. For all the sorrow of it, however, I made good my word; and I have since thought that whether our judge deserved the place or no, to say the least he earned it.

Every man has his model, and mine was Big John Kennedy. This was in a way of nature, for I had found Big Kennedy in my boyhood, and it is then, and then only, when one need look for his great men. When once you have grown a beard, you will meet with few heroes, and make to yourself few friends; wherefore you should the more cherish those whom your fortunate youth has furnished.