My anger over Gutterglory owned a certain propriety of foundation. He was that sodden Cicero who marred the scene when, long before, I called on Big Kennedy, with the reputable old gentleman and Morton, to consult over the Gas Company's injunction antics touching Mulberry Traction. By some wonderful chance, Gutterglory had turned into sober walks. Big Kennedy, while he lived, and afterward I, myself, had upheld him, and put him in the way of money. He paid us with eloquence in conventions and campaigns, and on show occasions when Tammany would celebrate a holiday or a victory. From low he soared to high, and surely none was more pleased thereby than I. On every chance I thrust him forward; and I was sedulous to see that always a stream of dollar-profit went running his way.
Morton, I remember, did not share my enthusiasm. It was when I suggested Gutterglory as counsel for Mulberry.
“But really now!” objected Morton, with just a taint of his old-time lisp, “the creature doesn't know enough. He's as shallow as a skimming dish, don't y' know.”
“Gutterglory is the most eloquent of men,” I protested.
“I grant you the beggar is quite a talker, and all that,” retorted Morton, twirling that potential eyeglass, “but the trouble is, old chap, that when we've said that, we've said all. Gutterglory is a mere rhetorical freak. He ought to take a rest, and give his brain a chance to grow up with his vocabulary.”
What Morton said had no effect on me; I clung to Gutterglory, and made his life worth while. I was given my return when I learned that for years he had gone about, unknown to me, extorting money from people with the use of my name. Scores have paid peace-money to Gutterglory, and thought it was I who bled them. So much are we at the mercy of rascals who win our confidence!
It was the fact of his learning that did it. I could never be called a good judge of one who knew books. I was over prone to think him of finest honor who wrote himself a man of letters, for it was my weakness to trust where I admired. In the end, I discovered the villain duplicity of Gutterglory, and cast him out; at that, the scoundrel was rich with six figures to his fortune, and every dime of it the harvest of some blackmail in my name.
He became a great fop, did Gutterglory; and when last I saw him—it being Easter Day, as I stepped from the Cathedral, where I'd been with Blossom—he was teetering along Fifth Avenue, face powdered and a glow of rouge on each cheekbone, stayed in at the waist, top hat, frock coat, checked trousers, snowy “spats” over his patent leathers, a violet in his buttonhole, a cane carried endwise in his hand, elbows crooked, shoulders bowed, the body pitched forward on his toes, a perfect picture of that most pitiful of things—an age-seamed doddering old dandy! This was he whom the Reverend Bronson vaunted as an ally!
“You are welcome to Gutterglory,” said I to my reverend visitor on that time when he named him as one to become eloquent for reform. “It but proves the truth of what Big John Kennedy so often said: Any rogue, kicked out of Tammany Hall for his scoundrelisms, can always be sure of a job as a 'reformer.'”
“Really!” observed Morton, when a few days later I was telling him of the visit of the Reverend Bronson, “I've a vast respect for Bronson. I can't say that I understand him—working for nothing among the scum and rubbish of humanity!—for personally I've no talent for religion, don't y' know! And so he thinks that honesty is the best policy!”