“An' that's where you go wrong!” replied Big Kennedy, who was in one of his philosophical humors. “Now if it was about morals, or virtue, or th' hereafter, I wouldn't hand you out a word. That's your game, d'ye see, an' when it's a question of heaven, you've got me beat. But there's other games, like Tammany Hall for instance, where I could give you cards an' spades. Now take that sot there: I know what he can do, an' what I want him for, an' inside of a week I'll be makin' him as useful as a corkscrew in Kentucky.”
“He seems a most unpromising foundation upon which to build one's hope,” said the Reverend Bronson dubiously.
“He aint much to look at, for fair!” responded Big Kennedy, in his large tolerant way. “But you mustn't bet your big stack on a party's looks. You can't tell about a steamboat by th' coat of paint on her sides; you must go aboard. Now that fellow”—here he pointed to the sleeping drunkard—“once you get th' booze out of him, has a brain like a buzzsaw. An' you should hear him talk! He's got a tongue so acid it would eat through iron. The fact is, th' difference between that soak an' th' best lawyer at the New York bar is less'n one hundred dollars. I'll have him packed off to a Turkish bath, sweat th' whisky out of him, have him shaved an' his hair cut, an' get him a new suit of clothes. When I'm through, you won't know him. He'll run sober for a month, which is as long as I'll need him this trip.”
“And will he then return to his drunkenness?” asked the Reverend Bronson.
“Sure as you're alive!” said Big Kennedy. “The moment I take my hooks off him, down he goes.”
“What you say interests me! Why not send him to my mission, and let me compass his reform.”
“You might as well go down to th' morgue an' try an' revive th' dead. No, no, Doctor; that duck is out of humanity's reach. If you took him in hand at your mission, he'd show up loaded some night an' tip over your works. Better pass him up.”
“If his case is so hopeless, I marvel that you tolerate him.”
The Reverend Bronson was a trifle piqued at Big Kennedy for thinking his influence would fall short of the drunkard's reform.
“You aint onto this business of bein' Chief of Tammany,” responded Big Kennedy, with his customary grin. “I always like to do my work through these incurables. It's better to have men about you who are handicapped by some big weakness, d'ye see! They're strong on th' day you need 'em, an' weak when you lay 'em down. Which makes it all the better. If these people were strong all th' year 'round, one of 'em, before we got through, would want my job, an' begin to lay pipes to get it. Some time, when I wasn't watchin', he might land th' trick at that. No, as hands to do my work, give me fellows who've got a loose screw in their machinery. They're less chesty; an' then they work better, an' they're safer. I've only one man near me who don't show a blemish. That's him,” and he pointed to where I sat waiting with young Morton and the reputable old gentleman. “I'll trust him; because I'm goin' to make him Boss when I get through; an' he knows it. That leaves him without any reason for doin' me up.”