The Boss, and How He Came to Rule New York

by Alfred Henry Lewis

“I've been told,” said I with a laugh, and going with Big Kennedy's humor, “that two hundred years ago, Captain Kidd, the pirate, had his home on the site of the present Stock Exchange.”

“Did he?” said Big Kennedy. “Well, I figger that his crew must have lived up an' down both sides of the street from him, an' their descendants are still holdin' down th' property. An' to think,” mused Big Kennedy, “that Trinity Church stares down th' length of Wall Street, with th' graves in th' Trinity churchyard to remind them stock wolves of th' finish! I'm a hard man, an' I play a hard game, but on th' level! if I was as big a robber as them Wall Street sharps, I couldn't look Trinity Church in th' face!” Then, coming back to Mulberry Traction and to me: “I've put it in bonds, d'ye see! Now if I was you, I'd stand pat on 'em just as they are. Lay 'em away, an' think to yourself they're for that little Blossom of yours.”

At the name of Blossom, Big Kennedy laid his heavy hand on mine as might one who asked a favor. It was the thing unusual. Big Kennedy's rough husk gave scanty promise of any softness of sentiment to lie beneath. Somehow, the word and the hand brought the water to my eyes.'

“It is precisely what I mean to do,” said I. “Blossom is to have it, an' have it as it is—two hundred thousand dollars in bonds.”

Big Kennedy, with that, gave my hand a Titan's grip in indorsement of my resolve.

Blossom was growing up a frail, slender child, and still with her frightened eyes. Anne watched over her; and since Blossom lacked in sturdiness of health, she did not go to a school, but was taught by Anne at home. Blossom's love was for me; she clung to me when I left the house, and was in my arms the moment the door opened upon my return. She was the picture of my lost Apple Cheek, wanting her roundness, and my eyes went wet and weary with much looking upon her.

My home was quiet and, for me, gloomy. Anne, I think, was happy in a manner pensive and undemonstrative. As for Blossom, that terror she drew in from her mother when the latter was struck by the blow of my arrest for the death of Jimmy the Blacksmith, still held its black dominion over her fancy; and while with time she grew away from those agitations and hysterias which enthralled her babyhood, she lived ever in a twilight of melancholy that nothing could light up, and from which her spirit never emerged. In all her life I never heard her laugh, and her smile, when she did smile, was as the soul of a sigh. And so my house was a house of whispers and shadows and silences as sad as death—a house of sorrow for my lost Apple Cheek, and fear for Blossom whose life was stained with nameless mourning before ever she began to live at all.

Next door to me I had brought my father and mother to dwell. Anne, who abode with me, could oversee both houses. The attitude of Big Kennedy towards Old Mike had not been wanting in effect upon me. The moment my money was enough, I took my father from his forge, and set both him and my mother to a life of workless ease. I have feared more than once that this move was one not altogether wise. My people had been used to labor, and when it was taken out of their hands they knew not where to turn with their time. They were much looked up to by neighbors for the power and position I held in the town's affairs; and each Sunday they could give the church a gold piece, and that proved a mighty boon to their pride. But, on the whole, the leisure of their lives, and they unable to employ it, carked and corroded them, and it had not a little to do in breaking down their health. They were in no sense fallen into the vale of years, when one day they were seized by a pneumonia and—my mother first, with her patient peasant face! and my father within the week that followed—passed both to the other life.

And now when I was left with only Blossom and Anne to love, and to be dear and near to me, I went the more among men, and filled still more my head and hands and heart with politics. I must have action, motion. Grief walked behind me; and, let me but halt, it was never long in coming up.

Sundry years slipped by, and the common routine work of the organization engaged utterly both Big Kennedy and myself. We struggled heartily, and had our ups and our downs, our years of black and our years of white. The storm that wrecked Big Kennedy's predecessor had left Tammany in shallow, dangerous waters for its sailing. Also Big Kennedy and I were not without our personal enemies. We made fair weather of it, however, particularly when one considers the broken condition of Tammany, and the days were not desolate of their rewards.