When a friend was condemned to the squeezer,
But he’d fence all the togs that he had
Just to help the poor boy to a sneezer,
And moisten his gob ’fore he died.”
The lagging last line was too much, and in their mad delight they began to pound Malachi familiarly on the back. And then he froze stiffly, drew himself up, ordered his cab and went home, and the song was never finished.
But now that morning had come and reason had returned with the light, he felt a chagrin at having suffered such a lapse in his dignity, and such a break in the resolution of years, and so was more solemn than ever.
When Malachi had read to the last line of the last column of the last page of his newspaper, he did not fold it and lay it aside as he did every other morning of the year. He turned to the first page and studied the picture there. It was the daily cartoon, and the central figure was intended for Malachi himself. That there could be no question of identity, the prudent artist had labeled it “Bull Nolan.” The figure was one that Malachi had seen in the newspapers in varying situations for years, and the aldermanic paunch, with massive chain and charm, the bullet head, with its stubble of hair and bell-crowned hat, the checked and braided clothes, the broad-soled shoes and checkered spats, the briskly radiating lines to symbolize his diamond, were supposed to embody the popular conception of the alderman’s personality. The inevitable cigar had fallen and lay fuming at his feet, the eyes and mouth gaped in palpable fear, and with a fat hand flashing other diamonds, this counterfeit presentment of Malachi Nolan was trying to protect the First Ward—peeping on a ballot from his waistcoat pocket—from a gentleman with high hat, side whiskers, gloves and cane, who, labeled “Citizen,” obviously impersonated the better element. The point of the cartoon was that the Municipal Reform League had resolved that Malachi Nolan be retired from public life. The League had had a banquet, and the speeches had breathed a zeal of reform such as only champagne and truffles can inspire. The resolutions rang like a declaration of independence; if the reform candidate, a gentleman of prominent probity, were beaten in regular convention, they would nominate him by petition.
Malachi studied the cartoon a long time, never changing expression, and when he finished, he folded the paper carefully and laid it on his desk, bestowed his spectacles in his waistcoat pocket, and then, placing a hand on each knee, sat and stared with widening eyes straight before him.
It was not a new experience to be thus caricatured. He had long since acquired a politician’s stoicism and could affect a reassuring indifference to attacks of the press; indeed, if a newspaper happened to elude him and slip into Nora’s hands, he could even pretend to like it. But this cartoon roused the fighting Irish in him.
Malachi had promised himself to retire from politics that spring, though his wary habit had kept him from taking the public into his confidence. He was rich, though not rich enough to give up saloon-keeping and become a contractor or a broker, and he had lately got the notion that he was growing old. But this successful politician, who so long before had landed in New York a homesick emigrant, had one great ambition unfulfilled. It was the common ambition of the exile—to see his home once more. When first elected to the council, after toiling years to save enough for his first small saloon, he had found, in the sentimental manner of his race, his chief joy in the fact that it was in the character of an ex-alderman he could go home to Ireland. Fate, of course, with her usual irony, had embittered his joy; Molly had died that very spring, she had not been spared even long enough to see him take his seat in the council chamber behind the one pathetic floral piece his constituents had placed upon his desk, but had left him to sit beside the candles at her wake, with lonesome little Nora crying at his knee. He felt that he had earned a rest. He had worked hard, mastered the intricate details of the water office and the special assessment bureau; he had done his part in making a town of wooden sidewalks a city of steel and stone; he had never betrayed his party or his friend. As for certain of his methods, well—if he thought of them at all—they were direct, and they won. So now that Nora was grown and had finished her education at St. Aloysius, he had decided to retire and take her with him on the long-dreamed-of trip back to Ireland—Ireland, where it was really spring that very morning.