As for the other eight low comedians, it happens in this particular drama that I would be unwilling to make an affidavit as to the absolute integrity of any one of them. But there are apt to be two or even three completely honest members of these august bodies, and two or three more who are pretty honest. A pretty honest Alderman is like a pretty good egg. A pretty honest Alderman would be incapable of touching an envelope containing one thousand dollars, or charging one hundred in return for his support to a petition for a bay-window; but if he were in the paint and oil business or the lumber trade, or interested in hay and oats, it would be safe to assume that any department of the City Government which did not give his firm directly or indirectly a part of its trade would receive no aldermanic favors at his hands. Then again, a pretty honest Alderman would allow a friend to sell a spavined horse to the city.
To A Political Optimist. II.
aving hinted gently at the leading characteristics of the twelve low comedians, I am ready now to make you acquainted with the twenty leading villains. There is something grimly humorous in the spectacle of a dozen genial, able-bodied, non-alcoholic ruffians levying tribute on a community too self-absorbed or too easy-going or too indifferent to rid itself of them. I find, on the other hand, something somewhat pathetic in the spectacle of twenty otherwise reputable citizens and capitalists driven to villainy by the force of circumstances. To be a villain against one's will is an unnatural and pitiable situation.
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain!
Here is the list:
- Thomas Barnstable, President of the People's Heat and Power Company.
- William B. Wilcox, General Manager of the North Circuit Traction Company.
- David J. Prendergast, Treasurer of the Underground Steam Company.
- Porter King, President of the South Valley Railroad Company.
- James Plugh, Treasurer of the Star Brewing Concern.
- Ex-State Treasurer George Delaney Johnson, Manager of the United Gas Company.
- Willis O. Golightly, Treasurer of the Consolidated Electric Works.
- Hon. Samuel Phipps, President of the Sparkling Reservoir Company.
- P. Ashton Hall, President of the Rapid Despatch Company.
Ex-Congressman Henry B. Pullen, Manager of the Maguinnis Engine Works. And so on. I will not weary you with a complete category. It would contain the names of twelve other gentlemen no less prominent in connection with quasi-public and large private business corporations. With them should be associated one thousand easy-going, second-class villains, whose names are not requisite to my argument, but who from one year to another are obliged by the exigencies of business or enterprise to ask for licenses from the non-alcoholic, genial comedians, for permission to build a stable, to erect a bay-window, to peddle goods in the streets, to maintain a coal-hole, to drain into a sewer, to lay wires underground; in short, to do one or another of the many every-day things which can be done only by permission of the City Government. And the pity of it is that they all would rather not be villains.
[Note.—At the suggestion of Josephine I here enter a caveat for my and her protection. While I was enumerating the list of low comedians she interrupted me to ask if I did not fear lest one of them might sand-bag me some dark night on account of wounded sensibilities. She laughed, but I saw she was a little nervous.