And now for the company. This drama differs from most dramatic productions in that it makes demands upon a large number of actors. To produce it properly on the theatrical stage would bankrupt any manager unless he were subsidized heavily from the revenues of the twenty leading villains. The cast includes besides twenty leading villains, twelve low comedians, no hero, no heroine (except, incidentally, Josephine); eight newspaper editors; ten thousand easy-going second-class villains; ten thousand patriotic, conscientious, and enlightened citizens, including a sprinkling of ardent reformers; twenty-five thousand zealous, hide-bound partisans; fifty thousand respectable, well-intentioned, tolerably ignorant citizens who vote, but are too busy with their own affairs to pay attention to politics, and as a consequence generally vote the party ticket, or vote to please a "friend;" ten thousand superior, self-centred souls who neglect to vote and despise politics anyway, among them poets, artists, scientists, some men of leisure, and travellers; ten thousand enemies of social order such as gamblers, thieves, keepers of dives, drunkards, and toughs; and your philosopher.

A very large stock company. I will leave the precise arithmetic to you. I wish merely to indicate the variegated composition of the average political constituency, and to let you perceive that the piece which is being performed is no parlor comedy. It is written in dead earnest, and it seems to me that the twenty leading villains, though smooth and in some instances aristocratic appearing individuals, are among the most dangerous characters in the history of this or any other stage. But before I refer to them more particularly I will make you acquainted with our twelve low comedians—the Board of Aldermen.

It is probably a surprise to you and to Josephine that the Aldermen are not the villains. Everything is comparative in this world, and, though I might have made them villains without injustice to such virtues as they possess, I should have been at a loss how to stigmatize the real promoters of the villainy. And after all there is an element of grotesque comedy about the character of Aldermen in a large American city. The indecency of the situation is so unblushing, and the public is so helpless, that the performers remind one in their good-natured antics of the thieves in "Fra Diavolo;" they get bolder and bolder and now barely take the trouble to wear the mask of respectability.

Have I written "thieves?" Patriotic Americans look askance at such full-blooded expressions. They prefer ambiguity, and a less harsh phraseology—"slight irregularities," "business misfortunes," "commercial usages," "professional services," "campaign expenses," "lack of fine sensibilities," "unauthenticated rumors." There are fifty ways of letting one's fellow-citizens down easily in the public prints and in private conversation. This is a charitable age, and the word thief has become unfamiliar, except as applied to rogues who enter houses as a trade. The community and the newspapers are chary of applying it to folk who steal covertly but steadily and largely as an increment of municipal office. It is inconvenient to hurt the feelings of public servants, especially when one may have voted for them from carelessness or ignorance.

Here is a list of the twelve low comedians for your inspection:

You will be surprised by my first statement regarding them, I dare say. Four of them, Peter Lynch, James Griffin, Jeremiah Dolan, and Michael O'Rourke neither drink nor smoke. Jeremiah Dolan chews, but the three others do not use tobacco in any form. They are patterns of Sunday-school virtue in these respects. This was a very surprising discovery to one of the minor characters in our drama—to two of them in fact—Mr. Arthur Langdon Waterhouse and his father, James Langdon Waterhouse, Esq. The young man, who had just returned from Europe with the idea of becoming United States Senator and who expressed a willingness to serve as a Reform Alderman while waiting, announced the discovery to his parent shortly before election with a mystified air.

"Do you know," said he to the old gentleman, who, by the way, though he has denounced every person and every measure in connection with our politics for forty years, was secretly pleased at his son's senatorial aspirations, "do you know that someone told me to-day that four of the very worst of those fellows have never drunk a drop of liquor, nor smoked a pipe of tobacco in their lives. Isn't it a curious circumstance? I supposed they were intoxicated most of the time."

You will notice also that Peter Lynch and Jeremiah Dolan have no occupation. Each of them has been connected in some capacity with the City Government for nearly twenty years, and they are persons of great experience. They have more than once near election time been amiably referred to in the press as "valuable public servants," and it must be admitted that they are efficient in their way. Certainly, they know the red tape of City Hall from A to Z, and understand how to block or forward any measure. The salary of Alderman is not large—certainly not large enough to satisfy indefinitely such capable men as they, and yet they continue to appear year after year at the same old stand. Moreover, they resist vigorously every effort to dislodge them, whether proceeding from political opponents or envious rivals of their own party. A philosopher like myself, who is, politically speaking, a worm, is expected to believe that valuable public servants retain office for the honor of the thing; but even a philosopher becomes suspicious of a patriot who has no occupation.

Next in importance are Hon. William H. Bird and Hon. John P. Driscoll. It is a well-known axiom of popular government that citizens are called from the plough or counting-room to public office by the urgent request of their friends and neighbors. As a fact, this takes place two or three times in a century. Most aspirants for office go through the form of having a letter from their friends and neighbors published in the newspapers, but only the very guileless portion of the public do not understand that the candidates in these cases suggest themselves. It is sometimes done, delicately, as, for instance, in the case of young Arthur Langdon Waterhouse, of whom I was writing just now. He let a close friend intimate to the ward committee that he would like to run for Alderman, and that in consideration thereof his father would be willing to subscribe $2,000 to the party campaign fund. It seems to a philosopher that a patriotic people should either re-edit its political axioms or live up to them.