Presume not that I am the thing I was:
For Heaven doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn’d away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company.
If so we may hope that it may be in New York even as it was in olden time in England, and that it may be said of the era that opened when Tammany elected the first Mayor of Greater New York by 85,000 majority:—
Yea, at that very moment,
Consideration like an angel came,
And whipp’d the offending Adam out of him.
········
Never came reformation in a flood,
With such a heady current scouring faults;
Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness
So soon did lose his seat, and all at once,
As in this King.
THE END.
APPENDIX.
MAYOR VAN WYCK’S PROGRAMME.
Mayor Van Wyck’s Letter of Acceptance in reply to the Democratic City Convention, which invited him to stand as candidate for the Mayoralty, was published a fortnight before the polling day. In the New York Journal of October 24th, Mr. Van Wyck, in the course of an interview with Alfred Henry Lewis, a representative of the paper, said:—“There need be no doubt or mistiness concerning my attitude on all questions now craving reply. I wish most heartily that every citizen of New York would read my letter of acceptance. It was not carelessly prepared; it was in no sort the suggestion or work of other men; it presents my exact position on every subject it suggests, and I meant every phrase of it, and I mean it now.”
The text of the Letter of Acceptance is as follows:—