Sweeney rested his grey eyes on me a second, saw that I was a stranger here, and stepped forward instantly with his big hand outstretched. He spoke without a trace of brogue.
"I'm very glad to meet you, Mr. Carleton," he said.
I don't know that I'm easily impressed and I flattered myself that I could recognize a politician when I saw one, but I want to confess that there was something in the way he grasped my hand that instantly gave me a distinctly friendly feeling towards Sweeney. I should have said right then and there that the man wasn't as black as he was painted. He was neither oily nor sleek in his manner. We chatted a minute and I think he was a bit surprised in me. He wanted to know where I lived, where I was working, and how much of a family I had. He put these questions in so frank and fatherly a fashion that they didn't seem so impertinent to me at the time as they did later. Some one called him and as he turned away, he said to Rafferty,
"See me before you go, Dan."
Then he said to me,
"I hope I'll see you down here often, Carleton."
With that Dan took me around and introduced me to Tom, Dick and Harry or rather to Tim, Denny and Larry. This crowd came nearer to the notion I had of ward politicians. They were a noisy, husky-throated lot, but they didn't leave you in doubt for a minute but what every mother's son of them was working for Sweeney as though they were one big family with Daddy Sweeney at the head. You could overhear bits of plots and counter plots on every side. I was offered a dozen cigars in as many minutes and though some of the men rather shied away from me at first a whispered endorsement from Dan was all that was needed to bring them back.
There was something contagious about it and when later the meeting itself opened and Sweeney rose to speak I cheered him as heartily as anyone. By this time a hundred or more other men had come in who looked more outside the inner circle. Sweeney spoke simply and directly. It was a personal appeal he made, based on promises. I listened with interest and though it seemed to me that many of his pledges were extravagant he showed such a good spirit back of them that his speech on a whole produced a favorable effect.
At any rate I came away from the meeting with a stronger personal interest in politics than I had ever felt in my life. Instead of seeming like an abstruse or vague issue it seemed to me pretty concrete and pretty vital. It concerned me and my immediate neighbors. Here was a man who was going to Congress not as a figurehead of his party but to make laws for Rafferty and for me. He was to be my congressman if I chose to help make him such. He knew my name, knew my occupation, knew that I had a wife and one child, knew my address. And I want to say that he didn't forget them either.
As I walked back through the brightly lighted streets which were still as much alive as at high noon, I felt that after all this was my ward and my city. I wasn't a mere dummy, I was a member of a vast corporation. I had been to a rally and had shaken hands with Sweeney.