The Booming of Acre Hill by John Kendrick Bangs (the best books to read .TXT) 📖

of power!" cried the candidate. "There are a hundred of them here in Dumfries Corners, and each one controls at least five assistants, which makes six hundred voters in all. If I call in one, he and his five workers will vote for me, but the other five hundred and ninety-four will vote for Haskins; and if they do, the administration might as well go out of business. Can't you see? It's the same with the dandelions. These spring elections are perfect--ah--Gehenna for a candidate if it happens to be an early spring like this."

Perkins's voice had the suggestion of a wail in it as he spoke of the dandelions, and his wife's alarm grew upon her. She understood now about the plumber, but his interjection of the dandelions had brought a fearful doubt into her heart. Surely he was losing his mind.

"Dandelions, Thaddeus?" she echoed, aghast.

"Yes, dandelions," retorted the candidate, forcibly. "They've queered me as much as anything. The neighbors say I'm not a good neighbor because I don't have them pulled. Mike's been so thoroughly alcoholic all through the fight, looking after my interests, that he can't pull them; and if I hire two men to come and do the work, seven hundred other men will want to know why they didn't get a chance."

"But why not employ boys?" demanded Mrs. Perkins.

"And be set down as an advocate of cheap child labor? Not I!" cried Perkins.

"Then the dandelion-pullers are another balance of power, are they?" asked Mrs. Perkins, beginning to grow somewhat easier in her mind as to her husband's sanity.

"Precisely; you have a very remarkable gift of insight, Bess," answered the candidate.

"And how many balances of power are there?" demanded the lady.

"The Lord only knows," sighed Perkins. "I've made about eighty of 'em solid already, but as soon as one balance is fixed a thousand others rise up like Banquo's ghost, and will not down. I haven't a doubt that it was a balance of power that Norah just turned away from the front door. They strike you everywhere. Why, even Bobbie ruined me with one of them in the Eighth Ward the other day--one solidified balance wiped out in a moment by my interesting son."

"Bobbie?" cried Mrs. Perkins. "A six-year-old boy?"

"Exactly--Bobbie, the six-year-old boy. I wish you'd keep the children in the house until this infernal business is over. The Eighth Ward would have elected me; but Bobbie ruined that," said Perkins, ruefully.

"But how?" cried Mrs. Perkins. "Have our children been out making campaign speeches for the other side?"

"They have," assented Perkins. "They have indeed. You remember that man Jorrigan?"

"The striker?" queried Mrs. Perkins, calling to mind a burly combination of red hair and bad manners who had made himself very conspicuous of late.

"Precisely. That's just the point," retorted Perkins. "The striker. That's what he is, and it's what you call him."

"But you said he was a striker at breakfast last Wednesday," said Mrs. Perkins. "We simply take your word for it."

"I know I did. He's also a balance of power, my dear. Jorrigan controls the Eighth Ward. That's the only reason I've let him in the house," said Thaddeus.

"You've been very chummy with him, I must say," sniffed Mrs. Perkins.

"Well, I've had to be," said the candidate. "That man is a power, and he knows it."

"What's his business?" asked Mrs. Perkins.

"Interference between capital and labor," replied Perkins. "So I've cultivated him."

"He never struck me as being a very cultivated person," smiled Mrs. Perkins. "He has a suggestion of alcohol about him that is very oppressive."

"I know--he has a very intoxicating presence," said the candidate, joining in the smile. "But we are rid of his presence now and forever, thanks to Bobbie. I got the news last night. He and his followers have declared for Haskins, in spite of all his promises to me, and we can attribute our personal good fortune and our political loss to Bobbie. Bobbie met him on the street the other day."

"I know he did," said Mrs. Perkins. "He told me so, and he said that the horrid man wanted to kiss him."

"It's true," said Perkins. "He did, and Bobbie wouldn't let him."

"Well, a man isn't going back on you because he can't kiss your whole family, is he?" asked Mrs. Perkins, apprehensively. "If that's the situation, I shall go to New York to-morrow."

Perkins laughed heartily. "No, my dear," he said. "You are safe enough from that. But Jorrigan, when Bobbie refused, said, 'Well, young feller, I guess you don't know who I am?' 'Yes, I do,' said Bobbie. 'You are Mr. Jorrigan,' and Jorrigan was overjoyed; but Bobbie destroyed his good work by adding, 'Jorrigan the striker,' and the striker's joy vanished. 'Who told you that?' said he. 'Pop--and he knows,' said Bobbie. That night," continued Perkins, with a droll expression of mingled mirth and annoyance, "the amalgamated mortar-mixers of the Eighth Ward decided that consideration for the country's welfare should rise above partisan politics, and that when it came to real statesmanship Haskins could give me points. A ward wiped out in a night, and another highly interesting, very thirsty balance of power gone over to the other side."

"I should think you'd give up, then," said Mrs. Perkins, despairfully. She wanted her husband to win--not because she had any ambition to shine as "Lady-Mayor," but because she did not wish Thaddeus to incur disappointment or undergo the chagrin of a public rebuke. "You seem to be losing balances of power right and left."

"Why should I give it up?" queried Perkins. "You don't suppose I am having any better luck than Mr. Haskins, do you?"

"Is he losing them too?" asked Mrs. Perkins, hopefully.

"I judge so from what he tells me," said Perkins. "We took dinner together at the Centurion in New York the other night, and he's a prince of good fellows, Bess. He has just as much trouble as I have, and when I met him on the train the other day he was as blue as I about the future."

"You and the captain dining together?" ejaculated Mrs. Perkins.

"Certainly," said Perkins. "Why not? Our hatred is merely political, and we can meet on a level of good-fellowship anywhere outside of Dumfries Corners."

Mrs. Perkins laughed outright. "Isn't it funny!" she said.

"Why, Haskins is one of my best friends, generally," continued Perkins. "I don't see anything funny about it. Just because we both happen to be dragged into politics on opposite sides at the same moment is no reason why we should begin cutting each other's throats, my dear. In fact, with balances of power springing up all over town like mushrooms, we have become companions in misery."

"Well, I don't see why you can't get together, then, and tell these balances to go to--to grass," suggested Mrs. Perkins.

"Grass is too mild, my love," remarked the candidate, smiling quietly. "They wouldn't go there, even if we told them to, so it would be simply a waste of breath. We've got to grin and bear them until the polls close, and then we can pitch in and tell 'em what we think of them."

"Just the same," continued Mrs. Perkins, "an agreement between Mr. Haskins and you to ignore these people utterly, instead of taking them into your family, would stop the whole abuse."

"That's a woman's idea," said Perkins, bravely, though in the innermost recesses of his heart he wished he had thought of it before. "It isn't practical politics, my love. You might as well say that two opposing generals in a war could save thousands of lives by avoiding each other's armies and keeping out of a fight."

"Well, I do say that," replied Mrs. Perkins, positively. "That's exactly my view of what generals ought to do."

"And what would become of the war?" queried the candidate.

"There wouldn't be any," said the good little woman.

"Precisely," retorted Perkins. "Precisely. And if Haskins and I did what you want us to do, there would be no more politics."

"Well, what of it?" demanded Mrs. Perkins. "Are politics the salvation of the country? It's as bad as war."

"Humph!" grunted Perkins. "It is difficult to please women. You hate war because, to settle a question of right, people go out into the field of battle and mow each other down with guns; you cry for arbitration. Let all questions, all differences of opinion, be settled by a resort to reason, say you--which is beautiful, and undoubtedly proper. But when we try to settle our differences by a bloodless warfare, in which the ballot is one's ammunition, you cry down with politics. A political contest is nothing but a bit of supreme arbitration, for which you peace people are always clamoring, by the court of last resort, the people." Mrs. Perkins smiled sweetly, and taking her husband's hand in hers, stroked it softly.

"Teddy dear, you mustn't be so politic with me," she said; "I'm not a campaign club. I know that sentiment you have just expressed is lofty and noble, and ought to be true, and I know we used to think it was true--three weeks ago I believed it when you said it; but this is now, dear. This is to-night, not three weeks ago, and I have changed my mind."

"Well," began the candidate, hesitatingly, "I don't know but that I am weakening a trifle myself."

"I know," interposed Mrs. Perkins, "you are weakening. You know as well as I do that the hard work you are doing is not in appealing to the reason of the supreme court of arbitration, the people. You are appealing, as you have said, yourself, to a large and interesting variety of balances of power, that do not want your views or your opinions or your arguments, but they do want your money to buy cigars and beer with. They want you to buy their good-will; and even if you bought it, I doubt if they would concede to you a controlling interest in it if Mr. Haskins should happen to want some of it, and I don't doubt he does."

"You don't know anything--" the candidate ventured.

"Yes I do, too," returned Mrs. Perkins, with the self-satisfied nod which the average new woman gives when she thinks she is right, though Mrs. Perkins had no pretensions in that direction, happily for her family. "I know all that you have told me. I know that when you were to dine at Colonel Buckley's on Wednesday night you wore your evening dress, and that when leaving there early to go to the city and address the Mohawk Independent Club you asked your manager if you could go dressed as you were, and his answer was, 'Not on your life,' and you went home and put on your business suit. You told me that yourself, and yet you talk about the supreme court of arbitration, the people!"

"But, Bess, the Mohawks are a powerful organization," pleaded Perkins. "I couldn't afford to offend them."

"No. It was the first balance of power that turned up. I remember it well. It was to be convinced by arguments. You were going down there to discuss principles, but you couldn't appeal to their judicial minds or reach their reason unless you changed your clothes; and when you got there as their guest, and ventured to ask for a glass of Vichy before you spoke, do you remember what they brought you?" demanded Mrs. Perkins, warming up to her subject.