In the course of the following week, James suffered from a series of shocks, minor, but still distressing. His was a fastidious nature, and he really had no idea that anyone but rogues could frequent some of the places into which he was led by his search for the people. The people, he found, were unbelievably elusive. In the first place, they were hard to find; and in the second, they seemed more inclined to laugh at than to listen to an exposition of their woes. Some of them even went so far as to deny that they had any.
It was about a week after the commencement of activities, in the back room of Doherty’s saloon, that James met Shorty Benson. Here, at last, he found some encouragement. Shorty listened to him with flattering attention, the while he consumed uncounted schooners of beer.
“Well,” said he, when James paused for a breath, “that sounds mighty interestin’. You made no mistake comin’ to me. And what do you want? Th’ assembly?”
James was almost angry. “No!” he shouted. “Good God! Why does everybody think I want something? I want you to understand once for all, Mr. Benson, that I am in this fight for the people! I want nothing! Assembly! Bah!”
“All right,” said Shorty, soothingly. “I know it ain’t much. But I thought for a starter — well, we’ll talk about that later. Now to get down to business. In the first place, my name ain’t Mr. Benson — it’s Shorty. In the second place, there’s only one guy that’ll cause us any trouble — and that’s Mike O’Toole. This district was mine till he butted in two years ago. Since then there’s been hell to pay. Last year he got me by three hundred.”
A week previous such a statement of the case of the people would have filled James with grief and astonishment; but being hardened by a week of interviews, Shorty’s picturesque language brought only a mild grimace. He thoroughly intended to make drastic reform in this respect later, but wisely decided that for the present the best thing to do was to ignore it. He tried to keep his tone from showing disapproval as he said:
“What we want to do is to let people understand that we are on their side. We are for the people.”
“Right-o,” said Mr. Benson, into his schooner of beer.
“And,” continued James, “in spite of their honesty, it must be admitted that they are ignorant. We must educate them.”
“Educate hell!” roared Shorty, without thinking. Then, at the look of pained surprised on James’ face, he quickly recovered. “What I meant, Mr. Hamlin, was this: you can’t educate ’em. Me and Red Barber’s been tryin’ it for years. You got to lead ’em.”
“Perhaps so,” James mused thoughtfully, “perhaps so. We’ll see about that later. And now, Mr. — er — Shorty, how can I get together a crowd of — say, five hundred — to talk to?”
“You can’t,” said Shorty decisively.
“Can’t?”
“Not till they get to know you. Maybe not even then. First you got to get acquainted.”
“But how?” said James helplessly. “I’ve been trying that for a week, and they don’t seem very anxious to — get acquainted.”
“Sure, that’s where I’m the handy guy. Listen: come around with me for three days and nights, and you’ll call every mick and dago in the district by his first name. That’s the way to start. Are you on?”
James was certainly becoming cosmopolitan. He held out his hand and grasped that of Mr. Benson firmly as he said: “We’ll begin tomorrow, Shorty.”
The ensuing ten days were hard ones. James spent them mostly in livery stables, saloons, and barber shops, and acquitted himself with a degree of aplomb and tact that was positively impressive. By the end of the week he was ordering beers by the dozen with a charm and frequency that won universal admiration. Shorty’s confidence rose by leaps and bounds, and even then found it difficult to keep pace with James’ enthusiasm; for James found a fresh stock with each new adherent. His father, who had at first considered the affair as one of James’ whims, to be dismissed under his frequent and inclusive term of “damned foolishness,” was surprised by this unexpected constancy into a donation to the campaign fund that was more than ample for present needs, and which bid fair to make every saloon-keeper in the district independently rich, and release the people forever from the degrading bonds of thirst.
Still, without Shorty, success would have been impossible. With all the good-will in the world, James would have found it more than difficult to establish direct communication between his philosophic principles and the people’s practical desires; but with Shorty always at hand in the role of interpreter it was no task at all. True, if James could have heard Shorty’s popular translations of his dearest doctrines he would have been grieved and astonished; but he didn’t hear them, so there was no harm done.
By the first of June Mike O’Toole was begging for mercy. His followers were deserting him in droves; literally by the dozen. His pleadings and promises were all in vain; the combination of James’ principles, Shorty’s diplomacy, and free beer was too much for him, and he was barely able to hold the fort — otherwise known as district organization headquarters — with a small band of personal friends and true believers. It began to be rumored in Fourteenth Street that he was done for, and the first week in June found him fighting desperately for a foothold where he had once been king.
Despite this apparent success, however, James was far from satisfied. He was a good deal of a fool, but he saw plainly that his hold on the people was of too fluid a nature to be either sincere or enduring. He knew very well that the only right relation between the people and their leader is the ideal one which he had proposed to himself at the beginning of his career, and he knew how far short of that ideal he had fallen. This thought worried him considerably; he fell to thinking of what would have been Abraham Lincoln’s opinion of this compromise with the unrighteous powers; he even felt, as did Lady Macbeth, that he was permeated with the odor of his crime — only in his case it was nothing worse than beer. Studying the thing impartially, he was forced to admit that he had no reason to be proud of a victory won by such questionable tactics, and he resolved to purge his leadership of all taint at the earliest opportunity. He neglected, however, to say anything about it to Shorty.
The opportunity was not long in coming. It was only a day or two later that Shorty arrived fifteen minutes later for a meeting at Doherty’s, with his face exhibiting the first sign of worry it had known for two weeks.
“Mr. Hamlin,” he said, “it’s up to you. The boys are gettin’ restless. I’ve been waitin’ for you to speak, but I guess you’ve forgot. We can’t wait any longer. When’s the blowout?”
Now, James knew very well what Shorty meant. But the increasing brusqueness of Shorty’s manner was beginning to disturb his dignity. Besides, being on the edge of the Rubicon, he hesitated.
“Blowout? What do you mean?”
“Why, the picnic,” said Shorty, surprised at this ignorance. “The annual. The boys are beginnin’ to ask questions about it, and I don’t know what to tell ’em.”
“Still I fail to understand you,” said James, with perverse pomposity. “Who is going to have this picnic?”
“We are,” said Shorty, a little uneasily.
“Ah!” said James, with uplifted eyebrows. “At last I perceive your meaning. But you are mistaken; you take too much for granted. We are not going to have any picnic.”
Only those who have either studied or participated in New York politics can appreciate the awful significance, the incredible folly, of this statement. A king can easier rule without an army or a woman without her beauty than a district leader without his picnic. Shorty knew this, so it is no wonder that he leaped to his feet and roared: