The Booming of Acre Hill And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life by John Kendrick Bangs (hardest books to read txt) 📕

"I am," said Thaddeus, shortly. "The debate wore me out."

"Did you debate? I thought you said you wouldn't."

"Well, I did. Everybody said I was afraid to meet Captain Haskins on the platform, so we had it out to-night over in the Tenth Ward. I talked for sixty-eight minutes, gave 'em my views, and then he got up."

"What did he say. Could he answer you?"

"No--but he won the day. All he said was: 'Well, boys, I'm not much of a talker, but I'll say one thing--Perkins, while my adversary, is still my friend, and I'm proud of him. Now, if you'll all join me at the bar, we'll drink his health--on me.'" Thaddeus paused, and then he added: "I imagine they're cheering yet; at any rate, if I have as much health as they drink--on Haskins--I'll double discount old Methuselah in the matter of years."

The next morning at breakfast the pale and nervous standard-bearer was affectionately greeted by his mother-in-law.

"I've been thinking about those lamps all night," she said, after a few minutes. "The trouble about the gate-posts is that you have three gate-posts and only two lamps."

"Maybe they'd let us buy three lamps instead of two," suggested Mrs. Perkins.

"Well, we won't, even if they do let us," observed Perkins, with some irritation. He had just received a newspaper from a kind friend in Massachusetts with a comic biography and dissipated wood-cut of himself in it. "I'm not starting a concert-hall, and I'm not going to put a row of lamps along the front of my place."

"I quite agree with you," replied his mother-in-law. "It occurred to me we might put them, like hanging lanterns, on each of the chimneys. It would be odd."

Thaddeus muttered two syllables to himself, the latter of which sounded like M'dodd, but exactly what it was he said I can only guess. Then he added: "They won't go there. I can't get a gas-pipe up through those chimneys. It's as much as we can do to get the smoke up, much less a gas-pipe. Even if we got the gas-pipe through, it wouldn't do. A putty-blower would choke up the flues."

"Well, I don't know," said the mother-in-law, placidly. "It seems to me--"

A glance from Mrs. Perkins stopped the dear old lady. I think Mrs. Perkins's sympathetic disposition taught her that her husband was having a hard time being agreeable, and that further discussion of the lamp question was likely to prove disastrous.

Thaddeus was soon called for by his manager, and started out to meet the leading lights of the Hungarian and Italian quarters. The Germans had been made solid the day before, and as for the Irish, they were supposed to be with Perkins on principle, because Perkins was not in accord politically with the existing administration.

"It's too bad he's so nervous," said his mother-in-law, as he went out. "They say women are nervous, but I must say I don't think much of the endurance of men. How absurd he was when he spoke of the gas-pipe through the chimney!"

"Well, I suppose, my dear mother," said Mrs. Perkins, sadly--"I suppose he can't be bothered with little details like the lamps now. There are other questions to be considered."

"What is the exact issue?" asked the mother-in-law, interestedly.

"Well--the tariff, and--ah--and taxes, and--ah--money, and--ah--ah--I think the saloon question enters in somehow. I believe Mr. Haskins wants more of them, and Thaddeus says there are too many of them as it is. And now they are both investigating them, I fancy, because Teddy was in one the other day."

"We ought to help him a little," said the elder woman. "Let's just relieve him of the whole lamp question; decide where to put them, go to New York and pick them out, get estimates for the laying of the pipes, and surprise him by having them all ready to put up the day after election."

"Wouldn't it be fun!" cried Mrs. Perkins, delightedly. "He'll be so surprised--poor dear boy. I'll do it. I'll send down this morning for Mr. O'Hara to come up here and see how we can make the connection and where the trenches for the pipes can be laid. Mr. O'Hara is the best-known contractor in town, and I guess he's the man we want."

And immediately O'Hara was telephoned for to come up to Mr. Perkins's, and the fair conspirators were not aware of, and probably will never realize, the importance politically of that act. Mr. O'Hara refused to come, but it was hinted about that Perkins had summoned him, and there was great joy among the rank and file, and woe among the better elements, for O'Hara was a boss, and a boss whose power was one of the things Thaddeus was trying to break, and the cohorts fancied that the apostle of purity had realized that without O'Hara reform was fallen into the pit. Furthermore, as cities of the third class, like Dumfries Corners, live conversationally on rumors and gossipings, it was not an hour before almost all Dumfries Corners, except Thaddeus Perkins himself and his manager, knew that the idol had bowed before the boss's hat, and that the boss had returned the grand message that he'd see Perkins in the Hudson River before he'd go to his damned mugwump temple; and in two hours they also knew it, for they heard in no uncertain terms from the secretary of the Municipal Club, a reform organization, which had been instrumental in securing Perkins's nomination, who demanded to know in an explicit yes or no as to whether any such message had been sent. The denial was made, and then the lie was given; and many to this day wonder exactly where the truth lay. At any rate, votes were lost and few gained, and many a worthy friend of good government lost heart and bemoaned the degeneration of the gentleman into the politician.

Perkins, worn out, irritated by, if not angry at, what he termed the underhanded lying of the opposition, drove home for luncheon, and found his wife and her mother in a state of high dudgeon. They had been insulted.

"It was frightful the language that man used, Thaddeus," said Mrs. Perkins.

"He wouldn't have dared do it except by telephone," put in the mother-in-law, whose notions were somewhat old-fashioned. "I've always hated that machine. People can lie to you and you can't look 'em in the eye over it, and they can say things to your face with absolute opportunity."

The dear old lady meant impunity, but it must be remembered that she was excited.

"Well, I think he ought to be chastised," said Mrs. Perkins.

"Who? What are you talking about?" demanded Thaddeus.

"That nasty O'Hara man," said Mrs. Perkins. "He said 'he'd be damned' over the wire."

Thaddeus immediately became energetic. "He didn't blackguard you, did he?" he demanded.

"Yes, he did," said Mrs. Perkins, the water in her eyes affecting her voice so that it became mellifluous instead of merely melodious.

"But how?" persisted Perkins.

"Well--we--we--rang him up--it was only as a surprise, you know, dear--we rang him up--"

"You--you rang up--O'Hara?" cried Perkins, aghast. "It must have been a surprise."

"Yes, Teddy. We were going to settle the lamp question; we thought you were bothered enough with--well, with affairs of state--"

The candidate drew up proudly, but immediately became limp again as he realized the situation.

"And," Mrs. Perkins continued, "we thought we'd relieve you of the lamp question; and as Mr. O'Hara is a great contractor--the most noted in all Dumfries Corners--isn't he?"

"Yes, yes, yes! he is!" said Perkins, furiously; "but what of that?"

"Well, that's why we rang him up," said Mrs. Perkins, with a sigh of relief to find that she had selected the right man. "We wanted Mr. O'Hara to dig the trench for the pipes, and lay the pipes--"

"He's a great pipe-layer!" ejaculated Perkins.

"Exactly," rejoined Mrs. Perkins, solemnly. "We'd heard that, and so we asked him to come up."

"But, my dear," cried Perkins, dismayed, "you didn't tell him you wanted him to put up my lamps? I'm not elected yet."

The agony of the moment for Perkins can be better imagined than portrayed.

"He didn't give us the chance," said the mother-in-law. "He merely swore."

Perkins drew a sigh of relief. He understood it all now, and in spite of the position in which he was placed he was glad. "Jove!" he said to himself, "it was a narrow escape. Suppose O'Hara had come! He'd have enjoyed laying pipes for a Mayor's lamps for me--two weeks before election."

And for the first time in weeks Perkins was faintly mirthful. The narrowness of his escape had made him hysterical, and he actually indulged in the luxury of a nervous laugh.

"That accounts for the rumor," he said to himself, and then his heart grew heavy again. "The rumor is true, and--Oh, well, this is what I get for dabbling in politics. If I ever get out of this alive, I vow by all the gods politics shall know me no more."

"It was all right--my asking O'Hara, Thaddeus?" asked Mrs. Perkins.

"Oh yes, certainly, my dear--perfectly right. O'Hara is indeed, as you thought, the most noted, not to say notorious, contractor in town, only he's not laying pipes just now. He's pulling wires."

"For telephones, I presume?" said the old lady, placidly.

"Well, in a way," replied Thaddeus. "There's a great deal of vocality about O'Hara's wires. But, Bess," he added, seriously, "just drop the lamps until we get 'em, and confine your telephoning to your intimate friends. An Irishman on a telephone in political times is apt to be a trifle--er--artless in his choice of words. If you must talk to one of 'em, remember to put in the lightning plug before you begin."

With which injunction the candidate departed to address the Mohawks, an independent political organization in the Second Ward, which was made up of thinking men who never indorsed a candidate without knowing why, and rarely before three o'clock of the afternoon of election day at that, by whom he was received with cheers and back-slapping and button-holings which convinced him that he was the most popular man on earth, though on election day--but election day has yet to be described. It came, and with it there came to Perkins a feeling very much like that which the small boy experiences on the day before Christmas. He has been good for two months, and he knows that to-morrow the period of probation will be over and he can be as bad as he pleases again for a little while anyhow.

"However it turns out, I can tell 'em all to go to the devil to-morrow," chuckled Thaddeus, rubbing his hands gleefully.

"I don't think you ought to forget the lamps, Thaddeus," observed the mother-in-law at breakfast. "Here it is election day and you haven't yet decided where they shall go. Now I really think--"

"Never mind the lamps," returned Thaddeus. "Let's talk of ballot-boxes to-day. To-morrow we can place the lamps."

"Very well, if you say so," said the old lady; "only I marvel at you latter-day boys. In my young days a small matter like that would have been settled long ago."

"Well, I'll compromise with you," said Thaddeus. "We won't wait until to-morrow. I'll decide the question to-night--I'm really too busy now to think of them."

"I shall be glad when we don't have to think about 'em at all," sighed Mrs. Perkins, pouring out the candidate's coffee. "They've really been a care to me. I don't like the idea of putting them on the porch, or on the gate-posts either. They'll have to be kept clean, and goodness knows I can't ask the girls to go out in the middle of winter to clean them if they are on the gate-posts."

"Mike will clean them," said Thaddeus.

Mrs. Perkins sniffed when Mike's name was mentioned. "I doubt it," she said. "He's been lots of good for two weeks."

"Mike has been lots of good for two weeks," echoed Thaddeus, enthusiastically. "He's kept all the hired men in line, my