Part 21

To MICHAEL P. O’GRADY PROTECTOR OF SALOONS, FRIEND OF CROOKS FOR TEN YEARS A CITY COUNCILMAN DOMINATING THE AFFAIRS OF THE MUNICIPALITY THIS STATUE IS ERECTED BY GRATEFUL FELLOW-CITIZENS IN RECOGNITION OF HIS PUBLIC SERVICES

The effect of this was tremendously disturbing, as may be imagined. Every newspaper in America printed a picture of the O’Grady statue; our rival cities made merry over it at our expense. The Chamber of Commerce, incensed at the affront to the city’s good name, passed resolutions condemning Barton in the bitterest terms; the local press howled; a mass meeting was held in our biggest hall to voice public indignation. But amid the clamor Barton remained calm, pointing to the stipulation in Follonsby’s will that his money should be spent in memorials of men who had enjoyed most fully the confidence of the people. And as O’Grady had been permitted for years to run the town about as he liked, with only feeble protests and occasional futile efforts to get rid of him, Barton was able to defend himself against all comers.

Six months later Barton set up on the same boulevard a handsome tablet commemorating the services of a mayor whose venality had brought the city to the verge of bankruptcy, and who, when his term of office expired, had betaken himself to parts unknown. This was greeted with another outburst of rage, much to Barton’s delight. After a brief interval another tablet was placed on one of the river bridges. The building of that particular bridge had been attended with much scandal, and the names of the councilmanic committee who were responsible for it were set forth over these figures:--

_Cost to the People_, $49,000.00 _Cost to the Council_, 31,272.81 ---------- _Graft_, $17,727.19

The figures were exact and a matter of record. An impudent prosecuting attorney who had broken with the machine had laid them before the public some time earlier; but his efforts to convict the culprits had been frustrated by a judge of the criminal court who took orders from the bosses. Barton broke his rule against talking through the newspapers by issuing a caustic statement imploring the infuriated councilmen to sue him for libel as they threatened to do.

The city was beginning to feel the edge of Barton’s little ironies. At the club we all realized that he was animated by a definite and high purpose in thus flaunting in enduring bronze the shame of the city.

'It is to such men as these,' said Barton, referring to the gentlemen he had favored with his statue and tablets, 'that we confide all our affairs. For years we have stupidly allowed a band of outlaws to run our town. They spend our money; they hitch the saloons and brothels to the city hall, and manage in their own way large affairs that concern all of us. These scoundrels are our creatures, and we encourage and foster them; they represent us and our ideals, and it’s only fitting that we should publish their merits to the world.'

While Barton was fighting half a dozen injunction suits brought to thwart the further expenditure of Follonsby’s money for memorials of men of notorious misfeasance or malfeasance, another city election rolled round. By this time there had been a revulsion of feeling. The people began to see that after all there might be a way of escape. Even the newspapers that had most bitterly assailed Barton declared that he was just the man for the mayoralty, and he was fairly driven into office at the head of a non-partisan municipal ticket.

The Boulevard of Rogues we called it for a time. But after Barton had been in the mayor’s office a year he dumped the O’Grady statue into the river, destroyed the tablets, and returned to the Follonsby Fund out of his own pocket the money he had paid for them. Three noble statues of honest patriots now adorn the boulevard, and half a dozen beautiful fountains have been distributed among the parks.

The Barton plan is, I submit, worthy of all emulation. If every boss-ridden, machine-managed American city could once visualize its shame and folly as Barton compelled us to do, there would be less complaint about the general failure of local government. There is, when you come to think of it, nothing so preposterous in the idea of perpetuating in outward and visible forms the public servants we humbly permit to misgovern us. Nothing could be better calculated to quicken the civic impulse in the lethargic citizen than the enforced contemplation of a line of statues erected to the men he has allowed to govern him and spend his money.

I am a little sorry, though, that Barton never carried out one of his plans, which looked to the planting in the centre of a down-town park of a symbolic figure of the city, felicitously expressed by a bar-room loafer dozing on a beer-keg. I should have liked it; and Barton confessed to me the other day that he was a good deal grieved himself that he had not pulled it off!

WHAT HAPPENED TO ALANNA

BY KATHLEEN NORRIS

A CAPPED and aproned maid, with a martyred expression, had twice sounded the dinner-bell in the stately halls of Costello, before any member of the family saw fit to respond to it.

Then they all came at once, with a sudden pounding of young feet on the stairs, an uproar of young voices, and much banging of doors. Jim and Danny, twins of fourteen, to whom their mother was wont proudly to allude as 'the top o' the line,' violently left their own sanctum on the fourth floor, and coasted down such banisters as lay between that and the dining-room. Teresa, an angel-faced twelve-year-old in a blue frock, shut _The Wide, Wide World_ with a sigh, and climbed down from the window-seat in the hall.

Teresa’s pious mother, in moments of exultation, loved to compare and commend her offspring to such of the saints and martyrs as their youthful virtues suggested. And Teresa at twelve had, as it were, graduated from the little saints, Agnes and Rose and Cecilia, and was now compared, in her mother’s secret heart, to the gracious Queen of all the Saints. 'As she was when a little girl,' Mrs. Costello would add, to herself, to excuse any undue boldness in the thought.

And indeed, Teresa, as she was to-night, her blue eyes still clouded with Ellen Montgomery’s sorrows, her curls tumbled about her hot cheeks, would have made a pretty foil in a picture of old Saint Anne.

But this story is about Alanna of the black eyes, the eight years, the large irregular mouth, the large irregular features.

Alanna was outrunning lazy little Leo--her senior, but not her match at anything--on their way to the dining-room. She was rendering desperate the two smaller boys, Frank X., Jr., and John Henry Newman Costello, who staggered hopelessly in her wake. They were all hungry, clean, and good-natured, and Alanna’s voice led the other voices, even as her feet, in twinkling patent leather, led their feet.

Following the children came their mother, fastening the rich silk and lace at her wrists as she came. Her handsome kindly face and her big shapely hands were still moist and glowing from soap and warm water, and the shining rings of black hair at her temples were moist, too.

'This is all my doin', dad,' said she comfortably, as she and her flock entered the dining-room. 'Put the soup on, Alma. I’m the one that was goin' to be prompt at dinner, too!' she added, with a superintending glance for all the children, as she tied on little John’s napkin.

F. X. Costello, Senior, undertaker by profession, and mayor by an immense majority, was already at the head of the table.

'Late, eh, mommie?' said he, good-naturedly.

He threw his newspaper on the floor, cast a householder’s critical glance at the lights and the fire, and pushed his neatly placed knives and forks to right and left carelessly with both his fat hands.

The room was brilliantly lighted and warm. A great fire roared in the old-fashioned black-marble grate, and electric lights blazed everywhere. Everything in the room, and in the house, was costly, comfortable, incongruous, and hideous. The Costellos were very rich, and had been very poor; and certain people were fond of telling of the queer, ridiculous things they did, in trying to spend their money. But they were very happy, and thought their immense, ugly house was the finest in the city, or in the world.

'Well, an’ what’s the news on the Rialter?' said the head of the house, busy with his soup.

'You’ll have the laugh on me, dad,' his wife assured him placidly. 'After all my sayin' that nothing’d take me to Father Crowley’s meetin'!'

'Oh, that was it?' said the mayor. 'What’s he goin' to have--a concert?'

'--_And_ a fair, too!' supplemented Mrs. Costello. There was an interval devoted on her part to various bibs and trays, and a low aside to the waitress. Then she went on: 'As you know, I went, meanin' to beg off. On account of baby bein' so little, and Leo’s cough, and the paperers bein' upstairs--and all! I thought I’d just make a donation, and let it go at that. But the ladies all kind of hung back--there was very few there--and I got talkin'--'

'Well, 't is but our dooty, after all,' said the mayor, nodding approval.

'That’s all, Frank. Well! So finally Mrs. Kiljohn took the coffee, and the Lemmon girls took the grab-bag. The Guild will look out for the concert, and I took one fancy-work booth, and of course, the Children of Mary’ll have the other, just like they always do.'

'Oh, was Grace there?' Teresa was eager to know.

'Grace was, darlin'.'

'And we’re to have the fancy-work! You’ll help us, won’t you, mother? Goody--I’m in that!' exulted Teresa.

'I’m in that, too!' echoed Alanna quickly.

'A lot you are, you baby!' said Leo unkindly.

'You’re not a Child of Mary, Alanna,' Teresa said, promptly and uneasily.

'Well--well--I can help!' protested Alanna, putting up her lip. '_Can’t I_, mother? Can’t I, mother?'

'You can help me, dovey,' said her mother absently. 'I’m not goin' to work as I did for Saint Patrick’s Bazaar, dad, and I said so! Mrs. O’Connell and Mrs. King said they’d do all the work, if I’d just be the nominal head. Mary Murray will do us some pillers--leather--with Gibsons and Indians on them. And I’ll have Lizzie Bayne up here for a month, makin' me aprons and little Jappy wrappers, and so on.'

She paused over the cutlets and the chicken pie, which she had been helping with an amazing attention to personal preference. The young Costellos chafed at the delay, but their mother’s fine eyes saw them not.

'Kelley & Moffat ought to let me have materials at half price,' she reflected aloud. 'My bill’s six or seven hundred a month!'

'You always say you’re not going to do a thing, and then get in and make more than any other booth!' said Dan proudly.

'Oh, not this year, I won’t,' his mother assured him. But in her heart she knew she would.

'Aren’t you glad it’s fancy-work?' said Teresa. 'It doesn’t get all sloppy and mussy like ice-cream, does it, mother?'

'Gee, don’t you love fairs!' burst out Leo rapturously.

'Sliding up and down the floor before the dance begins, Dan, to work in the wax?' suggested Jimmy, in pleasant anticipation. 'We go every day and every night, don’t we, mother?'

'Ask your father,' said Mrs. Costello discreetly.

But the mayor’s attention just then was taken by Alanna, who had left her chair to go and whisper in his ear.

'Why, here’s Alanna’s heart broken!' said he cheerfully, encircling her little figure with a big arm.

Alanna shrank back suddenly against him, and put her wet cheek on his shoulder.

'Now, whatever is it, darlin'?' wondered her mother, sympathetically but without concern. 'You’ve not got a pain, have you, dear?'

'She wants to help the Children of Mary!' said her father tenderly. 'She wants to do as much as Tessie does!'

'Oh, but, dad, she _can’t_!' fretted Teresa. 'She’s not a Child of Mary! She oughtn’t to want to tag that way. Now all the other girls' sisters will tag!'

'They haven’t got sisters!' said Alanna, red-cheeked of a sudden.

'Why, Mary Alanna Costello, they have too! Jean has, and Stella has, and Grace has her little cousins!' protested Teresa triumphantly.

'Never mind, baby,' said Mrs. Costello hurriedly. 'Mother’ll find you something to do. There now! How’d you like to have a raffle-book on something--a chair or a piller? And you could get all the names yourself, and keep the money in a little bag--'

'Oh, my! I wish I could!' said Jim artfully. 'Think of the last night, when the drawing comes! You’ll have the fun of looking up the winning number in your book and calling it out in the hall.'

'Would I, dad?' said Alanna softly, but with dawning interest.

'And then, from the pulpit, when the returns are all in,' contributed Dan warmly, 'Father Crowley will read out your name,--"With Mrs. Frank Costello’s booth--raffle of sofa cushion, by Miss Alanna Costello, twenty-six dollars and thirty-five cents!"

'Oo--would he, dad?' said Alanna, won to smiles and dimples by this charming prospect.

'Of course he would!' said her father. 'Now go back to your seat, machree, and eat your dinner. When mommer takes you and Tess to the matinée to-morrow, ask her to bring you in to me first, and you and I’ll step over to Paul’s, and pick out a table or a couch, or something. Eh, mommie?'

'And what do you say?' said that lady to Alanna, as the radiant little girl went back to her chair.

Whereupon Alanna breathed a bashful 'Thank you, dad,' into the ruffled yoke of her frock, and the matter was settled.

The next day she trotted beside her father to Paul’s big furniture store, and after long hesitation selected a little desk of shining brass and dull oak.

'Now,' said her father, when they were back in his office, and Teresa and Mrs. Costello were eager for the matinée, 'here’s your book of numbers, Alanna. And here, I’ll tie a pencil and a string to it. Don’t lose it. I’ve given you two hundred numbers, at two bits each, and mind, the minute any one pays for one, you put their name down on the same line!'

'Oo,--oo!' said Alanna, in pride. 'Two hundred! That’s lots of money, isn’t it, dad? That’s eleven or fourteen dollars, isn’t it, dad?'

'That’s fifty dollars, goose!' said her father, making a dot with the pencil on the tip of her upturned little nose.

'Oo!' said Teresa, awed. Hatted, furred, and muffed, she leaned on her father’s shoulder.

'Oo--dad!' whispered Alanna, with scarlet cheeks.

'So _now_!' said her mother, with a little nod of encouragement and warning. 'Put it right in your muff, lovey. Don’t lose it. Dan or Jim will help you count your money, and keep things straight.'

'And to begin with, we’ll all take a chance!' said the mayor, bringing his fat palm, full of silver, up from his pocket. 'How old are you, mommie?'

'I’m thirty-seven--all but, as well you know, Frank!' said his wife promptly.

'Thirty-six and thirty-seven for you, then!' He wrote her name opposite both numbers. 'And here’s the mayor on the same page--forty-four! And twelve for Tessie, and eight for this highbinder on my knee, here! And now we’ll have one for little Gertie!'

Gertrude Costello was not yet three months old, her mother said.

'Well, she can have number one, any way!' said the mayor. 'You make a rejooced rate for one family, I understand, Miss Costello?'

'I _don’t_!' chuckled Alanna, locking her thin little arms about his neck, and digging her chin into his eye.

So he gave her full price, and she went off with her mother in a state of great content, between rows and rows of coffins, and cases of plumes, and handles and rosettes, and designs for monuments.

'Mrs. Church will want some chances, won’t she, mother?' she said suddenly.

'Let Mrs. Church alone, darlin',' advised Mrs. Costello. 'She’s not a Catholic, and there’s plenty to take chances without her!'

Alanna reluctantly assented; but she need not have worried. Mrs. Church voluntarily took many chances, and became very enthusiastic about the desk.

She was a pretty, clever young woman, of whom all the Costellos were very fond. She lived with a very young husband, and a very new baby, in a tiny cottage near the big Irish family, and pleased Mrs. Costello by asking her advice on all domestic matters, and taking it. She made the Costello children welcome at all hours in her tiny, shining kitchen, or sunny little dining-room. She made them candy and told them stories. She was a minister’s daughter, and wise in many delightful, girlish, friendly ways.

And in return Mrs. Costello did her many a kindly act, and sent her almost daily presents in the most natural manner imaginable.

But Mrs. Church made Alanna very unhappy about the raffled desk. It so chanced that it matched exactly the other furniture in Mrs. Church’s rather bare little drawing-room, and this made her eager to win it. Alanna, at eight, long familiar with raffles and their ways, realized what a very small chance Mrs. Church stood of getting the desk. It distressed her very much to notice that lady’s growing certainty of success.

She took chance after chance. And with every chance she warned Alanna of the dreadful results of her not winning; and Alanna, with a worried line between her eyes, protested her helplessness afresh.

'She _will_ do it, dad!' the little girl confided to him one evening, when she and her book and her pencil were on his knee. 'And it _worries_ me so.'

'Oh, I hope she wins it,' said Teresa ardently. 'She 's not a Catholic, but we’re praying for her. And you know people who aren’t Catholics, dad, are apt to think that our fairs are pretty--pretty money-making, you know!'

'And if only she could point to that desk,' said Alanna, 'and say that she won it at a Catholic fair.'

'But she won’t,' said Teresa, suddenly cold.

'I’m _praying_ she will,' said Alanna suddenly.

'Oh, I don’t think you ought, do you, dad?' said Teresa gravely. 'Do you think she ought, mommie? That’s just like her pouring her holy water over the kitten. You oughtn’t to do those things.'

'I ought to,' said Alanna, in a whisper that reached only her father’s ear.

'You suit me, whatever you do,' said Mayor Costello, 'and Mrs. Church can take her chances with the rest of us.'

Mrs. Church seemed to be quite willing to do so. When at last the great day of the fair came, she was one of the first to reach the hall, in the morning, to ask Mrs. Costello how she might be of use.

'Now wait a minute, then!' said Mrs. Costello cordially. She straightened up as she spoke, from an inspection of a box of fancy-work. 'We could only get into the hall this hour gone, my dear, and 't was a sight, after the Native Sons' Banquet last night. It’ll be a miracle if we get things in order for to-night. Father Crowley said he’d have three carpenters here this morning at nine, without fail; but not one’s come yet. That’s the way!'

'Oh, we’ll fix things,' said Mrs. Church, shaking out a dainty little apron.

Alanna came briskly up, and beamed at her. The little girl was driving about on all sorts of errands for her mother, and had come in to report.

'Mother, I went home,' she said, in a breathless rush, 'and told Alma four extra were coming to lunch, and here are your big scissors, and I told the boys you wanted them to go out to Uncle Dan’s for greens, they took the buckboard, and I went to Keyser’s for the cheesecloth, and he had only eighteen yards of pink, but he thinks Kelley’s have more, and there are the tacks, and they don’t keep spool-wire, and the electrician will be here in ten minutes.'

'Alanna, you’re the pride of me life,' said her mother, kissing her. 'That’s all now, dearie. Sit down and rest.'

'Oh, but I 'd rather go round and see things,' said Alanna, and off she went.

The immense hall was filled with the noise of voices, hammers, and laughter. Groups of distracted women were forming and dissolving everywhere around chaotic masses of boards and bunting. Whenever a carpenter started for the door, or entered it, he was waylaid, bribed, and bullied by the frantic superintendents of the various booths. Messengers came and went, staggering under masses of evergreen, carrying screens, rope, suit-cases, baskets, boxes, Japanese lanterns, freezers, rugs, ladders, and tables.

Alanna found the stage fascinating. Lunch and dinner were to be served there, for the five days of the fair, and it had been set with many chairs and tables, fenced with ferns and bamboo. Alanna was charmed to arrange knives and forks, to unpack oily hams and sticky cakes, and great bowls of salad, and to store them neatly away in a green room.

The grand piano had been moved down to the floor. Now and then an audacious boy or two banged on it for the few moments that it took his mother’s voice or hands to reach him. Little girls gently played 'The Carnival of Venice' or 'Echoes of the Ball,' with their scared eyes alert for reproof. And once two of the 'big' Sodality girls came up, assured and laughing and dusty, and boldly performed one of their convent duets. Some of the tired women in the booths straightened up and clapped, and called, '_Encore_!'

Teresa was not one of these girls. Her instrument was the violin; moreover, she was busy and absorbed at the Children of Mary’s booth, which by four o’clock began to blossom all over its white-draped pillars and tables with ribbons and embroidery and tissue paper, and cushions and aprons and collars, and all sorts of perfumed prettiness.

The two priests were constantly in evidence, their cassocks and hands showing unaccustomed dust.

And over all the confusion, Mrs. Costello shone supreme. Her brisk, big figure, with skirts turned back, and a blue apron still further protecting them, was everywhere at once; laughter and encouragement marked her path. She wore a paper of pins on the breast of her silk dress, she had a tack-hammer thrust in her belt. In her apron-pockets were string, and wire, and tacks. A big pair of scissors hung at her side, and a pencil was thrust through her smooth black hair. She advised and consulted and directed; even with the priests it was to be observed that her mild, 'Well, Father, it seems to me,' always won the day. She led the electricians a life of it; she became the terror of the carpenters' lives.

Where was the young lady that played the violin going to stay? Send her up to Mrs. Costello’s.--Heavens! We were short a tablecloth! Oh, but Mrs. Costello had just sent Dan home for one.--How on earth could the Male Quartette from Tower Town find its way to the hall? Mrs. Costello had promised to tell Mr. C. to send a carriage for them.

She came up to the Children of Mary’s booth about five o’clock.

'Well, if you girls ain’t the wonders!' she said to the tired little Sodalists, in a tone of unbounded admiration and surprise. 'You make me ashamed of me own booth. This is beautiful.'

'Oh, do you think so, mother?' said Teresa wistfully, clinging to her mother’s arm.

'I think it’s grand!' said Mrs. Costello, with conviction. There was a delighted laugh. 'I’m going to bring all the ladies up to see it.'

'Oh, I’m so glad!' said all the girls together, reviving visibly.

'An’ the pretty things you got!' went on the cheering matron. 'You’ll clear eight hundred if you’ll clear a cent. And now put me down for a chance or two; don’t be scared, Mary Riordan; four or five! I’m goin' to bring Mr. Costello over here to-night, and don’t you let him off too easy.'

Everyone laughed joyously.

'Did you hear of Alanna’s luck?' said Mrs. Costello. 'When the Bishop got here, he took her all around the hall with him, and between this one and that, every last one of her chances is gone. She couldn’t keep her feet on the floor for joy. The lucky girl! They’re waitin' for you, Tess, darlin', with the buckboard. Go home and lay down a while before dinner.'