The Boss, and How He Came to Rule New York

FOR all the cry and call of politics, and folk to see me whom I would not see, that night, and throughout the following day--and even though the latter were one of election Fate...

WHEN now I was rich with double millions, I became harrowed of new thoughts and sown with new ambitions. It was Blossom to lie at the roots of it--Blossom, looking from her wind...

GRAY, weather-worn, beaten of years, there in the door was my Sicilian! I observed, as he took a seat, how he limped, with one leg drawn and distorted. I had him in and gave him...

WHAT should it be?--this gallows-brand to show like a bruised ribbon of evil about the throat of Blossom! Anne gave me the story of it. It was a birthmark; that hangman fear whi...

IT was by the suggestion of young Van Flange himself that he became a broker. His argument I think was sound; he had been bred to no profession, and the floor of the Exchange, i...

WHILE the Widow Van Flange and I sat waiting the coming of Gothecore, the lady gave me further leaves of her story. The name of Van Flange was old. It had been honorable and hig...

NOW, when I went about refurnishing my steel box with new millions, I turned cautious as a fox. I considered concealment, and would hide my trail and walk in all the running wat...

THAT'S my purpose in a nutshell,” lisped young Morton; “I've decided to make some money; and I've come for millions.” Here he waved a delicate hand, and bestowed upon Big Kenned...

PERHAPS you will say I waste space and lay too much of foolish stress upon my quarrel with Sheeny Joe and its police-cell consequences. And yet you should be mindful of the inci...

YOUNG MORTON was president of Mulberry Traction. When the franchise came sound and safe into the hands of Mulberry, young Morton evolved a construction company and caused himsel...

“But why do you call yourself defeated?” I asked. It was no part of my purpose to concede, even by my silence, that either I or Tammany was opposed to the Reverend Bronson. “You...

WHEN the old Chief was gone, Big Kennedy succeeded to his place as the ruling spirit of the organization. For myself, I moved upward to become a figure of power only a whit less...

NOW it was that in secret my ambition took a hearty start and would vine-like creep and clamber. My triumph over Jimmy the Blacksmith added vastly to my stature of politics. Mor...

BIG KENNEDY could not live a year; his doom was written. It was the word hard to hear, and harder to believe, of one who, broad, burly, ruddy with the full color of manhood at i...

BEFORE I abandon the late election in its history to the keeping of time past, there is an episode, or, if you will, an accident, which should find relation. Of itself it would...

THE Philadelphia machine was a training school for repeaters. Those ten thousand sent to our cause by Morton's friend, went about their work like artillerymen about their guns....

THAT night under lock and key was a night of laughed and screamed like bedlam. Once I heard the low click of sobs, and thought it might be poor unhappy Apple Cheek. The surmise...

WHEN I gave that knife to the Sicilian, I had not thought how on the next occasion that I encountered it I should draw it from the throat of a dead and fallen enemy. With the si...

BIG KENNEDY'S commands concerning the Tin Whistles taught me that lurking somewhere in the election situation he smelled peril to himself. Commonly, while his methods might be a...

SINCE time began, no man, not even a king, has been better obeyed in his mandates, than was I while Chief of Tammany Hall. From high to low, from the leader of a district to the...

“So you say,” I retorted, “and doubtless so you think.” I had a desire to quarrel finally and for all time with the reputable old gentleman, whose name I no longer needed, and w...

FOXY BILLY CASSIDY made but slow work of obtaining those papers asked for to overthrow our enemy, the Chief. He copied reams upon reams of contracts and vouchers and accounts, b...

BIG KENNEDY'S success at the election served to tighten the rivets of his rule. It was now I looked to see him ferret forth and punish those renegades who had wrought against hi...

BIG KENNEDY was right; the reputable old gentleman rose to that lure of Congress like any bass to any fly. It was over in a trice, those preliminaries; he was proud to be thus c...

IT was when I was in my fifteenth year that face to face I first met politics. Or to fit the phrase more nearly with the fact, I should say it was then when politics met me. Nor...

MY father was a blacksmith, and he and my mother came out of Clonmel, where I myself was born. There were four to our family, for besides my father and mother, I owned a sister...

BIG KENNEDY'S suggestion of Sing Sing for Sheeny Joe did not fit with my fancy. Not that a cropped head and a suit of stripes would have been misplaced in the instance of Sheeny...

WHAT should there be more? My house stands upon a hill; waving, sighing trees are ranked about it, while to the eastward I have the shimmering stretches of the river beneath my...