" In the politics to which he was referring this
remark could be taken literally.
Another illustration of this truth was incidentally given me, at about
the same time, by an acquaintance, a Tammany man named Costigan, a good
fellow according to his lights. I had been speaking to him of a fight in
one of the New York downtown districts, a Democratic district in which
the Republican party was in a hopeless minority, and, moreover,
was split into the Half-Breed and Stalwart factions. It had been an
interesting fight in more than one way. For instance, the Republican
party, at the general election, polled something like five hundred
and fifty votes, and yet at the primary the two factions polled
seven hundred and twenty-five all told. The sum of the parts was thus
considerably greater than the whole. There had been other little details
that made the contest worthy of note. The hall in which the primary was
held had been hired by the Stalwarts from a conscientious gentleman. To
him the Half-Breeds applied to know whether they could not hire the hall
away from their opponents, and offered him a substantial money advance.
The conscientious gentleman replied that his word was as good as his
bond, that he had hired the hall to the Stalwarts, and that it must
be theirs.
Pages:
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249