"I was bothered with a question of mistaken identity," replied Dolan.
To the silence he answered: "Me myself. I'm the man. Do you happen to
know who I am?" Hendricks broke a splinter from the wood under him,
and Dolan continued: "Of course you don't, and neither do I. For
example, I go down into Union township before election and visit with
the boys. I bring a box of cigars and maybe a nip under the buggy
seat, and maybe a few stray five-dollar bills for the lads that drive
the wagons that haul the voters to the polls. I go home, and I says to
myself: 'I have that bailiwick to a man. No votes there against Jake.'
But the morning after election I see Jake didn't get but two votes in
the township. Very well. Now who did they vote against? Surely not
against the genial obliging rollicking Irish lad whose face I shave
every other morning. What could they possibly have against him?
No--they voted against that man Dolan, who got drunk, at the Fair and
throwed the gate receipts into the well, and tried to shoo the horses
off the track into the crowd at the home-stretch of the trotting race.
He's the man they plugged. And there's another one--him that
confesses to Father Van Sandt." Dolan shook his head sadly and sighed.
"He's a black-hearted wretch. If you want to see how a soul will look
in its underwear, get an Irishman to confess to a Dutchman." The chirp
of crickets arose in the silence, and after a time Dolan concluded,
"And now there abideth these three, me that I shave, me that they vote
against, and me that the Father knows; and the greatest of these is
charity--I dunno."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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