With a bearing intended to show great confidence I passed through the
little knot of men gathered at the door and entered the barber’s shop.
Was not one of my lambs clothed with due authority from the Empire State
there as watcher? It was “up to the leader” to see that all was going
well with her. At the end of the long table farthest from the door sat
Mrs. V——. (To prevent hysterics on the part of the “antis” it should be
said that she was a grandmother and that the duties of her home were
attended to by her grown daughter.)
“Everything going all right?”
“Yes, indeed. I’ve been treated with every courtesy. Let me introduce
you to the chairman of the board, Mr. ——.”
I looked about for the filthy pool of politics, but could not discover
any. Several men were busily writing in enormous books, in regular
_Alice in Wonderland style_. A policeman clothed with all the majesty of
the law sat at the other end of the long table. Several candidates for
registration stood in line, awaiting their turn, while the man at the
head of it struggled through the third degree. The floating population
of New York sometimes finds difficulty in recalling where it lived and
voted from a year ago!
Everything in and about the place was as quiet and orderly as possible.
Gentlemen seemed to find it more convenient to smoke outside! Yet our
women have made no objection to tobacco.
At another election district I found that the watcher in charge was on
such good terms with her election board that they had regaled her with
the strains of the victrola and a cup of tea!
On the great day itself we were “on the job” before the opening of the
polls at six o’clock. I started on my round of the twenty-one districts
in the cold dusk of the winter morning, finding all the watchers in
their places. We visited them a second and a third time in the course of
the day. At only one polling-place had the men in charge made any
trouble for us. There they did not want the watcher to go behind the
bar, but as this was her undoubted right they eventually yielded. The
day was clear, but raw and windy. The political atmosphere was also less
balmy on this day of the struggle. The Tammany leaders were less cordial
than earlier in the campaign, and on some faces a suspicion of a frown
lurked. We were treated with all courtesy, however, and some of the
gentlemen were so gallant as to help me in and out of the automobile.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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