In another corner of the stage stand the ten thousand superior, self-centred souls who neglect to vote and despise politics--the mixed corps of pessimists, impractical dreamers, careless idlers, and hyper-cultured world-disdainers, who hold aloof, from one motive or another, from contact with common life and a share in its responsibilities--some on the plea that universal suffrage is a folly or a failure, some that earth is but a vale of travail which concerns little the wise or righteous thinker, some from sheer butterfly or stupid idleness. Were they to vote they would help to offset that no less large body of suffragists--the active enemies of order, the hoodlum, tobacco-spitting, woman-insulting, rum-drinking ruffian brigade. There are only left the ten thousand conscientious citizens, real patriots--a corporal's guard, amid the general optimistic sweep toward the polls. These mark their crosses with care against the names of the honest men and perhaps some of the pretty honest, only to read in the newspapers next morning that the big four have been returned to power and that the confidence of the plain and sovereign people in the disinterested conduct of their public servants has again been demonstrated. "Ho, ho, ho," laugh the low comedians. "Mum's the word." The faces of the big four are wreathed in self-congratulatory smiles. At the homes of Peter Lynch and Jeremiah Dolan, those experienced individuals without occupation, there are cakes and ale. It is a mistake to assume that because a citizen is an Alderman he is not human and amiably domestic in his tastes. Jeremiah loves the little Dolans and is no less fond of riding his children on his leg than Thomas Barnstable, or any of the leading villains. When their father looks happy in the late autumn, the children know that their Christmas stockings will be full. Jeremiah is at peace with all the world and is ready to sit with slicked hair for his photograph, from which a steel (or is it steal?) engraving will shortly be prepared for the new City Government yearbook, superscribed: "Jeremiah Dolan, Chairman of the Board of Aldermen." A framed enlargement of this will hang on one side of the fire-place, and an embroidered motto, "God Bless Our Home," on the other, and all will be well with the Dolans for another twelve months. In his own home Jeremiah is a man of few words on public matters. Not unnaturally his children believe him to be of the salt of the earth, and he lets it go at that, attending strictly to business without seeking to defend himself in the bosom of his family from the diatribes of reformers. Still, it is reasonable to assume that, under the fillip of the large majority rolled up in his favor, he would be liable to give vent to his sense of humor so far as to refer in the presence of his wife and children to the young man who was willing to become an Alderman while waiting to be Senator, as a T. Willy.