My decision was made to deal with the town throughout the next regime as with a gold mine. I would work it night and day, sparing neither conscience nor sleep; I would have from it what utmost bulk of treasure I might during the coming administration of the town's affairs. The game lay in my palm; I would think on myself and nothing but myself; justice and right were to be cast aside; the sufferings of others should be no more to me than mine had been to them. I would squeeze the situation like a sponge, and for its last drop. Then laying down my guiding staff as Chief, I would carry Blossom, and those riches I had heaped together, to regions, far away and new, where only the arch of gentle skies should bend above her days! She should have tranquillity! she should find rest! That was my plan, my hope; I kept it buried in my breast, breathed of it to no man, not even the kindly Morton, and set myself with all of that ferocious industry which was so much the badge of my nature to its carrying forth. Four years; and then, with the gold of a Monte Cristo, I would take Blossom and go seeking that repose which I believed must surely wait for us somewhere beneath the sun! While I was engaged about those preliminaries demanded of me if the machine were to begin its four-years' reign on even terms of comfort, Morton was often at my shoulder with a point or a suggestion. I was glad to have him with me; for his advice in a fog of difficulty such as mine, was what chart and lighthouse are to mariners. One afternoon while Morton and I were trying to hit upon some man of education to take second place and supplement the ignorance of one whom the equities of politics appointed to be the head of a rich but difficult department, the Reverend Bronson came in. We three--the Reverend Bronson, Morton, and myself--were older now than on days we could remember, and each showed the sere and yellow of his years. But we liked each other well; and, although in no sort similar in either purpose or bent, I think time had made us nearer friends than might have chanced with many who were more alike. On this occasion, while I engaged myself with lists of names and lists of offices, weighing out the spoils, Morton and the Reverend Bronson debated the last campaign, and what in its conclusion it offered for the future. “I shall try to be the optimist,” said the Reverend Bronson at last, tossing up a brave manner. “Since the dying administration was not so good as I hoped for, I trust the one to be born will not be so bad as I fear. And, as I gather light by experience, I begin to blame officials less and the public more. I suspect how a whole people may play the hypocrite as much as any single man; nor am I sure that, for all its clamors, a New York public really desires those white conditions of purity over which it protests so much.”