“Really, I don't know, don't y' know!” This deep observation Morton flourished off in a profound muse. “As I've said, the town will get what's coming to it, because it will always get what it wants. It always has--really! And speaking of 'reform' as we employ the term in politics: The town, in honesty, never desires it; and that's why somebody must forever attend on 'reform' to keep it from falling on its blundering nose and knees by holding it up by the tail. There are people who'll take anything you give them, even though it be a coat of tar and feathers, and thank you for it, too,--the grateful beggars! New York resembles these. Some chap comes along, and offers New York 'reform.' Being without 'reform' at the time, and made suddenly and sorrowfully mindful of its condition, it accepts the gift just as a drunkard takes a pledge. Like the drunkard, however, New York is apt to return to its old ways--it is, really!” “One thing,” said the Reverend Bronson as he arose to go, and laying his hand on my shoulder, “since the Boss of Tammany, in a day of the machine, is the whole government and the source of it, I mean to come here often and work upon our friend in favor of a clean town.” “And you will be welcome, Doctor, let me say!” I returned. “Now I think,” said Morton meditatively, when the Reverend Bronson had departed, “precisely as I told our excellent friend. A rule should ever fit a people; and it ever does. A king is as naturally the blossom of the peasantry he grows on as is a sunflower natural to that coarse stem that supports its royal nod-dings, don't y' know. A tyranny, a despotism, a monarchy, or a republic is ever that flower of government natural to the public upon which it grows. Really!--Why not? Wherein lurks the injustice or the inconsistency of such a theory? What good is there to lie hidden in a misfit? Should Providence waste a man's government on a community of dogs? A dog public should have dog government:--a kick and a kennel, a chain to clank and a bone to gnaw!” With this last fragment of wisdom, the cynical Morton went also his way, leaving me alone to chop up the town--as a hunter chops up the carcass of a deer among his hounds--into steak and collop to feed my hungry followers. However much politics might engage me, I still possessed those hundred eyes of Argus wherewith to watch my girl. When again about me she had no word for what was past. And on my side, never once did I put to her the name of young Van Flange. He was as much unmentioned by us as though he had not been. I think that this was the wiser course. What might either Blossom or I have said to mend our shattered hopes?