BIG KENNEDY'S commands concerning the Tin Whistles taught me that lurking somewhere in the election situation he smelled peril to himself. Commonly, while his methods might be a wide shot to the left of the lawful, they were never violent. He must feel himself hard pressed to call for fist and club. He lived at present cross-purposes with sundry high spirits of the general organization; perhaps a word was abroad for his disaster and he had heard some sigh of it. This would be nothing wonderful; coarse as he seemed fibered, Big Kennedy had spun his web throughout the ward as close-meshed as any spider, and any fluttering proof of treason was certain to be caught in it. The election, while the office at local bay came to be no weightier than that of Alderman, was of moment to Big Kennedy. Defeat would mean his eclipse, and might even spell his death of politics. To lose the Alderman was to let fall the reins of ward direction. The Alderman and his turtle-devouring fellows cracked the whip over the police whom they appointed or dismissed, and the police were a ballot-engine not to be resisted. He who held the Alderman, held the police; and he who had the police, carried victory between his hands. Doubtless it was some inner-circle treachery which Big Kennedy apprehended. The regular opposition, while numerous and carrying on its muster rolls the best respectability of the ward, lacked of that organization which was the ridgepole of Big Kennedy's supremacies. It straggled, and was mob-like in its movements; and while, as I've written, it showed strong in numbers, it was no more to be collected or fashioned into any telling force for political effort than a flock of grazing sheep. If there were to come nothing before him more formidable than the regular opposition, Big Kennedy would go over it like a train of cars and ask no aid of shoulder-hitters. Such innocent ones might stand three deep about a ballot-box, and yet Big Kennedy would take from it what count of votes he chose and they be none the wiser. It would come to no more than cheating a child at cards. The open opposition to Big Kennedy was made up of divers misfit elements. At its head, as a sort of captain by courtesy, flourished that reputable peppery old gentleman who aforetime took my part against Sheeny Joe. A bit in love with his own eloquence, and eager for a forum wherein to exercise it, the reputable old gentleman had named himself for Alderman against Big Kennedy's candidate. As a campaign scheme of vote-getting--for he believed he had but to be heard to convince a listener--the reputable old gentleman engaged himself upon what he termed a house-to-house canvass.