later officers in Tammany Hall! Here was a great Reform Governor and Presidential nominee--in Tammany Hall; and the present presiding financial genius of the City’s projected Subway system. While there, in a corner of that very page, heading a committee of social knights who had pledged body and bank to hold Tammany at bay was the man--yes, the very same name of the man--who had been Tweed’s lawyer, who had _defended_ Tweed when he was caught rifling the City. David sat struggling with all this as well as the spirit of Sunday dinner permitted him to do so. In his town, he had heard disparagements of Tammany. He had always confounded it with the National Democratic Party. He remembered how they had heckled Jo Cleary, the machinist in the shop who was a Democrat. “Well, what if Tammany _is_ Democratic? Do you think your bunch of silk-stocking Republicans is any better? They’re both of ’em crooks. Here’s the difference. If you are broke, you kin get ten dollars through the front door of Tammany: and you kin get a boot through the back door of the other Party.” David recalled that there had been silence after this reply. He was in no mood for thinking it all out. He knew only that Jo Cleary had straight sharp eyes and that he had always trusted him, found reason, in more immediate matters, to believe him. Cleary was full of strangeness. He wanted Ireland to be independent: he got drunk with telling regularity, each Saturday night. When he was drunk, he was jolly. He would sing pathetic minor songs of suffering with laughter in his voice and wild flourishing arms. “D’ye see?” he’d shout, “This is how we keeps ’em down. ‘Down, down, with the pigs, ha, ha!’” When he was sober, Cleary was morose and a good workman. David knew enough to feel the pathos in his drunken jollity. It was a thing, unlike all these about him, he instinctively understood. It was a thing, among others, that made him mark Cleary’s sober words and give them credence. So David stirred against the Sunday paper. He was glad, when Lois stood there in the door to take him away from the vice of thinking. “There’s some people downstairs, David, just dying to meet you. Will you come?” While he looked up at her, she was still. She felt the flattery of his warm eyes. She was slender and sweet, with her bent body leaning against the jamb. She seemed to David a glowing creature, a product so desirable that the world which brought her forth must be perfect also. And Lois saw him, clouding in his chair, trying to rouse himself to the business below: she liked the brash vividness of his clumsy body, the naïve confession in his face of all that spoke in his heart. She half realized that this freshness did not grow in the sheltered rooms of the City: she regretted it. David followed her downstairs.