"March 29.--I have the appointment, Lucy. This is the beginning of my political career--the beginning of the end of Minetta Lane. You have a heavy task before you, dear, to keep me, eyes to the goal, running the race like a thoroughbred. Some day, Lucy, we'll go back to the Canyon, chins up, work done, gentlemen unafraid!" Enoch turned more pages, covering a year or so of the diary. "March 30.--I've been in the City Hall two years today. Lucy, the only chance on earth I'll ever have to clean out the rookeries of New York would be to be a Tammany Police Commissioner. And Tammany would certainly send its best gunman after a Police Commissioner who didn't dote on rookeries. Lucy, can't city governments be clean? Is human nature normally and habitually corrupt when it comes to governing a city? The Mayor and all his appointees are simply wading through the vast quagmire of the common citizen's indifference, fought every step by the vile creatures who batten on the administration of the city's affairs. Do you suppose that if the schools laid tremendous stress on clean citizenship and began in the kindergarten to teach children how to govern in the most practical way, it would help? I believe it would. I'm going to tuck that thought in the back of my head and some day I may have opportunity to use it. I wish I could do something for the poor boys of New York. I wish the Grand Canyon were over in Jersey!" "Sept. 4.--I am unfit to speak to you, but oh, I need you as I never did before. Don't turn those kind, clear-seeing eyes away from me, Lucy! Lucy! It happened this way. I wanted, if possible to make our Police Commissioner see Minetta Lane through my eyes. And I took him down there, three days ago. It's unchanged, in all these years, except for the worse. And Luigi was dragging a sack of rags into his basement. He was gray and bent but it was Luigi. And he recognized me and yelled 'Bastard!' after me. Lucy, I went back and beat him, till the Commissioner hauled me off. And the dirty, spluttering little devil roared my story to all that greedy, listening crowd! I slipped away, Lucy, and I hid myself in a place I know in Chinatown. No! No! I don't drink and I don't hit the pipe. I _gamble_. My luck is unbelievable. And when the fit is on me, I'd gamble my very soul away. Jonas found me. Jonas is a colored porter in the City Hall who has rather adopted me. And Jonas said, 'Boss, how come you to do a stunt like this? The Police Commissioner say to the Mayor and I hear 'em, an Italian black hander take you for somebody else and he have him run in. I tell 'em you gone down to Atlantic City. You come home with me, Boss.' He put his kind black hand on my shoulder, and Lucy, his eyes were full of tears. I left my winnings with the Chinaman, and came back here with Jonas. Lucy! Oh, if I could really hear your voice!"