This millionaire leader of Tammany Hall was by no means an unpleasant man to meet. He had a certain diffidence and he was not a good talker; his old habit of attentively listening was too strongly fixed. Physically strong, his deep voice and direct, concise manner when he did speak were impressive and always concentrated on the business at hand. He had none of the ordinary vices; he drank liquor occasionally, it was true, but his drinks were sparse and the times far separated. In smoking he did not indulge, neither did he swear, nor gamble at cards, although he was not a stranger to stock market speculations. A communicant of the Epiphany Roman Catholic Church, he attended mass every Sunday, and gave liberal donations to the church. Unlike Mr. Croker, Mr. Murphy never cared to make the Democratic Club his headquarters; every night, when a district leader, Mr. Murphy could be found, from 7:30 to 10 o’clock, leaning against a lamp post at the northwest corner of Twentieth Street and Second Avenue. Everybody in the district knew that he would be there, accessible to anybody who wanted to talk to him. Such were the career and characteristics of the new leader of Tammany Hall--a dictator in fact, yet preserving all of the tokens of democratic accessibility. Mayor Low’s administration failed to make an impression calculated to influence a majority of voters to reelect him. Quite true, most of his appointees to head the various departments were men of character, administrative capacity and sincerity of purpose--radically different types, indeed, from the Tammany district leaders who were usually appointed to those offices under Tammany administrations. But in appointing Colonel John N. Partridge as commissioner of police, Mayor Low chose a weak and inefficient man. The demoralized condition of the police administration under Tammany had long been the special target of the reformers’ attacks, and people had expected a wholesome overhauling of that department under Mayor Low. Colonel Partridge’s administration, however, was so disappointing that the City Club was moved to demand his resignation. It criticized Commissioner Partridge for taking no adequate measures to break up the alliance between the police and crime, or to get a proper understanding of the underlying conditions in the police department, and further criticized him for surrounding himself at headquarters with notoriously corrupt officers, one of whom, in fact, was made his principal uniformed adviser.