Mason grew a little red, and looked nettled. “Don’t take that to yerself,” said Larry, noticing this; “I ain’t a-backheelin’ you or any other man; it’s the reformers as a bunch that I’m hittin’. When they hear of a crooked job they start to kick up the dust, hold meetin’s at the Academy of Music and do other red-hot stunts; then the first t’ing youse know they’re backin’ up the worst kind of a gang of tin horn pipes who are on’y fightin’ the administration because they ain’t in on the rake-off. If they win out, the pipes git the plums and work ranker jobs than the other bunch ever thought of, and then the reformers flop over into the other camp and trot the race all over again. Ain’t I right?” “There is some truth in this,” said Mason, “but then fusion is our only hope; we have not the strength to name and elect a man of our own.” “As long as youse t’ink that ye’ll be easy game. Say, the people who wants the cards dealt square in the city’s got the bulge, but they’re dead leary on gettin’ their hands dirty; a man with aces in his fist is beat if he don’t use ’em at the show down.” “I take it that you would support a reform delegation providing you were satisfied it was controlled by reformers.” “Not on yer life! Le’me tell youse somethin’. Some o’ the fiercest guys what ever broke into politics, started their turn as reformers, and I don’t take no chances on havin’ a confidence game worked on me, see? The man what goes to the convention from this division stands to do a certain t’ing; he’s sent there to do it by the voters and he does it. Nobody outside’s got anyt’ing to say.” “That’s as it should be,” said Mason. “But in how many divisions or wards is that the case? The ring controls the primaries in nine out of ten of them; the voice of the man with the ballot is seldom or never heard. Slavery was a liberal institution compared with the electoral serfdom that exists in some of our municipalities.” Mason’s warmth led him into exaggeration; but Larry had views upon this particular subject himself and proceeded to unburden himself. “Youse’re dead right!” declared he. “I was talkin’ to the old coon what peddles calamus root to the avenoo, the other day, an’ he said that he wished he was a slave again, pickin’ cotton an’ dancin’ the buck. He says that he got a skin full o’ corn pone then, but that it keeps him scratchin’ with both hands these days to git next to anything with more stick in it than water. Say, the Uncle Tom racket wasn’t a bad graft when ye look at it right, and maybe it’ed been a good t’ing for the wool growers if Uncle Abe had changed his mind.” Mason smiled at Larry’s literal interpretation of his words and made a vague remark regarding the blessings of liberty. But the other received it with contempt.