Politics had been McQuirk’s study for years, and he had been an apt scholar. He knew nothing of the profundity of statesmanship, and cared less; he had never made a speech upon his feet, and could not had his life depended upon it. But what he did not know of practical politics, as his friend Moran was in the habit of saying, was not worth knowing. He possessed a genius for organization: in getting out the full vote he was unexcelled, and he dominated the freemen of his district by one of three things: Favour--the expectation of favour--the fear of disfavour. There were people in the ward that had known him when he was a dump-cart driver, and others who remembered a later period when his only visible means of support was Sunday poker-playing in the parlours of social clubs. Then he became a political hanger-on; he fetched and carried for the powers that were and by his astuteness gained their favour. Little by little he rose in power, and at length, was sent, under orders, to represent his division in the ward committee. From that time he grew visibly; his name began to appear in the political columns of the Sunday papers and he took to wearing a silk hat. Then came the revolt of a clique of workers that presaged disaster to the ward machine; McQuirk saw his opportunity, threw himself at the head of the insurgents and in a desperate battle of the ballots, came off victorious. His old benefactors were driven to the wall and ruthlessly knifed, and McQuirk stood at the head of the committee in the pivotal ward of the district. With a solid phalanx of admirers and a chain of supporting social clubs behind him, he soon made himself manifest; controlling the most powerful subdivision of the organization, he held the balance of power and was courted and feared. He walked into his first ward convention with his breast pocket stuffed with proxies and dictated the nomination of his bitterest foe; then he threw his strength, in secret, with an independent movement and buried the said foe under an avalanche of ballots that effectually stripped him of his dangerous qualities. As Mr. Haley had remarked, McQuirk was a miracle. James Kelly was sweating blood and spending money, provided by the Motor Traction Company, right and left, to accomplish his nomination. The back room of his saloon, turned into a campaign headquarters, had for weeks been a vortex of activity. The air was never clear of cigar smoke, or the table of beer bottles. Kelly, aided by that rising young politician, Gratten Haley, Nobby Foley and his son, had canvassed the ward from end to end. This did him some good; but vastly greater than their combined exertions was the fact that the boss favoured him--that he was the choice of the machine. “That mocaraw,” said McQuirk, on Tuesday morning as he stood in Moran’s “court,” “has queered the whole shooting match! He’ll have every voter out to-night, either for him or against him, and that’ll bring our other people into the fight.”