Colonel Machiavelli Sneekins sustained an important relation to the Reform movement, and at this Grand Rally of Non-Partisan Citizens in the Interest of Reform, he had, with great propriety, selected himself to be Master of Ceremonies. Colonel Sneekins was a non-partisan citizen. He looked upon partisanship as the curse of the Republic, and in his more enthusiastic moments had declared that if he could have his way about it, any man so hopelessly dead to the nobler impulses of the human heart as to confess himself a partisan should be declared guilty of a felony and confined for a proper period of years at hard labor. What the country called for, according to Colonel Sneekins, was Reform. The first step in bringing about the triumph of Reform was to put all the offices in the hands of Reformers. If the public wished to intoxicate its eyes with the spectacle of the kind of men who would then administer the Government, it had but to look upon him. He was a Reformer. As a Reformer he was in possession of a lucrative municipal office, wherein he was mightily prospering, and which for the honor and glory of Reform he was willing to retain. Colonel Sneekins was the leading spirit of this citizens' movement. He had prepared the call of the meeting. He had obtained the 1500 signatures now appended to it, representing estimable business men who, in observing that useful maxim of trade, "We strive to please," esteemed it one of their functions to sign all the petitions that came along. Colonel Sneekins had hired the hall and the band; had made up from the City Directory a formidable list of Vice-Presidents and Secretaries; had secured the orators, and finally had arranged for the attendance of a sufficient audience. In perfecting these details he had had the valuable assistance of other distinguished Reformers and non-partisan citizens. Editor Hacker, of _The New York Daily Sting_, had boomed the movement with great zeal and effectiveness. General Divvy, the ex-Governor of South Carolina, who had grown wealthy reforming that State and had thereafter naturally come to be regarded as an authority on all matters connected with reform, had written an earnest letter commending the rally as one of the most important steps that had ever been taken in the direction of pure and frugal government. The Rev. Dr. Lillipad Froth, from his pulpit in the Memorial Church of the Sacred Vanities, had taken occasion to say that great results to the community might be expected from the success of this patriotic enterprise, and ex-Congressman Van Shyster, being interviewed by a reporter of _The Sting_, after expressing his unqualified opinion that all political parties were utterly corrupt and abandoned, whereof his opportunity of judging had certainly been excellent, since he had suffered numerous defeats as the candidate of each of them successively, emphatically declared that he saw no hope for the city except in the cause this meeting was called to foster.