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CHAPTER III – THE BOSS SEES THE POWER OF TAMMANY

THAT night under lock and key was a night of laughed and screamed like bedlam. Once I heard the low click of sobs, and thought it might be poor unhappy Apple Cheek. The surmise went wide, for she was held in another part of the prison.

It was in the first streaks of the morning before I slept. My slumbers did not last long; it seemed as though I had but shut my eyes when a loud rap of iron on iron brought me up, and there stood one armed of a key so large it might have done for the gate of a giant’s castle. It was this man hammering with his weapon on the grate of my cell that roused me.

“Now then, young gallows-bird,” said the functionary, “be you ready for court?”

The man, while rough, gave me no hard impression, for he wore a tolerant grin and had eyes of friendly brown. These amiable signs endowed me with courage to ask a question.

“What will they do with me?” I queried. I was long delirium. Drunken men babbled and cursed and shouted; while a lunatic creature anxious, for I had no experience to be my guide. “What will they do? Will they let me go?”

“Sure! they’ll let you go.” My hopes gained their feet. “To Blackwell’s.” My hopes lay prone again.

The turnkey, for such was the man’s station, had but humored me with one of the stock jokes of the place. On seeing my distress, and perhaps remembering that I should be something tender if years were to count, and no frequent tenant of the cells with sensibilities trained to the safe consistency of leather, he made me further reply.

“No, I’ll tell you the truth, youngster. If you plead guilty, an’ there’s no one there but the cop, it’ll be about ten dollars or twenty days on the Island. But if Sheeny Joe comes ‘round to exhibit his nose, or Big Kennedy shows up to stall ag’inst you, why I should say you might take six months and call yourself in luck.”

There was nothing to brighten the eye in the story, and my ribs seemed to inclose a heart of wood.

With a vile dozen to be my companions, frowsy, bleary creatures, some shaking with the dumb ague of drink whose fires had died out, I was driven along a narrow corridor, up a pair of stairs, and into a room of respectable size! Its dimensions, however, would be its only claim to respectability, for the walls and ceiling were smoke-blackened, while the floor might have come the better off for a pailful of soap and water.

Once within the room I found myself in a railed pen. Against the wall, with a desk before him and raised above the herd by a platform, sat the magistrate. There was a fence which divided the big room, and beyond and leaning on it lolled the public, leering and listening, as hard an array as one might wish to see. One might have sentenced the entire roomful to the workhouse and made few mistakes.

Inside this fence, and gathered for the most part about the magistrate, were those who had business with the court; officers, witnesses, friends and enemies of the accused, with last although not least a collection of the talent of the bar. Many of these latter were brisk Jews, and all of them were marked by soiled linen, frayed elbows, greasy collars, and an evident carelessness as to the state of their hands and faces. There were boys to wait on these folk of law, a boy to each I should say. None of these urchins was older than was I, and some no more than twelve. They carried baize bags, chatted gravely while waiting the call of their masters, and gave themselves strutting airs and brows of consequence. These engaging children, in a spirit of loyalty, doubtless, showed themselves as untainted of water as were their betters.

While I rehearse these sordid appearances as developed in the dim lights which through the grimy windows fell across the scene, you are not to suppose the notice of them preyed upon me. I was, in that hour, neither so squeamish nor so observant as to make particular note of them, nor was I to that degree the slave of soap in my own roving person, as to justify the risk of strictures which might provoke retort. Besides, I was thinking dolefully on that trip to Blackwell’s Island whereof the future seemed so full, and my eyes scanned the judge on the bench rather than lesser folk who were not so important in my affairs.

While in the mills of great misery, still I was steady enough. I turned my gaze upon the magistrate, and sought in his looks and words, as he went about the sorry destinies of other delinquents, some slant of what I might look forward to for myself. The dignitary in question showed lean and sallow and bald, with a sly face and an eye whereof the great expression was one of sleepless self-interest. He did not come upon you as either brave or good, but he had nothing brutal or vindictive, and his timid mealy voice was shaken by a quaver that seemed a perpetual apology for what judgments he from time to time would pass. His sentences were invariably light, except in instances where some strong influence from the outside, generally a politician or the agent of a big company, arose to demand severity.

While within the railed pen with those other unfortunates whom the dragnets of the police had brought to these mean shores, and in an interval when my fascinated eyes were off the magistrate, I caught sight of Anne and my father. They had seats inside the fence. The latter’s face was clouded with simple trouble; he wore his Sunday coat, and his hands, hard and showing the stains of his forge, roved in uneasy alternation from his pockets to his lapels and back again. Anne’s young eyes were worn and tired, for she had slept as little as had I and wept much more the night before. I could not discover Apple Cheek, although I looked about the room for her more than once. I had it in my hopes that they had given Apple Cheek her freedom, and the thought was a half-relief. Nothing of such decent sort had come to pass, however; Apple Cheek was waiting with two or three harridans, her comrades of the cells, in an adjoining room.

When my name was called, an officer of the court opened a gate in the prisoner’s pen and motioned me to come forth.

“Hurry up!” said the officer, who was for expedition. “W’at’s the trouble with your heels? You aint got no ball an’ chain on yet, you know.”

Then he gave me a chair in front of the magistrate, where the man of power might run me up and down with his shifty deprecatory eye.

“There was a girl brought in with him, your honor,” remarked the officer at the gate.

“Have her out, then,” said the magistrate; whereupon Apple Cheek, a bit disheveled and cheeks redder than ever with the tears she had shed, was produced and given a seat by my side.

“Who complains of these defendants?” asked the magistrate in a mild non-committal voice, glancing about the room.

“I do, your honor.”

It was Sheeny Joe who came pushing to the fore from a far corner. His head had received the benefit of several bandages, and it gave me a dullish joy to think it was I to furnish the reason of them.

The magistrate appeared to know Sheeny Joe, and to hold him in regard at that. The moment my enemy declared himself as the complainant, and no one springing up to take my part, the magistrate bent upon me a stony glance that spoke plainly of those six months concerning which the turnkey told. I gave up everything, myself and Apple Cheek, as surely lost.

“Tell your story,” said the magistrate to Sheeny Joe. His manner was full of commiseration for that unworthy. “What did he assault you with?”

“With a blackjack, your honor, or a piece of lead pipe,” replied Sheeny Joe. “He struck me when I wasn’t lookin’. I’m busy trying to tell the girl there w’at hotel she wants. He gives it to me over the head from behind; then as I wheels, he smashes me across the nose. I couldn’t see with w’at, but it was a bar of some kind, mebby iron, mebby lead. As I goes down, I hears the sketch – the girl, I mean – sing out, ‘Kill him!’ The girl was eggin’ him on, your honor.”

Sheeny Joe unwound this string of lies without hitch or pause, and withal so rapidly it fair stole my breath away. I felt the eyes of the magistrate upon me; I knew my danger and yet could come by no words for my own defense. I make no doubt, had it not been for a diversion as unlooked-for as it was welcome, I would have been marked for prison where I stood.

“I demand to be heard,” came suddenly, in a high angry voice. “What that rogue has just uttered is all a pack of lies together!”

It was the reputable old gentleman of the evening before who thus threw himself in the way of events. Being escorted through the press of onlookers by an officer, the reputable old gentleman stood squarely in front of the magistrate.

“I demand justice for that boy,” fumed the reputable old gentleman, glaring at the magistrate, and growing crimson in the face; “I demand a jury. As for the girl, she wasn’t ten minutes off the boat; her only part in the offense would seem to be that this scoundrel,” pointing to Sheeny Joe, “was striving to lure her to a low resort.”

“The Dead Rabbit a low resort!” cried Sheeny

Joe indignantly. “The place is as straight as a gun.”

“Will you please tell me who you are?” asked the magistrate of the reputable old gentleman. He had resumed his non-committal look. The confident vigor of the reputable old gentleman disconcerted him and made him wary.

“I am a taxpayer,” said the reputable old gentleman; “yes,” donning an air as though the thunders and lightnings of politics dwelt in the word, “yes, your honor, a taxpayer. I do not know this boy, but here are his father and sister to speak for him.” Then, as he caught sight of the captain who had ordered him out of the station: “There is a man, your honor, who by the hands of his minions drove me from a public police office – me, a taxpayer!”

The captain grinned easily to find himself thus distinguished. The grin irritated the reputable old gentleman, who was even more peppery than reputable.

“Smile, sir!” cried the reputable old gentleman, shaking his wrathful finger at the captain. “I shall have you before your superiors on charges before I’m done!”

“That’s what they all say,” remarked the captain, stifling a yawn.

“One thing at a time, sir,” said the magistrate to the reputable old gentleman. His attitude was wheedling and propitiatory. “Did I understand you to say that the gentleman and the lady at your back are the father and sister of this boy?”

My father and Anne had taken their stations to the rear of the reputable old gentleman. The latter, looking around as if to identify them, replied:

“If the court please, I’m told so.”

“Your honor,” broke in Sheeny Joe with a front of injury, “w’at’s that got to do with his sandbaggin’ me? Am I to be murdered w’en peacefully about me business, just ‘cause a guy’s got a father?”

“What were you saying to this girl?” asked the magistrate mildly of Sheeny Joe, and indicating Apple Cheek with his eye where she sat tearful and frightened by my side. “This gentleman” – the reputable old gentleman snorted fiercely – “declares that you were about to lure her to a low resort.”

“Your honor, it was the Dead Rabbit,” said Sheeny Joe.

“Is the Dead Rabbit,” observed the magistrate, to the captain, who was still lounging about, “is the Dead Rabbit a place of good repute?”

“It aint no Astor House,” replied the captain, “but no one expects an Astor House in Water Street.”

“Is it a resort for thieves?”

The magistrate still advanced his queries in a fashion apologetic and subdued. The reputable old gentleman impressed him as one he would not like to offend. Then, too, there was my father – an honest working-man by plain testimony of his face. On the other hand stood Sheeny Joe, broken of nose, bandaged, implacable. Here were three forces of politics, according to our magistrate, who was thinking on a re-election; he would prefer to please them all. Obviously, he in no sort delighted in his present position, since whichever way he turned it might be a turn toward future disaster for himself.

“Is the Dead Rabbit a resort for thieves?” again asked the magistrate.

“Well,” replied the captain judgmatically, “even a crook has got to go somewhere. That is,” he added, “when he aint in hock.”

Where this criss-cross colloquy of justice or injustice might have left me, and whether free or captive, I may only guess. The proceedings were to gain another and a final interruption. This time it was the red-faced man, he who had called himself “Big Kennedy,” to come panting into the presence of the court. The red-faced man had hurried up the stairs, three steps at a time, and it told upon his breathing.

The magistrate made a most profound bow to the red-faced man. Remembering the somber prophecy of him with the big key, should “Big Kennedy show up to Stall ag’inst me,” my hope, which had revived with the stand taken by the reputable old gentleman, sunk now to lowest marks.

“What will you have, Mr. Kennedy?” purred the magistrate obsequiously.

“Is the court going to dispose of the cases of this boy and this girl?” interrupted the reputable old gentleman warmly. “I demand a jury trial for both of them. I am a taxpayer and propose to have justice.”

“Hold up, old sport, hold up!” exclaimed the redfaced man in cheerful tones. He was addressing the reputable old gentleman. “Let me get to work. I’ll settle this thing like throwin’ dice.”

“What do you mean, sir, by calling me an old sport?” demanded the reputable old gentleman.

The red-faced man did not heed the question, but wheeled briskly on the magistrate.

“Your honor,” said the red-faced man, “there’s nothin’ to this. Sheeny Joe there has made a misdeal, that’s all. I’ve looked the case over, your honor; there’s nothin’ in it; you can let the girl an’ the boy go.”

“But he said the Dead Rabbit was a drum for crooks!” protested Sheeny Joe, speaking to the redfaced man.

“S’ppose he did,” retorted the other, “that don’t take a dollar out of the drawer.”

“An’ he’s to break my nose an’ get away?” complained Sheeny Joe.

“Well, you oughter to take care of your nose,” said the red-faced man, “an’ not go leavin’ it lyin’ around where a kid can break it.”

Sheeny Joe was not to be shaken off; he engaged in violent argument with the red-faced man. Their tones, however, were now more guarded, and no one might hear their words beyond themselves. While this went forward, the magistrate, to save his dignity, perhaps, and not to have it look as though he were waiting for orders, pretended to be writing in his book of cases which lay open on his desk.

It was Sheeny Joe to bring the discussion between himself and the red-faced man to an end. Throughout the whispered differences between them, differences as to what should be my fate, Sheeny Joe showed hot with fury, while the red-faced man was cool and conciliatory; his voice when one caught some sound of it was coaxing.

“There’s been enough said!” cried Sheeny Joe, suddenly walking away from the red-faced man. “No duck is goin’ to break my nose for fun.”

“The boy’s goin’ loose,” observed the red-faced man in placid contradiction. “An’ the girl goes to her friends, wherever they be, an’ they aint at the Dead Rabbit.” Then in a blink the countenance of the redfaced man went from calm to rage. He whirled Sheeny Joe by the shoulder. “See here!” he growled, “one more roar out of you, an’ I’ll stand you up right now, an’ it’s you who will take sixty days, or my name aint Big John Kennedy. If you think that’s a bluff, call it. Another yeep, an’ the boat’s waitin’ for you! You’ve been due at the Island for some time.”

“That’s all right, Mr. Kennedy!” replied Sheeny Joe, his crest falling, and the sharpest terror in his face, “that’s all right! You know me? Of course it goes as you say! Did you ever know me to buck ag’inst you?”

The red-faced man smiled ferociously. The anger faded from his brow, and leaving Sheeny Joe without further word, he again spoke to the magistrate.

“The charges ag’inst these two children, your honor, are withdrawn.” He spoke in his old cool tones. “Captain,” he continued, addressing that dignitary, “send one of your plain-clothes people with this girl to find her friends for her. Tell him he mustn’t make any mistakes.”

“The cases are dismissed,” said the magistrate, making an entry in his book. He appeared relieved with the change in the situation; almost as much, if that were possible, as myself. “The cases are dismissed; no costs to be taxed. I think that is what you desire, Mr. Kennedy?”

“Yes, your honor.” Then coming over to where I sat, the red-faced man continued: “You hunt me up to-morrow – Big John Kennedy – that’s my name. Any cop can tell you where to find me.”

“Yes, sir,” I answered faintly.

“There’s two things about you,” said the red-faced man, rubbing my stubble of hair with his big paw, “that’s great in a boy. You can hit like the kick of a pony; an’ you can keep your mouth shut. I aint heard a yelp out of you, mor’n if you was a Boston terrier.” This, admiringly.

As we left the magistrate’s office – the red-faced man, the reputable old gentleman, my father, Apple Cheek, and myself, with Anne holding my hand as though I were some treasure lost and regained – the reputable old gentleman spoke up pompously to the red-faced man.

“I commend what you have done, sir; but in that connection, and as a taxpayer, let me tell you that I resent your attitude towards the magistrate. You issued your orders, sir, and conducted yourself toward that officer of justice as though you owned him.”

“Well, what of it?” returned the red-faced man composedly. “I put him there. What do you think I put him there for? To give me the worst of it?”

“Sir, I do not understand your expressions!” said the reputable old gentleman. “And I resent them! Yes, sir, I resent them as a taxpayer of this town!”

“Say,” observed the red-faced man benignantly, “there’s nothin’ wrong about you but your head. You had better take a term or two at night school an’ get it put on straight. You say you’re a taxpayer; you’ve already fired the fact at me about five times. An’ now I ask you: Suppose you be?”

“Taxpayer; yes, sir, taxpayer!” repeated the reputable old gentleman, in a mighty fume. “Do you intend to tell me there’s no meaning to the word?”

“It means,” said the red-faced man in the slow manner of one who gives instruction; “it means that if you’re nothin’ but a taxpayer – an’ I don’t think you be or you’d have told us – you might as well sit down. You’re a taxpayer, eh? All right; I’m a ward-leader of Tammany Hall. You’re a taxpayer; good! I’m the man that settles how much you pay, d’ye see!” Then, as though sympathy and disgust were blended: “Old man, you go home and take a hard look at the map, and locate yourself. You don’t know it, but all the same you’re in New York.”

CHAPTER IV – THE BOSS ENTERS THE PRIMARY GRADE OF POLITICS

PERHAPS you will say I waste space and lay too much of foolish stress upon my quarrel with Sheeny Joe and its police-cell consequences. And yet you should be mindful of the incident’s importance to me as the starting point of my career. For I read in what took place the power of the machine as you will read this printed page. I went behind the bars by the word of Big John Kennedy; and it was by his word that I emerged and took my liberty again. And yet who was Big John Kennedy? He was the machine; the fragment of its power which molded history in the little region where I lived. As mere John Kennedy he would be nothing. Or at the most no more than other men about him. But as “Big John Kennedy,” an underchief of Tammany Hall, I myself stood witness while a captain of police accepted his commands without a question, and a magistrate found folk guilty or innocent at the lifting of his finger. Also, that sweat of terror to sprinkle the forehead of Sheeny Joe, when in his moment of rebellion he found himself beneath the wrathful shadow of the machine, was not the least impressive element of my experience; and the tolerant smile, that was half pity, half amusement, as Big Kennedy set forth to the reputable old gentleman – who was only “a taxpayer” – the little limits of his insignificance, deepened the effect upon my mind of what had gone before.

True, I indulged in no such analysis as the above, and made no study of the picture in its detail; but I could receive an impression just as I might receive a blow, and in the innocence of my ignorance began instantly to model myself upon the proven fact of a power that was above law, above justice, and which must be consulted and agreed with, even in its caprice, before existence could be profitable or even safe. From that moment the machine to me was as obviously and indomitably abroad as the pavement under foot, and must have its account in every equation of life to the solution whereof I was set. To hold otherwise, and particularly to act otherwise, would be to play the fool, with failure or something worse for a reward.

Big Kennedy owned a drinking place. His barroom was his headquarters; although he himself never served among his casks and bottles, having barmen for that work. He poured no whisky, tapped no beer, donned no apron, but sat at tables with his customers and laid out his campaigns of politics or jubilated over victory, and seemed rather the visitor than the proprietor in his own saloon. He owned shrewdness, force, courage, enterprise, and was one of those who carry a pleasant atmosphere that is like hypnotism, and which makes men like them. His manner was one of rude frankness, and folk held him for a bluff, blunt, genial soul, who made up in generosity what he lacked of truth.

And yet I have thought folk mistaken in Big Kennedy. For all his loud openness and friendly roar, which would seem to tell his every thought, the man could be the soul of cunning and turn secret as a mole. He was for his own interest; he came and went a cold calculating trader of politics; he never wasted his favors, but must get as much as he gave, and indulged in no revenges except when revenge was needed for a lesson. He did what men call good, too, and spent money and lost sleep in its accomplishment. To the ill he sent doctors and drugs; he found work and wages for idle men; he paid landlords and kept the roofs above the heads of the penniless; where folk were hungry he sent food, and where they were cold came fuel.

For all that, it was neither humanity nor any milk of kindness which put him to these labors of grace; it was but his method of politics and meant to bind men to him. They must do his word; they must carry out his will; then it was he took them beneath the wing of his power and would spare neither time nor money to protect and prosper them.

And on the other side, he who raised his head in opposition to Big Kennedy was crushed; not in anger, but in caution. He weeded out rebellion, and the very seed of it, with as little scruple and for the same reason a farmer weeds a field.

It took me years to collect these truths of Big Kennedy. Nor was their arrival when they did come one by one, to make a shade of change in my regard for him. I liked him in the beginning; I liked him in the end; he became that headland on the coasts of politics by which I steered my course. I studied Big Kennedy as one might study a science; by the lines of his conduct I laid down lines for my own; in all things I was his disciple and his imitator.

Big Kennedy is dead now; and I will say no worse nor better of him than this: He was a natural captain of men. Had he been born to a higher station, he might have lighted a wick in history that would require those ten thicknesses of darkness which belong with ten centuries, to obscure. But no such thing could come in the instance of Big Kennedy; his possibilities of eminence, like my own, were confined to Tammany and its politics, since he had no more of education than have I. The time has gone by in the world at large, and had in Big Kennedy’s day, when the ignorant man can be the first man.

Upon the day following my release, as he had bid me.

I sought Big Kennedy. He was in his barroom, and the hour being mid-morning I was so far lucky as to find him quite alone. He was quick to see me, too, and seemed as full of a pleasant interest in me as though my simple looks were of themselves good news. He did most of the talking, for I sat backward and bashful, the more since I could feel his sharp eyes upon me, taking my measure. Never was I so looked over and so questioned, and not many minutes had come and gone before Big Kennedy knew as much of me and my belongings as did I myself. Mayhap more; for he weighed me in the scales of his experience with all the care of gold, considering meanwhile to what uses I should be put, and how far I might be expected to advance his ends.

One of his words I recall, for it gave me a glow of relief at the time; at that it was no true word. It was when he heard how slightly I had been taught of books.

“Never mind,” said he, “books as often as not get between a party’s legs and trip him up. Better know men than books. There’s my library.” Here he pointed to a group about a beer table. “I can learn more by studyin’ them than was ever found between the covers of a book, and make more out of it.”

Big Kennedy told me I must go to work.

“You’ve got to work, d’ye see,” said he, “if it’s only to have an excuse for livin’.”

Then he asked me what I could do. On making nothing clear by my replies – for I knew of nothing – he descended to particulars.

“What do you know of horses? Can you drive one?”

My eye brightened; I might be trusted to handle a horse.

“An’ I’ll gamble you know your way about the East Side,” said he confidently; “I’ll answer for that.” Then getting up he started for the door, for no grass grew between decision and action with Big Kennedy. “Come with me,” he said.

We had made no mighty journey when we stopped before a grocery. It was a two-store front, and of a prosperous look, with a wealth of vegetables and fruits in crates, and baskets, and barrels, covering half the sidewalk. The proprietor was a rubicund German, who bustled forth at sight of my companion.

“How is Mr. Kennedy?” This with exuberance. “It makes me prout that you pay me a wisit.”

“Yes?” said the other dryly. Then, going directly to the point: “Here’s a boy I’ve brought you, Nick. Let him drive one of your wagons. Give him six dollars a week.”

“But, Mr. Kennedy,” replied the grocer dubiously, looking me over with the tail of his eye, “I haf yet no wacancy. My wagons is all full.”

“I’m goin’ to get him new duds,” said Big Kennedy, “if that’s what you’re thinkin’ about.”

Still, the grocer, though not without some show of respectful alarm, insisted on a first position.

“If he was so well dressed even as you, Mr. Kennedy, yet I haf no wacancy,” said he.

“Then make one,” responded Big Kennedy coolly. “Dismiss one of the boys you have, d’ye see? At least two who work for you don’t belong in my ward.” As the other continued doubtful Big Kennedy became sharp. “Come, come, come!” he cried in a manner peremptory rather than fierce; “I can’t wait all day. Don’t you feed your horses in the street? Don’t you obstruct the sidewalks with your stuff? Don’t you sell liquor in your rear room without a license? Don’t you violate a dozen ordinances? Don’t the police stand it an’ pass you up? An’ yet you hold me here fiddlin’ and foolin’ away time!”

“Yes, yes, Mr. Kennedy,” cried the grocer, who from the first had sought to stem the torrent of the other’s eloquence, “I was only try in’ to think up w’ich horse I will let him drive alreatty. That’s honest! sure as my name is Nick Fogel!”

Clothed in what was to me the splendors of a king, being indeed a full new suit bought with Big Kennedy’s money, I began rattling about the streets with a delivery wagon the very next day. As well as I could, I tried to tell my thanks for the clothes.

“That’s all right,” said Big Kennedy. “I owe you that much for havin’ you chucked into a cell.”

While Grocer Fogel might have been a trifle slow in hiring me, once I was engaged he proved amiable enough. I did my work well too, missing few of the customers and losing none of the baskets and sacks. Grocer Fogel was free with his praise and conceded my value. Still, since he instantly built a platform in the street on the strength of my being employed, and so violated a new and further ordinance upon which he for long had had an eye, I have sometimes thought that in forming his opinion of my worth he included this misdemeanor in his calculations. However, I worked with my worthy German four years; laying down the reins of that delivery wagon of my own will at the age of nineteen.

Nor was I without a profit in this trade of delivering potatoes and cabbages and kindred grocery forage. It broadened the frontiers of my acquaintance, and made known to me many of a solvent middle class, and of rather a higher respectability than I might otherwise have met. It served to clean up my manners, if nothing more, and before I was done, that acquaintance became with me an asset of politics.

While I drove wagon for Grocer Fogel, my work of the day was over with six o’clock. I had nothing to do with the care of the horses; I threw the reins to a stable hand when at evening I went to the barn, and left for my home without pausing to see the animals out of the straps or their noses into the corn. Now, had I been formed with a genius for it, I might have put in a deal of time at study. But nothing could have been more distant from my taste or habit; neither then nor later did I engage myself in any traffic with books, and throughout my life never opened a half-dozen.

Still, considering those plans I had laid down for myself, and that future of politics to which my ambition began to consider, I cannot say I threw away my leisure. If my nose were not between the pages of a book, my hands were within a pair of boxing gloves, and I, engaged against this or that opponent, was leading or guarding, hitting or stopping, rushing or getting away, and fitting to an utmost hand and foot and eye and muscle for the task of beating a foeman black and blue should the accidents or duties of life place one before me.