The Booming of Acre Hill - John Kendrick Bangs (books for 8th graders TXT) 📗

all the gods politics shall know me no more."

"It was all right--my asking O'Hara, Thaddeus?" asked Mrs. Perkins.

"Oh yes, certainly, my dear--perfectly right. O'Hara is indeed, as you thought, the most noted, not to say notorious, contractor in town, only he's not laying pipes just now. He's pulling wires."

"For telephones, I presume?" said the old lady, placidly.

"Well, in a way," replied Thaddeus. "There's a great deal of vocality about O'Hara's wires. But, Bess," he added, seriously, "just drop the lamps until we get 'em, and confine your telephoning to your intimate friends. An Irishman on a telephone in political times is apt to be a trifle--er--artless in his choice of words. If you must talk to one of 'em, remember to put in the lightning plug before you begin."

With which injunction the candidate departed to address the Mohawks, an independent political organization in the Second Ward, which was made up of thinking men who never indorsed a candidate without knowing why, and rarely before three o'clock of the afternoon of election day at that, by whom he was received with cheers and back-slapping and button-holings which convinced him that he was the most popular man on earth, though on election day--but election day has yet to be described. It came, and with it there came to Perkins a feeling very much like that which the small boy experiences on the day before Christmas. He has been good for two months, and he knows that to-morrow the period of probation will be over and he can be as bad as he pleases again for a little while anyhow.

"However it turns out, I can tell 'em all to go to the devil to-morrow," chuckled Thaddeus, rubbing his hands gleefully.

"I don't think you ought to forget the lamps, Thaddeus," observed the mother-in-law at breakfast. "Here it is election day and you haven't yet decided where they shall go. Now I really think--"

"Never mind the lamps," returned Thaddeus. "Let's talk of ballot-boxes to-day. To-morrow we can place the lamps."

"Very well, if you say so," said the old lady; "only I marvel at you latter-day boys. In my young days a small matter like that would have been settled long ago."

"Well, I'll compromise with you," said Thaddeus. "We won't wait until to-morrow. I'll decide the question to-night--I'm really too busy now to think of them."

"I shall be glad when we don't have to think about 'em at all," sighed Mrs. Perkins, pouring out the candidate's coffee. "They've really been a care to me. I don't like the idea of putting them on the porch, or on the gate-posts either. They'll have to be kept clean, and goodness knows I can't ask the girls to go out in the middle of winter to clean them if they are on the gate-posts."

"Mike will clean them," said Thaddeus.

Mrs. Perkins sniffed when Mike's name was mentioned. "I doubt it," she said. "He's been lots of good for two weeks."

"Mike has been lots of good for two weeks," echoed Thaddeus, enthusiastically. "He's kept all the hired men in line, my dear."

"I've no doubt he's been of use politically, but from a domestic point of view he's been awful. He's been drunk for the last week."

"Well, my love," said the candidate, despairingly, "some member of the family had to be drunk for the last week, and I'd rather it was Mike than you or any of the children. Mike's geniality has shed a radiance about me among the hired men of this town that fills me with pride."

"I don't see, to go back to what I said in the very beginning, why we can't have the lamps in-doors," returned Mrs. Perkins.

"I told you why not, my dear," said Perkins. "They are the perquisite of the Mayor, but for the benefit of the public, because the public pays for them."

"And hasn't the public, as you call it, taken possession of the inside of your house?" demanded the mother-in-law. "I found seven gentlemen sitting in the white and gold parlor only last night, and they hadn't wiped their feet either."

"You don't understand," faltered the standard-bearer. "That business isn't permanent. To-morrow I'll tell them to go round to the back door and ask the cook."

"Humph!" said the mother-in-law. "I'm surprised at you. For a few paltry votes you--" Just here the front door bell rang, and the business of the day beginning stopped the conversation, which bade fair to become unpleasant.

* * * * *


Night came. The votes were being counted, and at six o'clock Perkins was informed that everything was going his way.

"Get your place ready for a brass band and a serenade," his manager telephoned.

"I sha'n't!" ejaculated the candidate to himself, his old-time independence asserting itself now that the polls were closed--and he was right. He didn't have to. The band did not play in his front yard, for at eight o'clock the tide that had set in strong for Perkins turned. At ten, according to votes that had been counted, things were about even, and the ladies retired. At twelve Perkins turned out the gas.

"That settles the lamp question, anyhow," he whispered to himself as he went up-stairs, and then he went into Mrs. Perkins's room.

"Well, Bess," he said, "it's all over, and I've made up my mind as to where the lamps are to go."

"Good!" said the little woman. "On the gate-posts?"

"No, dear. In the parlor--the cloisonne lamps from Tiffany's."

"Why, I thought you said we couldn't--"

"Well, we can. Our lamps can go in there whether the public likes it or not. We are emancipated."

"But I don't understand," began Mrs. Perkins.

"Oh, it's simple," said Thaddeus, with a sigh of mingled relief and chagrin. "It's simple enough. The other lamps are to be put--er--on Captain Haskins's place."



THE BALANCE OF POWER

It was a pleasant night in the spring of 189-.

The residents of Dumfries Corners were enjoying an early spring, and suffering from the demoralizing influences of a municipal election. Incidentally Mr. Thaddeus Perkins, candidate, was beginning to feel very much like Moses when he saw the promised land afar. The promised land was now in plain sight; but whether or not the name of Perkins should be inscribed in one of its high places depended upon the voters who on the morrow were to let their ballots express their choice as to who should preside over the interests of the city and hold in check the fiery, untamed aldermen of Dumfries Corners.

The candidate was tired, very tired, and was trying to gain a few hours' rest before plunging again and for the last time into the whirlpool of vote-getting; and as he sat enjoying a few moments of blissful ease behind the close-drawn portieres of his library there came the much-dreaded sound of heavy feet upon the porch without, and the door-bell rang.

"Norah!" cried the candidate, in an agonized stage-whisper, as the maid approached in answer to the summons, "tell them I'm out, unless it's some one of my personal friends."

"Yis, sorr," was the answer. "Oi will."

And the door was opened.

"Is Misther Perkins in?" came a deep, unmistakably "voting" voice from without.

"Oi dun'no'. Are yees a personal friend of Misther Perkins?" was the response, and the heart of the listening Perkins sought his boots.

"Oi am not, but--" said the deep voice.

"Thin he isn't in," said Norah, positively.

"When 'll he be back?" asked the visitor, huskily.

"Ye say ye niver met him?" demanded Norah.

"Oi told ye oi hadn't," said the visitor, a trifle irritably. "But--"

"Thin he'll niver be back," put in the glorious Norah, and she shut the door with considerable force and retired.

For a moment the candidate was overcome; first he paled, but then catching Mrs. Perkins's eye and noting a twinkle of amusement therein, he yielded to his emotions and roared with laughter. What if Norah's manner was unconventional? Had she not carried out instructions?

"My dear," said the candidate to Mrs. Perkins, as the shuffling feet on the porch shuffled off into the night, "what wages do you pay Norah?"

"Sixteen dollars, Thaddeus," was the answer. "Why?"

"Make it twenty hereafter," replied the candidate. "She is an emerald beyond price. If I had only let her meet the nominating committee when they entered our little Eden three weeks ago, I should not now be involved in this wretched game of politics."

"Well, I sincerely wish you had," Mrs. Perkins observed, heartily. "This affair has made a very different man of you, and as for your family, they hardly see you any more. You are neglecting every single household duty for your horrid old politics."

"Well, now, my dear--" began the candidate.

"The pipes in the laundry have been leaking for four days now, and yet you won't send for a plumber, or even let me send for one," continued Mrs. Perkins.

"Well, Bessie dear, how can I? The race is awfully close. It wouldn't surprise me if the majority either way was less than a hundred."

"There you go again, Thaddeus. What on earth has the leak in the laundry pipes to do with the political situation?" asked the puzzled woman.

The candidate showed that in spite of his recent affiliations he still retained some remnant of his former self-respect, for he blushed as he thought of the explanation; but he tried nevertheless to shuffle out of it.

"Of course you can't understand," he said, with a cowardly resolve to shirk the issue. "That's because you are a woman, Bess. Women don't understand great political questions. And what I have particularly liked about you is that you never pretended that you did."

"Well, I'd like to know," persisted Mrs. Perkins. "I want to be of as much assistance to my husband in his work as I can, and if public questions are hereafter to be the problems of your life, they must become my problems too. Besides, my curiosity is really aroused in this especial case, and I'd love to know what bearing our calling a plumber has upon the tariff, or the money question, or any other thing in politics."

The candidate hesitated. He was cornered, and he did not exactly like the prospect.

"Well--" he began. "You see, I'm standing as the representative of a great party, and we--we naturally wish to win. If I am defeated, every one will say that it is a rebuke to the administration at Washington; and so, you see, we'd better let those leaks leak until day after to-morrow, when the voting will all be over."

Mrs. Perkins looked at her husband narrowly.

"I think I'll have to call the doctor," was her comment. "Either for you or for myself, Teddy. One of us is gone--wholly gone, mentally. There's no question about it, either you are rambling in your speech, or I have entirely lost all comprehension of the English language."

"I don't see--" began Perkins.

"Neither do I," interrupted Mrs. Perkins; "and I hardly hope to. You've explained and explained, but how a plumber's calling here to fix a laundry leak is to rebuke the administration at Washington is still far beyond me."

"But the plumbers are said to hold the balance