new bonnets and toggery of other sorts, and the smirking Wilkins was
there too. He passed the plate after the sermon, and his rectitude shone
out oleaginously on every line of his face. It was as much as I could do
to keep from tripping him up in the aisle, and sending him and the
contribution-plate sprawling. I almost did it when I imagined his
feelings as the nickels rattled down through the register into the
furnace below, but I restrained myself--and the killing glances he threw
into those glass eyes of his, whenever he happened to hold the plate
before one of those Dumfries girls! It was sickening, and I came near to
flying before the close of the service. The others had the same
sensations and temptations, and it is a wonder that Wilkins did not meet
with some dreadful humiliation before he got the collection back into
the chancel. It was a terrible strain on us, and his horrid
unconsciousness that he was anything but perfect, and that the rest of
us were anything more than so many paving stones to be walked on, was
aggravating to a degree. Nothing unusual happened, however, and the
service came to an end, and with it came to us all another surprise, but
this time the surprise gave Wilkins a pain, and I had a front seat when
the blow was dealt.
It had occurred to the immaculate rival of all the manhood of Dumfries
Corners that he would honor Araminta with his society on the way home
from church, and he and I reached her side after service at one and the
same moment.
"May I have the pleasure of seeing you home?" said Wilkins, twirling his
mustache with a "resist me if you can" smile on his lips.
"Don't let me interfere," said I, dryly, and was about to turn away.
"Thank you, Mr. Wilkins," replied Araminta, "but Mr. Smithers has
already asked me."
It was a beautiful, lovely, sweet lie. I hadn't done anything of the
sort, but I'd meant to, of course, and perhaps Araminta had become a
mind reader. Wilkins got a little flushy around his cheek-bones, and
posted off to Fiametta, but she and Burnham were already en route and
apparently reconciled. So it went with all. Wilkins was left. Even my
sister, who, lacking Wilkins, would have to walk home with the
minister's wife, declined, and the fall of the great man was complete.
Mary Brown was the only one remaining in the field, and when he fled to
her she said she wasn't going home.
"Well, then," said Wilkins, "let me take you to wherever you are going?"
"Thank you," returned Miss Brown, "I'm not going there either," and she
joined Araminta and myself, much to our delight, for we have no secrets
from her. And then it all came out.
The girls had not loved us less, or Wilkins more, but they had resolved
to keep Lent with unusual rigor this year.
_They had sworn us off and taken up Wilkins for penance_.
Hard on Wilkins?
Not a bit of it. He's as conscious of his rectitude and as unconscious
of his unpopularity as ever.
Only he is a little more outspoken about women than he used to be, and
somehow or other he has let it creep out that he "doesn't find them
interesting."
"They can't even learn to dance without tripping a fellow up," says he.
THE MAYOR'S LAMPS
The serpent had crept into Eden. The Perkins household for ten years had
been little less than Paradise to its inmates, and then in a single
night the reptile of political ambition had dragged his slimy length
through those happy door-posts and now sat grinning indecently at the
inscription over the library mantel, a ribbon mosaic bearing the
sentiment "Here Dwells Content" let into the tiles thereof.
How it ever happened no man knoweth, but happen it did. Thaddeus Perkins
was snatched from the arms of Peace and plunged headlong into the jaws
of Political Warfare.
"They want me because they think I'm strong," he pleaded, in extenuation
of his acceptance of the nomination for Mayor of his town.
"But you ought to know better," returned Mrs. Perkins, failing to
realize what possible misconstruction her lord and master might put
upon the answer. "The idea of your meddling in politics when you've got
twice as much work as you can do already! I think it's awful!"
"I didn't seek it," he said, after hesitating a moment;
"they've--they've thrust it on me." Then he tried to be funny. "With me,
public office is a public thrust."
"Is there any salary?" asked Mrs. Perkins, treating the jest with the
contempt it merited.
"No," said Thaddeus. "Not a cent; but--"
"Not a cent!" cried Mrs. Perkins. "And you are going to give up all your
career, or at least two years of it, and probably the best two years of
your life, for--"
"Glory," said Thaddeus.
"Glory! Humph," said Mrs. Perkins, "I am not aware that nations are
talking of previous Mayors of Dumfries Corners. Mr. Jiggers's name is
not a household word outside of this city, is it?"
Mr. Jiggers was the gentleman, into whose shoes Thaddeus was seeking to
place his feet--the incumbent of the mighty office to which he aspired.
"Who is the present Lord Mayor of London?" the lady continued.
"Haven't the slightest idea," murmured the standard-bearer of the
Democratic party, hopelessly.
"Or Berlin, or Peking--or even of Chicago?" she went on.
"What has that got to do with it?" retorted the worm, turning a trifle.
"You spoke of glory--the glory of being Mayor of Dumfries Corners, a
city of 30,000 inhabitants. This is going to send your name echoing from
sea to sea, reverberating through Europe, and thundering down through
the ages to come; and yet you admit that the glories of the Mayors of
London with 4,000,000 souls, of Berlin, Chicago, and Peking, with
millions more, are so slight that you can't remember their names--or
even to have heard them, for that matter. Really, Thaddeus, I am
surprised at you. What you expect to get out of this besides nervous
prostration I must confess I cannot see."
"Lamps," said Thaddeus, clutching like a drowning man at the one
emolument of the coveted office.
Mrs. Perkins gazed at her husband anxiously. The answer was so
unexpected and seemingly so absurd that she for a moment feared he had
lost his mind. The notion that two years' service in so important an
office as that of Mayor of Dumfries Corners received as its sole reward
nothing but lamps was to her mind impossible.
"Is--is there anything the matter with you, dear?" she asked, placing
her hand on his brow. "You don't seem feverish."
"Feverish?" snapped the leader of his party. "Who said anything about my
being feverish?"
"Nobody, Teddy dear; but what you said about lamps made me think--made
me think your mind was wandering a trifle."
"Oh--that!" laughed Perkins. "No, indeed--it's true. They always give
the Mayor a pair of lamps. Some of them are very swell, too. You know
those wrought-iron standards that Mr. Berkeley has in front of his
place?"
"The ones at the driveway entrance, on the bowlders?"
"Yes."
"They're beauties. I've always admired those lamps very much."
"Well--they are the rewards of Mr. Berkeley's political virtue. I paid
for them, and so did all the rest of the tax-payers. They are his
Mayor's lamps, and if I'm elected I'll have a pair just like them, if I
want them like that."
"Oh, I do hope you'll get in, Teddy," said the little woman, anxiously,
after a reflective pause. "They'd look stunning on our gate-posts."
"I don't think I shall have them there," said Thaddeus. "Jiggers has the
right idea, seems to me--he's put 'em on the newel-posts of his front
porch steps."
"I don't suppose they'd give us the money and let us buy one handsome
cloisonné lamp from Tiffany's, would they?" Mrs. Perkins asked.
"A cloisonné lamp on a gate-post?" laughed Perkins.
"Of course not," rejoined the lady. "You know I didn't mean any such
thing. I saw a perfectly beautiful lamp in Tiffany's last Wednesday, and
it would go so well in the parlor--"
"That wouldn't be possible, my dear," said Thaddeus, still smiling.
"You don't quite catch the idea of those lamps. They're sort of like the
red, white, and blue lights in a drug-store window in intention. They
are put up to show the public that that is where a political
prescription for the body politic may be compounded. The public is
responsible for the bills, and the public expects to use what little
light can be extracted from them."
"Then all this generosity on the public's part is--"
"Merely that of the Indian who gives and takes back," said Thaddeus.
"And they must be out-of-doors?" asked Mrs. Perkins. "If I set the
cloisonné lamp in the window, it wouldn't do?"
"No," said Thaddeus. "They must be out-of-doors."
"Well, I hope the nasty old public will stay there too, and not come
traipsing all over my house," snapped Mrs. Perkins, indignantly.
And then for a little time the discussion of the Mayor's lamps stopped.
The campaign went on, and Thaddeus night after night was forced to go
out to speak here and there and everywhere. One night he travelled five
miles through mud and rain to address an organization of tax-payers, and
found them assembled before the long mahogany counter of a beer-saloon,
which was the "Hall" they had secured for the reception of the idol of
their hopes; and among them it is safe to say there was not one who ever
saw a tax-bill, and not many who knew more about those luxuries of life
than the delicious flunky, immortalized by Mr. Punch, who says to a
brother flunky, "I say, Tummas, wot is taxes?" And he told them his
principles and promised to do his best for them, and bade them
good-night, and went away leaving them parched and dry and downcast. And
then the other fellow came, and won their hearts and "set them up
again." Another night he attended another meeting and lost a number of
friends because he shone at both ends but not in the middle. If he had
taken a glittering coin or two from his vest-pocket on behalf of the
noble working-men there assembled in great numbers and spirituous mood,
they would have forgiven him his wit and patent-leather shoes--and so
it went. Perkins was nightly hauled hither and yon by the man he called
his "Hagenbeck," the manager of the wild animal he felt himself
gradually degenerating into, and his wife and home and children saw less
of him than of the unimportant floating voter whose mind was open to
conviction, but could be reached only by way of the throat.
"Two o'clock last night; one o'clock the night before; I suppose it'll
be three before you are in to-night?" Mrs. Perkins said, ruefully.
"I do not know, my dear," replied Thaddeus. "There are five meetings on
for to-night."
"Well, I think they ought to give you the lamps now," said Mrs. Perkins.
"It seems to me this is when you need them most."
"True," said Thaddeus, sadly, for in his secret soul he was beginning to
be afraid he would be elected; and now that he saw what kind of people
Mayors have to associate with, the glory of it did not seem to be worth
the cost. "I'm a sort of Night-Mayor just at present, and those lamps
would come in handy in the wee sma' hours," he groaned. And then he
sighed and pined for the peaceful days of yore when he was content to
walk his ways with no nation upon his shoulders.
"I never envied Atlas anyhow," he confided to himself later, as he
tossed about upon his bed and called himself names. "It always seemed to
me that this revolving globe must rub the skin off his neck and back;
but now, poor devil, with just one municipality hanging over me, I can
appreciate more than ever the difficulties of his position--except that
he doesn't have to make speeches to 'tax-payers.' Humph! Taxpayers! It's
tax-makers. If I'd promised to go into all sorts of wilderness
improvement for the sole and only purpose of putting these 'tax-payers'
on the corporation at the expense of real laboring-men, I'd win in a
canter."
"What is the matter, Thaddeus?" said Mrs. Perkins, coming in from the
other room. "Can't you sleep?"
"Don't want to sleep, my dear," returned the candidate. "When I go to
sleep I dream I'm addressing mass-meetings. I can't enjoy my rest
unless I stay awake. Did your mother come to-day?"
"Yes--and, oh, she's so enthusiastic, Teddy!"
"At last! About me? You don't mean it."
"No--about the lamps. She says lamps are just what we need to complete
the entrance. She thinks Mr. Berkeley's scheme of putting them on the
stone posts is the best. There's more dignity about it. Putting them on
the piazza steps, she says, looks ostentatious, and suggests a
beer-saloon or a road-house."
"Well, my dear, that's about all politics seems to amount to," said the
reformer. "If those lamps are to be a souvenir of the campaign, they
ought to suggest road-houses and beer-saloons."
"They will not be souvenirs of a campaign," replied Mrs. Perkins,
proudly. "They will be the outward and visible sign of my husband's
merit; the emblem of victory."
"The red badge of triumph, eh?" smiled the candidate, wanly. "Well, my
dear, have them where you please, and keep them well filled with
alcohol, even if they do burn gas. They'll represent the tax-payers
when they get that."
"You musn't get so tired, Thaddeus dear," said the little woman,
smoothing his forehead soothingly with her hand. "You seem unusually
tired to-night."
"I am," said Thaddeus, shortly. "The debate wore me out."
"Did you debate? I thought you said you wouldn't."
"Well, I did. Everybody said I was afraid to meet Captain Haskins on the
platform, so we had it out to-night over in the Tenth Ward. I talked for
sixty-eight minutes, gave 'em my views, and then he got up."
"What did he say. Could he answer you?"
"No--but he won the day. All he said was: 'Well, boys, I'm not much of a
talker, but I'll say one thing--Perkins, while my adversary, is still my
friend, and I'm proud of him. Now, if you'll all join me at the bar,
we'll drink his health--on me.'" Thaddeus paused, and then he added: "I
imagine they're cheering yet; at any rate, if I have as much health as
they drink--on Haskins--I'll double discount old Methuselah in the
matter of years."
The next morning at breakfast the pale and nervous standard-bearer was
affectionately greeted by his mother-in-law.
"I've been thinking about those lamps all night," she said, after a few
minutes. "The trouble about the gate-posts is that you have three
gate-posts and only two lamps."
"Maybe they'd let us buy three lamps instead of two," suggested Mrs.
Perkins.
"Well, we won't, even if they do let us," observed Perkins, with some
irritation. He had just received a newspaper from a kind friend in
Massachusetts with a comic biography and dissipated wood-cut of himself
in it. "I'm not starting a concert-hall, and I'm not going to put a row
of lamps along the front of my place."
"I quite agree with you," replied his mother-in-law. "It occurred to me
we might put them, like hanging lanterns, on each of the chimneys. It
would be odd."
Thaddeus muttered two syllables to himself, the latter of which sounded
like M'dodd, but exactly what it was he said I can only guess. Then he
added: "They won't go there. I can't get a gas-pipe up through those
chimneys. It's as much as we can do to get the smoke up, much less a
gas-pipe. Even if we got the gas-pipe through, it wouldn't do. A
putty-blower would choke up the flues."
"Well, I don't know," said the mother-in-law, placidly. "It seems to
me--"
A glance from Mrs. Perkins stopped the dear old lady. I think Mrs.
Perkins's sympathetic disposition taught her that her husband was having
a hard time being agreeable, and that further discussion of the lamp
question was likely to prove disastrous.
Thaddeus was soon called for by his manager, and started out to meet the
leading lights of the Hungarian and Italian quarters. The Germans had
been made solid the day before, and as for the Irish, they were supposed
to be with Perkins on principle, because Perkins was not in accord
politically with the existing administration.
"It's too bad he's so nervous," said his mother-in-law, as he went out.
"They say women are nervous, but I must say I don't think much of the
endurance of men. How absurd he was when he spoke of the gas-pipe
through the chimney!"
"Well, I suppose, my dear mother," said Mrs. Perkins, sadly--"I suppose
he can't be bothered with little details like the lamps now. There are
other questions to be considered."
"What is the exact issue?" asked the mother-in-law, interestedly.
"Well--the tariff, and--ah--and taxes, and--ah--money, and--ah--ah--I
think the saloon question enters in somehow. I believe Mr. Haskins wants
more of them, and Thaddeus says there are too many of them as it is. And
now they are both investigating them, I fancy, because Teddy was in one
the other day."
"We ought to help him a little," said the elder woman. "Let's just
relieve him of the whole lamp question; decide where to put them, go to
New York and pick them out, get estimates for the laying of the pipes,
and surprise him by having them all ready to put up the day after
election."
"Wouldn't it be fun!" cried Mrs. Perkins, delightedly. "He'll be so
surprised--poor dear boy. I'll do it. I'll send down this morning for
Mr. O'Hara to come up here and see how we can make the connection and
where the trenches for the pipes can be laid. Mr. O'Hara is the best-known
contractor in town, and I guess he's the man we want."
And immediately O'Hara was telephoned for to come up to Mr. Perkins's,
and the fair conspirators were not aware of, and probably will never
realize, the importance politically of that act. Mr. O'Hara refused to
come, but it was hinted about that Perkins had summoned him, and there
was great joy among the rank and file, and woe among the better
elements, for O'Hara was a boss, and a boss whose power was one of the
things Thaddeus was trying to break, and the cohorts fancied that the
apostle of purity had realized that without O'Hara reform was fallen
into the pit. Furthermore, as cities of the third class, like Dumfries
Corners, live conversationally on rumors and gossipings, it was not an
hour before almost all Dumfries Corners, except Thaddeus Perkins
himself and his manager, knew that the idol had bowed before the boss's
hat, and that the boss had returned the grand message that he'd see
Perkins in the Hudson River before he'd go to his damned mugwump temple;
and in two hours they also knew it, for they heard in no uncertain terms
from the secretary of the Municipal Club, a reform organization, which
had been instrumental in securing Perkins's nomination, who demanded to
know in an explicit yes or no as to whether any such message had been
sent. The denial was made, and then the lie was given; and many to this
day wonder exactly where the truth lay. At any rate, votes were lost and
few gained, and many a worthy friend of good government lost heart and
bemoaned the degeneration of the gentleman into the politician.
Perkins, worn out, irritated by, if not angry at, what he termed the
underhanded lying of the opposition, drove home for luncheon, and found
his wife and her mother in a state of high dudgeon. They had been
insulted.
"It was frightful the language that man used, Thaddeus," said Mrs.
Perkins.
"He wouldn't have dared do it except by telephone," put in the
mother-in-law, whose notions were somewhat old-fashioned. "I've always
hated that machine. People can lie to you and you can't look 'em in the
eye over it, and they can say things to your face with absolute
opportunity."
The dear old lady meant impunity, but it must be remembered that she
was excited.
"Well, I think he ought to be chastised," said Mrs. Perkins.
"Who? What are you talking about?" demanded Thaddeus.
"That nasty O'Hara man," said Mrs. Perkins. "He said 'he'd be damned'
over the wire."
Thaddeus immediately became energetic. "He didn't blackguard you, did
he?" he demanded.
"Yes, he did," said Mrs. Perkins, the water in her eyes affecting her
voice so that it became mellifluous instead of merely melodious.
"But how?" persisted Perkins.
"Well--we--we--rang him up--it was only as a surprise, you know,
dear--we rang him up--"
"You--you rang up--O'Hara?" cried Perkins, aghast. "It must have been
a surprise."
"Yes, Teddy. We were going to settle the lamp question; we thought you
were bothered enough with--well, with affairs of state--"
The candidate drew up proudly, but immediately became limp again as he
realized the situation.
"And," Mrs. Perkins continued, "we thought we'd relieve you of the lamp
question; and as Mr. O'Hara is a great contractor--the most noted in all
Dumfries Corners--isn't he?"
"Yes, yes, yes! he is!" said Perkins, furiously; "but what of that?"
"Well, that's why we rang him up," said Mrs. Perkins, with a sigh of
relief to find that she had selected the right man. "We wanted Mr.
O'Hara to dig the trench for the pipes, and lay the pipes--"
"He's a great pipe-layer!" ejaculated Perkins.
"Exactly," rejoined Mrs. Perkins, solemnly. "We'd heard that, and so we
asked him to come up."
"But, my dear," cried Perkins, dismayed, "you didn't tell him you
wanted him to put up my lamps? I'm not elected yet."
The agony of the moment for Perkins can be better imagined than
portrayed.
"He didn't give us the chance," said the mother-in-law. "He merely
swore."
Perkins drew a sigh of relief. He understood it all now, and in spite of
the position in which he was placed he was glad. "Jove!" he said to
himself, "it was a narrow escape. Suppose O'Hara had come! He'd have
enjoyed laying pipes for a Mayor's lamps for me--two weeks before
election."
And for the first time in weeks Perkins was faintly mirthful. The
narrowness of his escape had made him hysterical, and he actually
indulged in the luxury of a nervous laugh.
"That accounts for the rumor," he said to himself, and then his heart
grew heavy again. "The rumor is true, and--Oh, well, this is what I get
for dabbling in politics. If I ever get out of this alive, I vow by 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."