By J. W. DeForest.
(_Atlantic Monthly, December,_ 1872.)
A certain fallen angel (politeness toward his numerous and influential
friends forbids me to mention his name abruptly) lately entered into
the body of Mr. Ananias Pullwool, of Washington, D.C.
As the said body was a capacious one, having been greatly enlarged
circumferentially since it acquired its full longitude, there was
accommodation in it for both the soul of Pullwool himself (it was a
very little one) and for his distinguished visitant. Indeed, there was
so much room in it that they never crowded each other, and that
Pullwool hardly knew, if he even so much as mistrusted, that there was
a chap in with him. But other people must have been aware of this
double tenantry, or at least must have been shrewdly suspicious of it,
for it soon became quite common to hear fellows say, "Pullwool has got
the Devil in him."
There was, indeed, a remarkable change--a change not so much moral as
physical and mental--in this gentleman's ways of deporting and behaving
himself. From being logy in movement and slow if not absolutely dull in
mind, he became wonderfully agile and energetic. He had been a
lobbyist, and he remained a lobbyist still, but such a different one,
so much more vigorous, eager, clever, and impudent, that his best
friends (if he could be said to have any friends) scarcely knew him for
the same Pullwool. His fat fingers were in the buttonholes of
Congressmen from the time when they put those buttonholes on in the
morning to the time when they took them off at night. He seemed to be
at one and the same moment treating some honorable member in the
bar-room of the Arlington and running another honorable member to cover
in the committee-rooms of the Capitol. He log-rolled bills which nobody
else believed could be log-rolled, and he pocketed fees which
absolutely and point-blank refused to go into other people's pockets.
During this short period of his life he was the most successful and
famous lobbyist in Washington, and the most sought after by the most
rascally and desperate claimants of unlawful millions.
But, like many another man who has the Devil in him, Mr. Pullwool ran
his luck until he ran himself into trouble. An investigating committee
pounced upon him; he was put in confinement for refusing to answer
questions; his filchings were held up to the execration of the envious
both by virtuous members and a virtuous press; and when he at last got
out of durance he found it good to quit the District of Columbia for a
season. Thus it happened that Mr. Pullwool and his eminent lodger took
the cars and went to and fro upon the earth seeking what they might
devour.
In the course of their travels they arrived in a little State, which
may have been Rhode Island, or may have been Connecticut, or may have
been one of the Pleiades, but which at all events had two capitals.
Without regard to Morse's Gazetteer, or to whatever other Gazetteer may
now be in currency, we shall affirm that one of these capitals was
called Slowburg and the other Fastburg. For some hundreds of years (let
us say five hundred, in order to be sure and get it high enough)
Slowburg and Fastburg had shared between them, turn and turn about,
year on and year off, all the gubernatorial and legislative pomps and
emoluments that the said State had to bestow. On the 1st of April of
every odd year the governor, preceded by citizen soldiers, straddling
or curvetting through the mud--the governor, followed by twenty
barouches full of eminent citizens, who were not known to be eminent at
any other time, but who made a rush for a ride on this occasion as
certain old ladies do at funerals--the governor, taking off his hat to
pavements full of citizens of all ages, sizes, and colors, who did not
pretend to be eminent--the governor, catching a fresh cold at every
corner, and wishing the whole thing were passing at the equator,--the
governor triumphantly entered Slowburg,--observe, Slowburg,--read his
always enormously long message there, and convened the legislature
there. On the 1st of April of every even year the same governor, or a
better one who had succeeded him, went through the same ceremonies in
Fastburg. Each of these capitals boasted, or rather blushed over, a
shabby old barn of a State-House, and each of them maintained a company
of foot-guards and ditto of horse-guards, the latter very loose in
their saddles. In each the hotels and boarding-houses had a full year
and a lean year, according as the legislature sat in the one or in the
other. In each there was a loud call for fresh shad and stewed oysters,
or a comparatively feeble call for fresh shad and stewed oysters, under
the same biennial conditions.
Such was the oscillation of grandeur and power between the two cities.
It was an old-time arrangement, and like many other old-fashioned
things, as for instance wood fires in open fireplaces, it had not only
its substantial merits but its superficial inconveniences. Every year
certain ancient officials were obliged to pack up hundreds of public
documents and expedite them from Fastburg to Slowburg, or from Slowburg
back to Fastburg. Every year there was an expense of a few dollars on
this account, which the State treasurer figured up with agonies of
terror, and which the opposition roared at as if the administration
could have helped it. The State-Houses were two mere deformities of
patched plaster and leprous whitewash; they were such shapeless,
graceless, dilapidated wigwams, that no sensitive patriot could look at
them without wanting to fly to the uttermost parts of the earth; and
yet it was not possible to build new ones, and hardly possible to
obtain appropriations enough to shingle out the weather; for Fastburg
would vote no money to adorn Slowburg, and Slowburg was equally
niggardly toward Fastburg. The same jealousy produced the same
frugality in the management of other public institutions, so that the
patients of the lunatic asylum were not much better lodged and fed than
the average sane citizen, and the gallows-birds in the State's prison
were brought down to a temperance which caused admirers of that species
of fowl to tremble with indignation. In short, the two capitals were as
much at odds as the two poles of a magnet, and the results of this
repulsion were not all of them worthy of hysterical admiration.
But advantages seesawed with disadvantages. In this double-ender of a
State political jobbery was at fault, because it had no headquarters.
It could not get together a ring; it could not raise a corps of
lobbyists. Such few axe-grinders as there were had to dodge back and
forth between the Fastburg grindstone and the Slowburg grindstone,
without ever fairly getting their tools sharpened. Legislature here and
legislature there; it was like guessing at a pea between two thimbles;
you could hardly ever put your finger on the right one. Then what one
capital favored the other disfavored; and between them appropriations
were kicked and hustled under the table; the grandest of railroad
schemes shrunk into waste-paper baskets; in short, the public treasury
was next door to the unapproachable. Such, indeed, was the desperate
condition of lobbyists in this State, that, had it contained a single
philanthropist of the advanced radical stripe, he would surely have
brought in a bill for their relief and encouragement.
Into the midst of this happily divided community dropped Mr. Ananias
Pullwool with the Devil in him. It remains to be seen whether this pair
could figure up anything worth pocketing out of the problem of two
capitals.
It was one of the even years, and the legislature met in Fastburg, and
the little city was brimful. Mr. Pullwool with difficulty found a place
for himself without causing the population to slop over. Of course he
went to a hotel, for he needed to make as many acquaintances as
possible, and he knew that a bar was a perfect hot-house for ripening
such friendships as he cared for. He took the best room he could get;
and as soon as chance favored he took a better one, with parlor
attached; and on the sideboard in the parlor he always had cigars and
decanters. The result was that in a week or so he was on jovial terms
with several senators, numerous members of the lower house, and all the
members of the "third house." But lobbying did not work in Fastburg as
Mr. Pullwool had found it to work in other capitals. He exhibited the
most dazzling double-edged axes, but nobody would grind them; he
pointed out the most attractive and convenient of logs for rolling, but
nobody would put a lever to them.
"What the doose does this mean?" he at last inquired of Mr. Josiah
Dicker, a member who had smoked dozens of his cigars and drunk quarts
out of his decanters. "I don't understand this little old legislature
at all, Mr. Dicker. Nobody wants to make any money; at least, nobody
has the spirit to try to make any. And yet the State is full; never
been bled a drop; full as a tick. What does it mean?"
Mr. Dicker looked disconsolate. Perhaps it may be worth a moment's time
to explain that he could not well look otherwise. Broken in fortune and
broken in health, he was a failure and knew it. His large forehead
showed power, and he was in fact a lawyer of some ability; and still he
could not support his family, could not keep a mould of mortgages from
creeping all over his house-lot, and had so many creditors that he
could not walk the streets comfortably. The trouble lay in hard
drinking, with its resultant waste of time, infidelity to trust, and
impatience of application. Thin, haggard, duskily pallid, deeply
wrinkled at forty, his black eyes watery and set in baggy circles of a
dull brown, his lean dark hands shaky and dirty, his linen wrinkled and
buttonless, his clothing frayed and unbrushed, he was an impersonation
of failure. He had gone into the legislature with a desperate hope of
somehow finding money in it, and as yet he had discovered nothing more
than his beggarly three dollars a day, and he felt himself more than
ever a failure. No wonder that he wore an air of profound depression,
approaching to absolute wretchedness and threatening suicide.
He looked the more cast down by contrast with the successful Mr.
Pullwool, gaudily alight with satin and jewelry, and shining with
conceit. Pullwool, by the way, although a dandy (that is, such a dandy
as one sees in gambling-saloons and behind liquor-bars), was far from
being a thing of beauty. He was so obnoxiously gross and shapeless,
that it seemed as if he did it on purpose and to be irritating. His fat
head was big enough to make a dwarf of, hunchback and all. His mottled
cheeks were vast and pendulous to that degree that they inspired the
imaginative beholder with terror, as reminding him of avalanches and
landslides which might slip their hold at the slightest shock and
plunge downward in a path of destruction. One puffy eyelid drooped in a
sinister way; obviously that was the eye that the Devil had selected
for his own; he kept it well curtained for purposes of concealment.
Looking out of this peep-hole, the Satanic badger could see a short,
thick nose, and by leaning forward a little he could get a glimpse of a
broad chin of several stories. Another unpleasing feature was a full
set of false teeth, which grinned in a ravenous fashion that was truly
disquieting, as if they were capable of devouring the whole internal
revenue. Finally, this continent of physiognomy was diversified by a
gigantic hairy wart, which sprouted defiantly from the temple nearest
the game eye, as though Lucifer had accidentally poked one of his horns
through. Mr. Dicker, who was a sensitive, squeamish man (as drunkards
sometimes are, through bad digestion and shaky nerves), could hardly
endure the sight of this wart, and always wanted to ask Pullwool why he
didn't cut it off.
"What's the meaning of it all?" persisted the Washington wire-puller,
surveying the Fastburg wire-puller with bland superiority, much as the
city mouse may have surveyed the country mouse.
"Two capitals," responded Dicker, withdrawing his nervous glance from
the wart, and locking his hands over one knee to quiet their trembling.
Mr. Pullwool, having the Old Harry in him, and being consequently full
of all malice and subtlety, perceived at once the full scope and force
of the explanation.
"I see," he said, dropping gently back into his arm-chair, with the
plethoric, soft movement of a subsiding pillow. The puckers of his
cumbrous eyelids drew a little closer together; his bilious eyes peered
out cautiously between them, like sallow assassins watching through
curtained windows; for a minute or so he kept up what might without
hyperbole be called a devil of a thinking.
"I've got it," he broke out at last. "Dicker, I want you to bring in a
bill to make Fastburg the only capital."
"What is the use?" asked the legislator, looking more disconsolate,
more hopeless than ever. "Slowburg will oppose it and beat it."
"Never you mind," persisted Mr. Pullwool. "You bring in your little
bill and stand up for it like a man. There's money in it. You don't see
it? Well, I do; I'm used to seeing money in things; and in this case I
see it plain. As sure as whiskey is whiskey, there's money in it."
Mr. Pullwool's usually dull and, so to speak, extinct countenance was
fairly alight and aflame with exultation. It was almost a wonder that
his tallowy person did not gutter beneath the blaze, like an over-fat
candle under the flaring of a wick too large for it.
"Well, I'll bring in the bill," agreed Mr. Dicker, catching the
enthusiasm of his counsellor and shaking off his lethargy. He perceived
a dim promise of fees, and at the sight his load of despondency dropped
away from him, as Christian's burden loosened in presence of the cross.
He looked a little like the confident, resolute Tom Dicker, who twenty
years before had graduated from college the brightest, bravest, most
eloquent fellow in his class, and the one who seemed to have before him
the finest future.
"Snacks!" said Mr. Pullwool.
At this brazen word Mr. Dicker's countenance fell again; he was ashamed
to talk so frankly about plundering his fellow-citizens; "a little
grain of conscience turned him sour."
"I will take pay for whatever I can do as a lawyer," he stammered.
"Get out!" laughed the Satanic one. "You just take all there is
a-going! You need it bad enough. I know when a man's hard up. I know
the signs. I've been as bad off as you; had to look all ways for five
dollars; had to play second fiddle and say thanky. But what I offer you
ain't a second fiddle. It's as good a chance as my own. Even divides.
One half to you and one half to me. You know the people and I know the
ropes. It's a fair bargain. What do you say?"
Mr. Dicker thought of his decayed practice and his unpaid bills; and
flipping overboard his little grain of conscience, he said, "Snacks."
"All right," grinned Pullwool, his teeth gleaming alarmingly. "Word of
a gentleman," he added, extending his pulpy hand, loaded with
ostentatious rings, and grasping Dicker's recoiling fingers. "Harness
up your little bill as quick as you can, and drive it like Jehu.
Fastburg to be the only capital. Slowburg no claims at all, historical,
geographical, or economic. The old arrangement a humbug; as
inconvenient as a fifth wheel of a coach; costs the State thousands of
greenbacks every year. Figure it all up statistically and dab it over
with your shiniest rhetoric and make a big thing of it every way.
That's what you've got to do; that's your little biz. I'll tend to the
rest."
"I don't quite see where the money is to come from," observed Mr.
Dicker.
"Leave that to me," said the veteran of the lobbies; "my name is
Pullwool, and I know how to pull the wool over men's eyes, and then I
know how to get at their britches-pockets. You bring in your bill and
make your speech. Will you do it?"
"Yes," answered Dicker, bolting all scruples in another half tumbler of
brandy.
He kept his word. As promptly as parliamentary forms and mysteries
would allow, there was a bill under the astonished noses of honorable
lawgivers, removing the seat of legislation from Slowburg and centring
it in Fastburg. This bill Mr. Thomas Dicker supported with that fluency
and fiery enthusiasm of oratory which had for a time enabled him to
show as the foremost man of his State. Great was the excitement, great
the rejoicing and anger. The press of Fastburg sent forth shrieks of
exultation, and the press of Slowburg responded with growlings of
disgust. The two capitals and the two geographical sections which they
represented were ready to fire Parrott guns at each other, without
regard to life and property in the adjoining regions of the earth. If
there was a citizen of the little Commonwealth who did not hear of this
bill and did not talk of it, it was because that citizen was as deaf as
a post and as dumb as an oyster. Ordinary political distinctions were
forgotten, and the old party-whips could not manage their very
wheel-horses, who went snorting and kicking over the traces in all
directions. In short, both in the legislature and out of it, nothing
was thought of but the question of the removal of the capital.
Among the loudest of the agitators was Mr. Pullwool; not that he cared
one straw whether the capital went to Fastburg, or to Slowburg, or to
Ballyhack; but for the money which he thought he saw in the agitation
he did care mightily, and to get that money he labored with a zeal
which was not of this world alone. At the table of his hotel, and in
the barroom of the same institution, and in the lobbies of the
legislative hall, and in editorial sanctums and barbers' shops, and all
other nooks of gossip, he trumpeted the claims of Fastburg as if that
little city were the New Jerusalem and deserved to be the metropolis of
the sidereal universe. All sorts of trickeries, too; he sent spurious
telegrams and got fictitious items into the newspapers; he lied through
every medium known to the highest civilization. Great surely was his
success, for the row which he raised was tremendous. But a row alone
was not enough; it was the mere breeze upon the surface of the waters;
the treasure-ship below was still to be drawn up and gutted.
"It will cost money," he whispered confidentially to capitalists and
land-owners. "We must have the sinews of war, or we can't carry it on.
There's your city lots goin' to double in value if this bill goes
through. What per cent will you pay on the advance? That's the
question. Put your hands in your pockets and pull 'em out full, and put
back ten times as much. It's a sure investment; warranted to yield a
hundred per cent; the safest and biggest thing agoing."
Capitalists and land-owners and merchants hearkened and believed and
subscribed. The slyest old hunks in Fastburg put a faltering forefinger
into his long pocket-book, touched a greenback which had been laid away
there as neatly as a corpse in its coffin, and resurrected it for the
use of Mr. Pullwool. By tens, by twenties, by fifties, and by hundreds
the dollars of the ambitious citizens of the little metropolis were
charmed into the portemonnaie of this rattlesnake of a lobbyist.
"I never saw a greener set," chuckled Pullwool. "By jiminy, I believe
they'd shell out for a bill to make their town a seaport, if it was a
hundred miles from a drop of water."
But he was not content with individual subscriptions, and
conscientiously scorned himself until he had got at the city treasury.
"The corporation must pony up," he insisted, with the mayor. "This bill
is just shaking in the wind for lack of money. Fastburg must come down
with the dust. You ought to see to it. What are you chief magistrate
for? Ain't it to tend to the welfare of the city? Look here, now; you
call the common council together; secret session, you understand. You
call 'em together and let me talk to 'em. I want to make the loons
comprehend that it's their duty to vote something handsome for this
measure."
The mayor hummed and hawed one way, and then he hawed and hummed the
other way, and the result was that he granted the request. There was a
secret session in the council-room, with his honor at the top of the
long green table, with a row of more or less respectable functionaries
on either side of it, and with Mr. Pullwool and the Devil at the
bottom. Of course it is not to be supposed that this last-named
personage was visible to the others, or that they had more than a vague
suspicion of his presence. Had he fully revealed himself, had he
plainly exhibited his horns and hoofs, or even so much as uncorked his
perfume-bottle of brimstone, it is more than probable that the city
authorities would have been exceedingly scandalized, and they might
have adjourned the session. As it was, seeing nothing more disagreeable
than the obese form of the lobbyist, they listened calmly while he
unfolded his project.
Mr. Pullwool spoke at length, and to Fastburg ears eloquently. Fastburg
must be the sole capital; it had every claim, historical, geographical,
and commercial, to that distinction; it ought, could, would, and should
be the sole capital; that was about the substance of his exordium.
"But, gentlemen, it will cost," he went on. "There is an unscrupulous
and furious opposition to the measure. The other side--those fellows
from Slowburg and vicinity--are putting their hands into their
britches-pockets. You must put your hands into yours. The thing will be
worth millions to Fastburg. But it will cost thousands. Are you ready
to fork over? _Are_ you ready?"
"What's the figure?" asked one of the councilmen. "What do you
estimate?"
"Gentlemen, I shall astonish _some_ of you," answered Mr. Pullwool,
cunningly. It was well put; it was as much as to say, "I shall astonish
the green ones; of course the really strong heads among you won't be in
the least bothered." "I estimate," he continued, "that the city
treasury will have to put up a good round sum, say a hundred thousand
dollars, be it more or less."
A murmur of surprise, of chagrin, and of something like indignation ran
along the line of official mustaches. "Nonsense," "The dickens," "Can't
be done," "We can't think of it," broke out several councilmen, in a
distinctly unparliamentary manner.
"Gentlemen, one moment," pleaded Pullwool, passing his greasy smile
around the company, as though it were some kind of refreshment. "Look
at the whole job; it's a big job. We must have lawyers; we must have
newspapers in all parts of the State; we must have writers to work up
the historical claims of the city; we must have fellows to buttonhole
honorable members; we must have fees for honorable members themselves.
How can you do it for less?"
Then he showed a schedule; so much to this wire-puller and that and the
other; so much apiece to so many able editors; so much for eminent
legal counsel; finally, a trifle for himself. And one hundred thousand
dollars or thereabouts was what the schedule footed up, turn it
whichever way you would.
Of course this common council of Fastburg did not dare to vote such a
sum for such a purpose. Mr. Pullwool had not expected that it would;
all that he had hoped for was the half of it; but that half he got.
"Did they do it?" breathlessly inquired Tom Dicker of him, when he
returned to the hotel.
"They done it," calmly, yet triumphantly, responded Mr. Pullwool.
"Thunder!" exclaimed the amazed Dicker. "You are the most extraordinary
man! You must have the very Devil in you!"
Instead of being startled by this alarming supposition, Mr. Pullwool
looked gratified. People thus possessed generally do look gratified
when the possession is alluded to.
But the inspired lobbyist did not pass his time in wearing an aspect of
satisfaction. When there was money to get and to spend he could run his
fat off almost as fast as if he were pouring it into candle-moulds. The
ring--the famous capital ring of Fastburg--must be seen to, its fingers
greased, and its energy quickened. Before he rolled his apple-dumpling
of a figure into bed that night he had interviewed Smith and Brown the
editors, Jones and Robinson the lawyers, Smooth and Slow the literary
characters, various lobbyists, and various lawgivers.
"Work, gentlemen, and capitalize Fastburg and get your dividends," was
his inspiring message to one and all. He promised Smith and Brown ten
dollars for every editorial, and five dollars for every humbugging
telegram, and two dollars for every telling item. Jones and Robinson
were to have five hundred dollars apiece for concurrent legal
statements of the claim of the city; Smooth and Slow, as being merely
authors and so not accustomed to obtain much for their labor, got a
hundred dollars between them for working up the case historically. To
the lobbyists and members Pullwool was munificent; it seemed as if
those gentlemen could not be paid enough for their "influence;" as if
they alone had that kind of time which is money. Only, while dealing
liberally with them, the inspired one did not forget himself. A
thousand for Mr. Sly; yes, Mr. Sly was to receipt for a thousand; but
he must let half of it stick to the Pullwool fingers. The same
arrangement was made with Mr. Green and Mr. Sharp and Mr. Bummer and
Mr. Pickpurse and Mr. Buncombe. It was a game of snacks, half to you
and half to me; and sometimes it was more than snacks,--a thousand for
you two and a thousand for me too.
With such a greasing of the wheels, you may imagine that the machinery
of the ring worked to a charm. In the city and in the legislature and
throughout the State there was the liveliest buzzing and humming and
clicking of political wheels and cranks and cogs that had ever been
known in those hitherto pastoral localities. The case of Fastburg
against Slowburg was put in a hundred ways, and proved as sure as it
was put. It really seemed to the eager burghers as if they already
heard the clink of hammers on a new State-House and beheld a perpetual
legislature sitting on their fences and curbstones until the edifice
should be finished. The great wire-puller and his gang of stipendiaries
were the objects of popular gratitude and adoration. The landlord of
the hotel which Mr. Pullwool patronized actually would not take pay for
that gentleman's board.
"No, sir!" declared this simple Boniface, turning crimson with
enthusiasm. "You are going to put thousands of dollars into my purse,
and I'll take nothing out of yours. And any little thing in the way of
cigars and whiskey that you want, sir, why, call for it. It's my treat,
sir."
"Thank you, sir," kindly smiled the great man. "That's what I call the
square thing. Mr. Boniface, you are a gentleman and a scholar; and I'll
mention your admirable house to my friends. By the way, I shall have to
leave you for a few days."
"Going to leave us!" exclaimed Mr. Boniface, aghast. "I hope not till
this job is put through."
"I must run about a bit," muttered Pullwool, confidentially. "A little
turn through the State, you understand, to stir up the country
districts. Some of the members ain't as hot as they should be, and I
want to set their constituents after them. Nothing like getting on a
few deputations."
"Oh, exactly!" chuckled Mr. Boniface, ramming his hands into his
pockets and cheerfully jingling a bunch of keys and a penknife for lack
of silver. It was strange indeed that he should actually see the Devil
in Mr. Pullwool's eye and should not have a suspicion that he was in
danger of being humbugged by him. "And your rooms?" he suggested. "How
about them?"
"I keep them," replied the lobbyist, grandly, as if blaspheming the
expense--to Boniface. "Our friends must have a little hole to meet in.
And while you are about it, Mr. Boniface, see that they get something
to drink and smoke; and we'll settle it between us."
"Pre--cisely!" laughed the landlord, as much as to say, "My treat!"
And so Mr. Pullwool, that Pericles and Lorenzo de' Medici rolled in
one, departed for a season from the city which he ruled and blessed.
Did he run about the State and preach and crusade in behalf of
Fastburg, and stir up the bucolic populations to stir up their
representatives in its favor? Not a bit of it; the place that he went
to and the only place that he went to was Slowburg; yes, covering up
his tracks in his usual careful style, he made direct for the rival of
Fastburg. What did he propose to do there? Oh, how can we reveal the
whole duplicity and turpitude of Ananias Pullwool? The subject is too
vast for a merely human pen; it requires the literary ability of a
recording angel. Well, we must get our feeble lever under this boulder
of wickedness as we can, and do our faint best to expose all the
reptiles and slimy things beneath it.
The first person whom this apostle of lobbyism called upon in Slowburg
was the mayor of that tottering capital.
"My name is Pullwool," he said to the official, and he said it with an
almost enviable ease of impudence, for he was used to introducing
himself to people who despised and detested him. "I want to see you
confidentially about this capital ring which is making so much
trouble."
"I thought you were in it," replied the mayor, turning very red in the
face, for he had heard of Mr. Pullwool as the leader of said ring; and
being an iracund man, he was ready to knock his head off.
"In it!" exclaimed the possessed one. "I wish I was. It's a fat thing.
More than fifty thousand dollars paid out already!"
"Good gracious!" exclaimed the mayor in despair.
"By the way, this is between ourselves," added Pullwool. "You take it
so, I hope. Word of honor, eh?"
"Why, if you have anything to communicate that will help us, why, of
course, I promise secrecy," stammered the mayor. "Yes, certainly; word
of honor."
"Well, I've been looking about among those fellows a little," continued
Ananias. "I've kept my eyes and ears open. It's a way I have. And I've
learned a thing or two that it will be to your advantage to know. Yes,
sir! fifty thousand dollars!--the city has voted it and paid it, and
the ring has got it. That's why they are all working so. And depend
upon it, they'll carry the legislature and turn Slowburg out to grass,
unless you wake up and do something."
"By heavens!" exclaimed the iracund mayor, turning red again. "It's a
piece of confounded rascality. It ought to be exposed."
"No, don't expose it," put in Mr. Pullwool, somewhat alarmed. "That
game never works. Of course they'd deny it and swear you down, for
bribing witnesses is as easy as bribing members. I'll tell you what to
do. Beat them at their own weapons. Raise a purse that will swamp
theirs. That's the way the world goes. It's an auction. The highest
bidder gets the article."
Well, the result of it all was that the city magnates of Slowburg did
just what had been done by the city magnates of Fastburg, only, instead
of voting fifty thousand dollars into the pockets of the ring, they
voted sixty thousand. With a portion of this money about him, and with
authority to draw for the rest on proper vouchers, Mr. Pullwool, his
tongue in his cheek, bade farewell to his new allies. As a further
proof of the ready wit and solid impudence of this sublime politician
and model of American statesmen, let me here introduce a brief
anecdote. Leaving Slowburg by the cars, he encountered a gentleman from
Fastburg, who saluted him with tokens of amazement, and said, "What are
you doing here, Mr. Pullwool?"
"Oh, just breaking up these fellows a little," whispered the man with
the Devil in him. "They were making too strong a fight. I had to _see_
some of them," putting one hand behind his back and rubbing his fingers
together, to signify that there had been a taking of bribes. "But be
shady about it. For the sake of the good cause, keep quiet. Mum's the
word."
The reader can imagine how briskly the fight between the two capitals
reopened when Mr. Pullwool re-entered the lobby. Slowburg now had its
adherents, and they struggled like men who saw money in their warfare,
and they struggled not in vain. To cut a very long story very short, to
sum the whole of an exciting drama in one sentence, the legislature
kicked overboard the bill to make Fastburg the sole seat of government.
Nothing had come of the whole row, except that a pair of simple little
cities had spent over one hundred thousand dollars, and that the
capital ring, fighting on both sides and drawing pay from both sides,
had lined its pockets, while the great creator of the ring had crammed
his to bursting.
"What does this mean, Mr. Pullwool?" demanded the partially honest and
entirely puzzled Tom Dicker, when he had discovered by an unofficial
count of noses how things were going. "Fastburg has spent all its money
for nothing. It won't be sole capital, after all."
"I never expected it would be," replied Pullwool, so tickled by the
Devil that was in him that he could not help laughing. "I never wanted
it to be. Why, it would spoil the little game. This is a trick that can
be played every year."
"Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Dicker, and was dumb with astonishment for a
minute.
"Didn't you see through it before?" grinned the grand master of all
guile and subtlety.
"I did not," confessed Mr. Dicker, with a mixture of shame and
abhorrence. "Well," he presently added, recovering himself, "shall we
settle?"
"Oh, certainly, if you are ready," smiled Pullwool, with the air of a
man who has something coming to him.
"And what, exactly, will be my share?" asked Dicker, humbly.
"What do you mean?" stared Pullwool, apparently in the extremity of
amazement.
"You said _snacks_, didn't you?" urged Dicker, trembling violently.
"Well, _snacks_ it is," replied Pullwool. "Haven't you had a thousand?"
"Yes," admitted Dicker.
"Then you owe me five hundred?"
Mr. Dicker did not faint, though he came very near it, but he staggered
out of the room as white as a sheet, for he was utterly crushed by this
diabolical impudence.
That very day Mr. Pullwool left for Washington, and the Devil left for
_his_ place, each of them sure to find the other when he wanted him, if
indeed their roads lay apart.