“_We were batting the town, from the sun went down,
Till the morning grew grey in the sky;
And we heard the cocks crow, as we homeward did go,
With our skins full of mellow old rye._”
SONGS OF THE CURB.
WHEN the two young men pushed open the door leading to the club’s
parlour, they found themselves in a vortex of wild enthusiasm. The
congregated members, for the most part, were coatless; and with cigars
clinched between their teeth they madly gyrated about the room to the
tune of:
“_Oh Murphy he was paralyzed,
McCarty couldn’t see,
I was drunk, but Ferguson,
Was a damn sight worse than me!_”
Danny Casey, his suspenders slipped from his shoulders and his derby
hat tipped back upon his head, presided at the piano; McGlory, standing
upon the pool table waved his arms like a bandmaster.
Mike McCarty appeared to be the only sane person in the place; he stood
in the doorway that led to the adjoining room, as self-possessed, as
well-dressed as ever, a smile upon his face. Though he was born in an
alley and of a woman who took in washing, Mike, in instinct, taste
and deportment, was a gentleman. Seeing Larry and McGonagle enter, he
beckoned them into the other room and closed the door.
“The push is havin’ a good time,” remarked Larry. “That’s a lovely
skate McGlory’s got.”
“They’re all about half lit up,” returned McCarty; “and they are plumb
daffy, too. It’s best to save yer sky-rockets till after the game’s
won; ain’t that right?”
“We’ll take it from youse,” agreed Larry.
“How did youse make out?” asked Mike.
“Knocked ’em cold! We both go to the convention, all right.”
“It was a cinch,” put in Goose. “There’s about forty o’ McGlory’s
drivers boardin’ in my division, and when the old man cut ’em loose,
the Kelly push wilted like wet rags.”
“Then we got ’em,” declared Mike, exultantly. “I knowed youse’d win
out; that gives us two more.” He nodded toward a sheet of foolscap upon
the table, covered with names and figures. “Kerrigan made that,” added
he. “It’s all right, I guess.”
Larry and McGonagle bent over the paper attentively; the uproar in the
other room continued; but the tune was changed; the dancing had ceased
and the voices of the overjoyed members were raised in the ditty:
“_I’m goin’ down to Kerrigan’s,
On purpose to get tight,
An’ when I get home again,
There’s goin’ to be a fight,
I’ll smash up all the furniture,
And all the dishes, too,
Upset the stove when I go in,
Is the first t’ing I will do._”
The reasons for these acts of domestic vandalism were not inquired into
by Murphy or McGonagle; each had his finger upon a name and they were
looking at each other with something like dismay.
“Tim Daily,” Larry straightened up and fairly glared.
“And Levitsky,” moaned Goose. “Elected by our people, too! Oh, I kin
see our finish, right here.”
“Hully Gee!” murmured McCarty, “is them people been worked in? Then
they’re got the bulge.”
There ensued a silence as sulphurous as any profanity ever conceived by
mortal man. Then McGonagle spoke. “Well,” demanded he, of Larry, “what
next?”
“They’ve put us up against it, hard,” mourned Larry.
“Got anyt’ing to say Murphy?”
Larry glowered at them in bovine fury. “I went into this mix,” declared
he, his right hand beating upon his left, “to win! And we’re goin’ to
win if we have to tear up the ward be the roots! McQuirk’s played a
foxy game, and worked some of our people for rank suckers, see? But
we’ll kick the props from under him and do him brown, d’ye hear? We’ll
do him brown!”
“How?” ventured McGonagle.
“How? I don’t care a damn how we do it! We ain’t a’goin’ to let him
play us for good t’ings, are we?”
“Let’s go see Daily,” suggested Goose.
McCarty looked at his watch. “It only wants a couple o’ minutes o’
one,” said he, “Daily’s snorin’ t’ beat the band by this time.”
“Not on yer life! He’s on the night shift this week,” said Larry. “We
kin see him, all right. Come on, Goose.”
The two repassed through the parlour, almost unnoticed in the
excitement, and down the stairs to the street. They headed eastward
over Girard Avenue, their objective point being one of the iron mills
that line the river front in Kensington.
Down a narrow street, under the light of the lamps, a dozen or more
of men were swinging long-handled brooms; a pair of bony, dispirited
horses followed in their track, their driver shovelling the heaps of
rubbish into the cart. The scavengers droned a strange-sounding song
as they worked; the watching overseer talked constantly, in a sharp,
high tone; the horses hung their heads dejectedly and rattled at the
chains of their harness.
“That’s some of McGlory’s night gang,” remarked Larry. “They start
’em out early since the loot reported dirty streets in the old man’s
district.”
They turned into a quiet street leading toward the river. A cellar door
opened, and a broad barb of light shot across the sidewalk; from the
midst of this rose a pallid, spectral form, and stood looking calmly
into the night. But it was only a baker, clad in his spotless working
dress, popping out of his overheated basement for a breath of air. A
great stack, towering skyward, and vomiting a blazing shower of sparks
into the night, showed that they were nearing the mill. The huge, low,
shed-like buildings lifted their corrugated walls, like the beginnings
of greater structures; a knot of men were gathered about the wide
doorway; they had limp, damp towels twisted about their necks and all
smoked short pipes. Rows of puddlers, naked to the waist, their bodies
glistening with perspiration, stood before the furnaces “balling” the
molten metal; from time to time one would drench himself with water,
and once more face the Cyclopean eye glaring so angrily upon him.
Daily was among the crowd at the door, and he smiled and winked at his
fellows, as the two young men approached.
“We’ll on’y keep youse a second,” said Larry. He gathered from Daily’s
expression that he knew the nature of their errand. “Come on in here.”
The three entered the building. The vast mill was in almost complete
darkness, save for the far end where, sweltering, the puddlers
toiled; here and there an incandescent light threw a thin gleam over
the ponderous machines which crouched close to the floor like squat
black monsters. Huge cogs, a-glitter with grease ground together with
metallic growls.
“Cut it out,” said Daily; “this heat’ll be on in a minute or so.”
“We’ve heard that yous’re got the papers in your division to vote in
the convention t’morrow,” said Larry.
“That’s what,” grinned Daily. “I’m the delegate, all right.”
“Who are youse for?” asked Larry.
“Why Kelly, of course! I’m a regular, see? I don’t get dead sore
because t’ings ain’t batted my way; ain’t that right? I didn’t start to
work to-night till I got out the vote,” continued Daily, with a laugh,
“an’ the way your people shoved their little old votes in for me when
Foley slung ’em a breeze that I was against Kelly, would make youse hit
yer mother. Say, it was the real t’ing!”
“I knowed youse done us dirt!” exclaimed Larry.
“None o’ youse could a-squeezed in any other way in that division,” put
in McGonagle, angrily.
“Ah, git out! If they was fools enough, whose fault is it? If you was
dead set on carryin’ the precinct, why didn’t youse watch your end o’
the game, eh? But I got the vote, and I’m for Kelly!”
From far away in the dimness of the mill, a hammer rang upon an iron
plate with a tumultuous clangour. A voice vociferated:
“Heat! Heat! Heat-oo!”
Pipes were laid aside; heavy shoes rattled along the plated floor; the
rolls began to rumble slowly as the belts were shifted from the loose
pulleys; the men seized their tools and stood ready.
“So long,” said Daily. “The heat’s up.”
“Hold on!” Murphy held him by the arm and spoke rapidly. “Listen to me.
A delegate sits in a pow-wow to talk for the people what sends him;
ain’t that right? An’ if they sends him to salt a man, and he supports
him, why he’s playin’ ’em all for good t’ings!”
Daily turned away. “Youse give me a pain,” sneered he, over his
shoulder.
They watched him as he took his place at the rolls. Huge tongs running
upon trolleys, were shoved into the gaping maws of the furnaces and
each emerged gripping a white-hot mass of metal. A jarring concussion
rang through the building; it was the first of these being passed
through the rolls, and its scattering scales made even the hardened
“passers” flinch. Report followed report; the darkness had vanished
before the lurid glare; the heat of the place became blistering. Amid
the blinding flashes and the serpentlike bars that crawled about the
floor, the men worked furiously, like heat-maddened demons, engaged in
some dread incantation.
Then they turned and walked away. Larry’s face worked with rage;
McGonagle walked gloomily along at his side, his hands stuffed into his
pockets, his head bent dejectedly.
“We’ve got it where we live,” said the latter. “It was all serene till
we heard o’ this, and if he’s goin’ to vote for Kelly, why we can’t
stop him, that’s all; we can’t do nawthin’.”
“T’ell we can’t!” cried the enraged Murphy. “Say, look’et here, Goose;
one hour after Tim Daily says ‘yea’ for Kelly he’ll be in St. Mary’s
done up in splints! He’s played crooked with us people, ain’t that
right? And we’ll git even if we have to t’ump him. Ah!”
They walked along for a time, in silence.
“Are ye goin’ to see the other lobster?” questioned Goose.
“Let’s go over to the Dutchman’s, hit a bracer and talk t’ings over,
first. I’ve got cobwebs in me head an’ I want to brush ’em away. The
motzer kin wait till daylight.”
The saloon was the only all-night establishment in the neighbourhood.
It glittered with clusters of electric lamps and broad, gilt-framed
mirrors; a marble-topped bar backed by pyramids of glasses and bottles
stood upon one side.
They talked in a desultory way for some time, consuming much beer and
many plates of sandwiches. Dawn stretched a grey hand through the
window and dimmed the clusters of lights; and when they ranged along
the bar for the last drink, the streets were filling with people
hurrying toward their work.
Then they tramped off toward the spreading Hebrew settlement on North
Second Street. Levitsky, the man whom they sought, while he claimed
a voting place in the ward, really lived south of the line, in one
of the row of houses that face the old market sheds. These teem with
long-coated, huge-bearded Russian Jews, who drag their stock in trade
upon the sidewalk each morning and prowl up and down before it watching
for customers, and hoarsely shouting in a mixture of English and
Yiddish.
Larry and his chum paused before a dirty bulk window heaped with odds
and ends of merchandise; on a stand upon the sidewalk lay little
stacks of Yiddish newspapers and pamphlets; a thin, yellow-faced man,
in a round, high-crowned cap, and with a beard of patriarchal length,
sat in the doorway twisting a cigarette out of some damp tobacco. He
was a wise man in the Ghetto, learned in the law and a public reader
of the scrolls; he knew the ways of Gentile youth when it was half
drunken, for he drew his long coat about his gaunt frame as they
approached, and raised his hand to prevent the expected plucking at his
beard.
“Where’s Levitsky?” asked Larry.
The man in the velvet cap gestured his relief and called shrilly to
someone within. A girl came out; a dark-eyed, deep-breasted girl, the
perfect type of Jewess.
“Levitsky’s gone down to get his breakfast at Sam’s,” said she.
“Much obliged,” said Larry. “Come on, Goose.”
Down the street a scarlet lettered sign flamed conspicuously among a
wilderness of others, and thither they hurried and entered at the door
over which it hung. The revolving fans drove the hot, strong-odoured
breath of the place into their faces; waiters, greasy aproned and
perspiring, rushed about dexterously balancing pyramids of food-filled
crockery; the room resounded with shouted orders and the incessant
ringing of the cash register.
“There he is,” said Larry.
A stocky young man, in a collarless shirt, was just about to seat
himself at a table; he greeted them surprisedly.
“Vy cert’ny,” answered he, “ye kin see me. But I cand sell no bolicy
here, chends; there ish doo many beoble.”
“We ain’t lookin’ for policy. We want to see youse about yer little old
vote in the convention.”
Levitsky grinned. “Oh!” said he, “vell, sit down. Vill you have anyding
to eat?”
“No!” said Larry. “We’ll on’y stay in here a second.”
The policy-writer did not urge them, but turned to the waiter.
“Two fried eggs; a rare steak ant onions, ant a cup of coffee.”
And then Larry proceeded to state his views; Levitsky listened, never
volunteering a word, until he had finished his excited remarks, then he
spoke.
“Youse chends alvays treaded me right,” said he, “and I wud like to
do someding for you, an’d dot ride? But McQuirk jusd god me oudt of
drouble and I cand go pack on him, can I?” He flourished his arms
wildly as though protesting against the mere thought. “I vill leave id
to you fellas!” exclaimed he, “vould id be ride?”
This involved a question of ethics with which neither Larry nor
McGonagle felt themselves capable of grappling.
“But say,” demanded Murphy, “do youse t’ink us people’s goin’ to make
good to McQuirk because he got youse out o’ hock? If ye want’s to
square yerself, don’t make us stand for that. Ye’ve copped a sneak on
us, Levitsky, ye know ye have.”
They argued the question until the ordered breakfast appeared. Levitsky
attacked it, apparently unmoved in his determination to remain faithful
to the boss; the others got up angry and despairing.
“Just now,” said Larry, “it looks as if youse had us skinned to death;
but, say, there’s a block for every punch, and if Daily and youse try
to double bank us, we’ll git even in the convention if we have to pull
the shack!”
And they left the place.