carelessness of waiters, who if they do not forget one's orders
outright, execute them with all imaginable sloth. They attend on
guests as though the latter were pensioners, and are listless in
everything save a collection of the gratuity, personal to themselves,
which their avarice and a public's weakness have educated them to
expect.

* * * * *

Clams had occurred, and while we were discussing these small
sea-monsters, Fatfloat broke suddenly forth. "I don't know if it be a
subject for self-gratulation or no, but I observed that the daily
papers took quick note of my statement that Tammany Hall was looted of
its last shilling. For the guidance of these energetic folk of ink and
types, I will unfold a further huddle of details. Instead of nine
hundred thousand dollars, there were more than one million collected
for the Tammany campaign. No one can show where so much as two hundred
thousand dollars were honestly disbursed. Let me tell a story; it may
suggest an idea to our diligent friends of the Dailies. There is a
rotund, porpoise-shaped globular gentleman known of these parts as
'Bim the Button Man.' This personage went into the printing business
at the beginning of the late campaign and went out of it--like blowing
out a candle--at the close. Bim the Button Man, for his brief parade
as a printer, took a partner. Or perhaps the partner took Mr. Bim. The
partner was and is a doughty 'leader.' It was the new-made firm of
'Bim' that flourished in the production of those posters and
lithographs of Mr. Shepard which for so long disfigured the town. Mr.
Mitchell, printer, complained bitterly over this invasion of his
rights by Mr. Bim. The latter snapped pudgy fingers at the querulous
Mr. Mitchell by virtue of his powerful partner. Who was Mr. Bim's