These his offspring were given a peculiar albeit not always a sumptuous
bringing up.

When Patrick Henry Hanway was about the age of Oliver Twist at the time
Bill Sykes shoved him through the window, Hiram Hanway caused him to be
appointed page in the State Senate. There, for eight years, he lived in
the midst of all that treason and mendacity and cowardice and rapacity
and dishonor which as raw materials are ground together to produce laws
for a commonwealth. He learned early that the ten commandments have no
bearing on politics and legislation, and was taught that part of valor
which, basing itself on greed and cunning and fear, is called
discretion, and consists in first running from an enemy and then hiding
from pursuit. Altogether, those eight years might have been less
pernicious in their influence had Patrick Henry Hanway passed them with
the chain gang, and he emerged therefrom, to cast his first vote,
treacherous and plausible and boneless and false--as voracious as a pike
and as much without a principle.

Patrick Henry Hanway did not follow in the precise footsteps of his
sire. He resolved to make his money by pulling and hauling at
legislation; but the methods should be changed. He would improve upon
his father, and instead of pulling and hauling from the lobby, he would
pull and haul from within. The returns were surer; also it was easier to
knead and mold and bake one's loaf of legislation as a member, with a
seat in Senate or Assembly, than as some unassigned John Smith, who,
with a handful of bribes and a heart full of cheap intrigue, must do his
work from the corridor. A legislative seat was a two-edged sword to cut
both ways. You could trade with it, using it as a bribe, bartering vote
for vote; that was one edge. Or you could threaten with it, promising
nay for nay, and thus compel some member to save your bill to save his