SOME people are wonderin' why it is that the Brooklyn Democrats
have been sidin' with David B. Hill and the upstate crowd. There's
no cause for wonder. I have made a careful study of the
Brooklynite, and I can tell you why. It's because a Brooklynite is a
natural-born hay. seed, and can never become a real New Yorker.
He can't be trained into it. Consolidation didn't make him a New
Yorker, and nothin' on earth can. A man born in Germany can
settle down and become a good New Yorker. So can an Irishman;
in fact, the first word an Irish boy learns in the old country is "New
York," and when he grows up and comes here, he is at home right
away. Even a Jap or a Chinaman can become a New Yorker, but a
Brooklynite never can.

And why? Because Brooklyn don't seem to be like any other place
on earth. Once let a man grow up amidst Brooklyn's cobblestones,
with the odor of Newton Creek and Gowanus Canal ever in his
nostrils, and there's no place in the world for him except Brooklyn.
And even if he don't grow up there; if he is born there and lives
there only in his boyhood and then moves away, he is still beyond
redemption. In one of my speeches in the Legislature, I gave an
example of this, and it's worth repeatin' now. Soon after I became a
leader on the West Side, a quarter of a century ago, I came across a
bright boy, about seven years old, who had just been brought over
from Brooklyn by his parents. I took an interest in the boy, and
when he grew up I brought him into politics. Finally, I sent him to
the Assembly from my district Now remember that the boy was
only seven years old when he left Brooklyn, and was twenty-three
when he went to the Assembly. You'd think he had forgotten all
about Brooklyn, wouldn't you? I did, but I was dead wrong. When