first-class racing trotter--"Alice Lane"--behind which he gave me more
than one spin. During this first winter I grew to like Joe and his
particular cronies. But I had no idea that they especially returned the
liking, and in the first row we had in the organization (which arose
over a movement, that I backed, to stand by a non-partisan method of
street-cleaning) Joe and all his friends stood stiffly with the machine,
and my side, the reform side, was left with only some half-dozen votes
out of three or four hundred. I had expected no other outcome and took
it good-humoredly, but without changing my attitude.

Next fall, as the elections drew near, Joe thought he would like to make
a drive at Jake Hess, and after considerable planning decided that his
best chance lay in the fight for the nomination to the Assembly, the
lower house of the Legislature. He picked me as the candidate with whom
he would be most likely to win; and win he did. It was not my fight, it
was Joe's; and it was to him that I owe my entry into politics. I had
at that time neither the reputation nor the ability to have won the
nomination for myself, and indeed never would have thought of trying for
it.

Jake Hess was entirely good-humored about it. In spite of my being
anti-machine, my relations with him had been friendly and human, and
when he was beaten he turned in to help Joe elect me. At first they
thought they would take me on a personal canvass through the saloons
along Sixth Avenue. The canvass, however, did not last beyond the first
saloon. I was introduced with proper solemnity to the saloon-keeper--a
very important personage, for this was before the days when
saloon-keepers became merely the mortgaged chattels of the brewers--and
he began to cross-examine me, a little too much in the tone of one who
was dealing with a suppliant for his favor. He said he expected that I