would of course treat the liquor business fairly; to which I answered,
none too cordially, that I hoped I should treat all interests fairly.
He then said that he regarded the licenses as too high; to which I
responded that I believed they were really not high enough, and that
I should try to have them made higher. The conversation threatened to
become stormy. Messrs. Murray and Hess, on some hastily improvised plea,
took me out into the street, and then Joe explained to me that it was
not worth my while staying in Sixth Avenue any longer, that I had better
go right back to Fifth Avenue and attend to my friends there, and that
he would look after my interests on Sixth Avenue. I was triumphantly
elected.

Once before Joe had interfered in similar fashion and secured the
nomination of an Assemblyman; and shortly after election he had grown
to feel toward this Assemblyman that he must have fed on the meat which
rendered Caesar proud, as he became inaccessible to the ordinary mortals
whose place of resort was Morton Hall. He eyed me warily for a
short time to see if I was likely in this respect to follow in my
predecessor's footsteps. Finding that I did not, he and all my other
friends and supporters assumed toward me the very pleasantest attitude
that it was possible to assume. They did not ask me for a thing. They
accepted as a matter of course the view that I was absolutely straight
and was trying to do the best I could in the Legislature. They desired
nothing except that I should make a success, and they supported me with
hearty enthusiasm. I am a little at a loss to know quite how to express
the quality in my relationship with Joe Murray and my other friends of
this period which rendered that relationship so beneficial to me. When I
went into politics at this time I was not conscious of going in with
the set purpose to benefit other people, but of getting for myself a
privilege to which I was entitled in common with other people. So it was