nor could she ever persuade him to tell her where he lived.

Because of this mystery, upon which he merrily insisted, she affected
a fear that he would some day desert her. "You don' tell me where you
lif, I t'ink you goin' ran away of me, Toby. I vake opp some day; git
a ledder dod you gone back home by 'Talian lady dod's grazy 'bout
you!"

"Ahaha! Libra Ogostine, you believe I can make a write weet a
pen-a-paper? I don' know that-a _how_. Some-a-time you _see_
that gran' palazzo where I leef. Eesa greata-great sooraprise!"

In the gran' palazzo, it was as much as he could do to keep clean his
own grim little bunk in the corner. His comrades, sullen, hopeless,
came at evening from ten hours' desperate shovelling, and exhibited no
ambition for water or brooms, but sat hunched and silent, or morosely
muttering and coughing, in the dark room with its sodden earthen
floor, stained walls, and one smoky lamp.

To this uncomfortable chamber repaired, one March evening, Mr. Frank
Pixley, Republican precinct committee-man, nor was its dinginess an
unharmonious setting for that political brilliant. He was a
pock-pitted, damp-looking, soiled little fungus of a man, who had
attained to his office because, in the dirtiest precinct of the
wickedest ward in the city, he had, through the operation of a
befitting ingenuity, forced a recognition of his leadership. From such
an office, manned by a Pixley, there leads an upward ramification of
wires, invisible to all except manipulators, which extends to higher
surfaces. Usually the Pixley is a deep-sea puppet, wholly controlled
by the dingily gilded wires that run down to him; but there are times