The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him Part 38

The Commission began its inquiry, on the date fixed, and met three times a week from that time on. Peter did not try to push himself forward, but he was by far the best prepared on the subject, and was able to suggest the best sources of information. He asked good questions, too, of the various witnesses summoned. Finally he was the one regular attendant, and therefore was the one appealed to for information elicited at previous meetings. He found the politician his best helper. Pell was useful when he attended, which was not very often, and even this intermittent attendance ceased in June. "I'm going to Newport," he explained, and did not appear again till late in the fall. The contractor really took no part in the proceedings beyond a fairly frequent attendance, and an occasional fit of attention whenever the inquiry related to building. The labor-agitator proved quite a good man.

He had, it is true, no memory, and caused them to waste much time in reading over the minutes of previous meetings. But he was in earnest, and proved to be perfectly reasonable as soon as he found that the commissioners' duties were to inquire and not to make speeches. Peter walked home with him several times, and they spent evenings together in Peter's rooms, talking over the evidence, and the possibilities.

Peter met a great many different men in the course of the inquiry; landlords, real-estate agents, architects, engineers, builders, plumbers, health officials, doctors and tenants. In many cases he went to see these persons after they had been before the Commission, and talked with them, finding that they were quite willing to give facts in private which they did not care to have put on record.

He had been appointed the Secretary of the Food Commission, and spent much time on that work. He was glad to find that he had considerable influence, and that Green not merely acted on his suggestions, but encouraged him to make them. The two inquiries were so germane that they helped him reciprocally. No reports were needed till the next meeting of the Legislature, in the following January, and so the two commissions took enough evidence to swamp them. Poor Ray was reduced almost to despair over the ma.s.s of "rubbish" as he called it, which he would subsequently have to put in order.

Between the two tasks, Peter's time was well-nigh used up. It was especially drawn upon when the taking of evidence ceased and the drafting of the reports began. Ray's notes proved hopeless, so Peter copied out his neatly, and let Ray have them, rather glad that irrelevant and useless evidence was thus omitted. It was left to Peter to draw the report, and when his draft was submitted, it was accompanied by a proposed General Tenement-house Bill. Both report and bill were slightly amended, but not in a way that Peter minded.

Peter drew the Food-Commission report as well, although it went before the Commission as Green's. To this, too, a proposed bill was attached, which had undergone the scrutiny of the Health Board, and had been conformed to their suggestions.

In November Peter carried both reports to Albany, and had a long talk with Catlin over them. That official would have preferred no reports, but since they were made, there was nothing to do but to submit them to the Legislature. Peter did not get much encouragement from him about the chances for the bills. But Costell told him that they could be "whipped through. The only danger is of their being amended, so as to spoil them."

"Well," said Peter, "I hope they will be pa.s.sed. I've done my best, whatever happens."

A very satisfactory thing to be able to say of yourself, if you believe in your own truthfulness.

CHAPTER XXIX.

IN THE MEANTIME.

In spite of nine months' hard work on the two Commissions, it is not to be supposed that Peter's time was thus entirely monopolized. If one spends but seven hours of the twenty-four in sleep, and but two more on meals, there is considerable remaining time, and even so slow a worker as Peter found spare hours not merely for society and saloons, but for what else he chose to undertake.

Socially he had an evening with Miss De Voe, just before she left the city for the summer; a dinner with Mr. Pell, who seemed to have taken a liking to Peter; a call on Lispenard; another on Le Grand; and a family meal at the Rivingtons, where he was made much of in return for his aid to Ray.

In the saloons he worked hard over the coming primary, and spent evenings as well on doorsteps in the district, talking over objects and candidates. In the same cause, he saw much of Costell, Green, Gallagher, Schlurger and many other party men of greater or less note in the city's politics. He had become a recognized quant.i.ty in the control of the district, and the various ward factions tried hard to gain his support.

When the primary met, the proceedings, if exciting, were never for a moment doubtful, for Gallagher, Peter, Moriarty and Blunkers had been able to agree on both programme and candidates. An attempt had been made to "turn down" Schlurger, but Peter had opposed it, and had carried his point, to the great grat.i.tude of the silent, honest German. What was more important to him, this had all been done without exciting hard feelings.

"Stirling's a reasonable fellow," Gallagher told Costell, not knowing how much Peter was seeing of the big leader, "and he isn't dead set on carrying his own schemes. We've never had so little talk of mutiny and sulking as we have had this paring. Moriarty and Blunkers swear by him.

It's queer. They've always been on opposite sides till now."

When the weather became pleasant, Peter took up his "angle"' visitings again, though not with quite the former regularity. Yet he rarely let a week pa.s.s without having spent a couple of evenings there. The spontaneous welcome accorded him was payment enough for the time, let alone the pleasure and enjoyment he derived from the imps. There was little that could raise Peter in their estimation, but they understood very well that he had become a man of vast importance, as it seemed to them. They had sharp little minds and ears, and had caught what the "district" said and thought of Peter.

"Cheese it, the cop, Tim," cried an urchin one evening to another, who was about to "play ball."

"Cheese it yerself. He won't dare tech me," shouted Tim, "so long as Mister Peter's here."

That speech alone showed the magnitude of his position in their eyes.

He was now not merely, "friends wid de perlice;" he was held in fear by that awesome body!

"If I was as big as him," said one, "I'd fire all the peelers."

"Wouldn't that be dandy!" cried another.

He won their hearts still further by something he did in midsummer.

Blunkers had asked him to attend what brilliant posters throughout that part of the city announced as:

HO FOR THE SEA-Sh.o.r.e!

SIXTH ANNUAL

CLAM BAKE

OF THE

PATRICK N. BLUNKERS'S a.s.sOCIATION.

When Peter asked, he found that it was to consist of a barge party (tickets fifty cents) to a bit of sand not far away from the city, with music, clams, bathing and dancing included in the price of the ticket, and unlimited beer for those who could afford that beverage.

"The beer just pays for it," Blunkers explained. "I don't give um whisky cause some ---- cusses don't drink like as dey orter." Then catching a look in Peter's face, he laughed rather shamefacedly. "I forgits," he explained. "Yer see I'm so da--" he checked himself--"I swears widout knowin' it."

"I shall be very glad to go," said Peter.

"Dat's bully," said Blunkers. Then he added anxiously: "Dere's somethin'

else, too, since yer goin'. Ginerally some feller makes a speech. Yer wouldn't want to do it dis time, would yer?"

"What do they talk about?"

"Just what dey--" Blunkers swallowed a word, nearly choking in so doing, and ended "please."

"Yes. I shall be glad to talk, if you don't mind my taking a dull subject?"

"Yer just talk what yer want. We'll listen."

After Peter had thought it over for a day, he went to Blunkers's gin palace.

"Look here," he said. "Would it be possible to hire one more barge, and take the children free? I'll pay for the boat, and for the extra food, if they won't be in the way."

"I'm d.a.m.ned if yer do," shouted Blunkers. "Yer don't pay for nothinks, but der childers shall go, or my name ain't Blunkers."

And go they did, Blunkers making no secret of the fact that it was Peter's idea. So every child who went, nearly wild with delight, felt that the sail, the sand, the sea, and the big feed, was all owed to Peter.

It was rather an amusing experience to Peter. He found many of his party friends in the district, not excluding such men as Gallagher, Kennedy and others of the more prominent rank. He made himself very pleasant to those whom he knew, chatting with them on the trip down. He went into the water with the men and boys, and though there were many good swimmers, Peter's country and river training made it possible for him to give even the "wharf rats," a point or two in the way of water feats.

Then came the regulation clam-bake, after which Peter talked about the tenement-house question for twenty minutes. The speech was very different from what they expected, and rather disappointed them all.

However, he won back their good opinions in closing, for he ended with a very pleasant "thank you," to Blunkers, so neatly worded, and containing such a thoroughly apt local joke, that it put all in a good humor, and gave them something to tell their neighbors, on their return home. The advantage of seldom joking is that people remember the joke, and it gets repeated. Peter almost got the reputation of a wit on that one joke, merely because it came after a serious harangue, and happened to be quotable. Blunkers was so pleased with the end of the speech that he got Peter to write it out, and to this day the "thank you" part of the address, in Peter's neat handwriting, handsomely framed, is to be seen in Blunkers's saloon.

Peter also did a little writing this summer. He had gone to see three or four of the reporters, whom he had met in "the case," to get them to write up the Food and Tenement subjects, wishing thereby to stir up public feeling. He was successful to a certain degree, and they not merely wrote articles themselves, but printed three or four which Peter wrote. In two cases, he was introduced to "staff" writers, and even wrote an editorial, for which he was paid fifteen dollars. This money was all he received for the time spent, but he was not working for shekels. All the men told him to let them know when he had more "stories" for them, and promised him a.s.sistance when the reports should go in to the legislature.

Peter visited his mother as usual during August. Before going, he called on Dr. Plumb, and after an evening with him, went to two tenements in the district. As the result of these calls, he carried three children with him when he went home. Rather pale, thin little waifs. It is a serious matter to charge any one with so grave a crime as changling, but Peter laid himself open to it, for when he came back, after two weeks, he returned very different children to the parents. The fact that they did not prosecute for the subst.i.tution only proves how little the really poor care for their offspring.

But this was not his only summering. He spent four days with the Costells, as well as two afternoons later, thoroughly enjoying, not merely the long, silent drives over the country behind the fast horses, but the pottering round the flower-garden with Mrs. Costell. He had been reading up a little on flowers and gardening, and he was glad to swap his theoretical for her practical knowledge. Candor compels the statement that he enjoyed the long hours stretched on the turf, or sitting idly on the veranda, puffing Mr. Costell's good Havanas.

Twice Mr. Bohlmann stopped at Peter's office of a Sat.u.r.day and took him out to stay over Sunday at his villa in one of the Oranges. The family all liked Peter and did not hesitate to show it. Mr. Bohlmann told him:

"I sbend about dree dousand a year on law und law-babers. Misder Dummer id does for me, but ven he does nod any longer it do, I gifts id you."