Part 18 (1/2)
”You keep a saloon.”
”Yes. An' what ward do Oi live in?”
”The sixth, don't you?”
”Then,” said Dennis, his upper lip twisting into a smile of enormous proportions, ”Oi suppose yez afther thinkin' Oi'm a dirty black Republican.”
Peter laughed, as few could help doing, when Dennis led the way. ”Look here, Dennis,” he said, ”don't you run down that party. My father was a Democrat, but he voted for Lincoln, and fought for the blacks when the time came, and though I'm a Democrat like him, the Republicans are only black in their sympathies, and not in their acts.”
”An' what do yez say to the whisky frauds, an' black Friday, an' credit mobilier?” asked Dennis.
”Of course I don't like them,” said Peter; ”but that's the politicians, not the party.”
”Shure,” said Dennis, ”what's the party but the men that run it?”
”You've seen something of Mr. Bohlmann lately, Dennis?”
”Yes.”
”Well, he was the man who put Goldman in charge of that cow stable. Yet he's an honest man.”
Dennis scratched his head. ”It's a convincin' way yez have wid yez,” he said; ”but it's scoundrels the Republicans are, all the same. Look at them in the district; there's not one a decent man would invite to drink wid him.”
”I think, Dennis,” said Peter, ”that when all the decent men get into one party, there'll be only one worth talking about.”
”Av course,” replied Dennis. ”That's the reason there's only the Democratic party in New York City.”
”Tell me about this primary,” said Peter, concluding that abstract political philosophy was not the way to liberalize Dennis.
”It's most important, it is,” he was told, ”it's on top Patsy Blunkers an' his gang av dirty spalpeens (Dennis seemed to forget that he had just expressed the opinion that all the ”decent” men were Democrats) have been this two years, but we've got orders for a new enrollment at last, an' if we don't knock them this time, my name isn't Dinnis Moriarty.”
”What is the question before the meeting?”
”Afther the enrollment, it's to vote for delegates.”
”Oh! Then it's just a struggle over who shall be elected?”
”That's it. But a fine, big fight it will be. The whole district's so excited, sir, that it's twice Oi've had to pound the b'ys a bit in my saloon to keep the peace.”
”What do you want of me?”
”Shure, every vote counts on a night like this. An' ye'd be afther helpin' us big, for the district likes yez.”
”But, Dennis, I can't vote without knowing something about the way things are. I shouldn't know whether I was voting rightly.”
”Why, a man votes right when he votes for his friends!”
”No; a man votes right when he votes for his convictions.”
”Convictions, is it?”