The Boss, and How He Came to Rule New York

It was one evening at my own door, when that judge who once sought to fix upon me the murder of Jimmy the Blacksmith, came tapping for an interview. His term was bending towards the evening of its close, and the mean purpose of him was none better-than to just plead for his place again. I will not say the man was abject; but then the thought of his mission, added to a memory of that relation to each other in which it was aforetime our one day’s fate to have stood, choked me with contempt. I shall let his conduct go by without further characterization; and yet for myself, had our fortunes been reversed and he the Boss and I the Judge, before I had been discovered in an attitude of office-begging from a hand I once plotted to kill, I would have died against the wall. But so it was; my visitor would labor with me for a renomination.

My first impulse was one of destruction; I would put him beneath the wheel and crush out the breath of his hopes. And then came Big Kennedy’s warning to avoid revenge when moved of nothing broader than a reason of revenge.

I sat and gazed mutely upon that judge for a space; he, having told his purpose, awaited my decision without more words. I grew cool, and cunning began to have the upper hand of violence in my breast. If I cast him down, the papers would tell of it for the workings of my vengeance. If, on the quiet other hand, he were to be returned, it would speak for my moderation, and prove me one who in the exercise of power lifted himself above the personal. I resolved to continue him; the more since the longer I considered, the clearer it grew that my revenge, instead of being starved thereby, would find in it a feast.

“You tried to put a rope about my neck,” said I at last.

“I was misled as to the truth.”

“Still you put a stain upon me. There be thousands who believe me guilty of bloodshed, and of that you shall clear me by printed word.”

“I am ever ready to repair an error.”

Within a week, with black ink and white paper, my judge in peril set forth how since my trial he had gone to the ends of that death of Jimmy the Blacksmith in its history. I was, he said, an innocent man, having had neither part nor lot therein.

I remember that over the glow of triumph wherewith I read his words, there came stealing the chill shadow of a hopeless grief. Those phrases of exoneration would not recall poor Apple Cheek; nor would they restore Blossom to that poise and even balance from which she had been shaken on a day before her birth. For all the sorrow of it, however, I made good my word; and I have since thought that whether our judge deserved the place or no, to say the least he earned it.

Every man has his model, and mine was Big John Kennedy. This was in a way of nature, for I had found Big Kennedy in my boyhood, and it is then, and then only, when one need look for his great men. When once you have grown a beard, you will meet with few heroes, and make to yourself few friends; wherefore you should the more cherish those whom your fortunate youth has furnished.

Big Kennedy was my exemplar, and there arose few conditions to frown upon me with a problem to be solved, when I did not consider what Big Kennedy would have done in the face of a like contingency. Nor was I to one side of the proprieties in such a course. Now, when I glance backward down that steep aisle of endeavor up which I’ve come, I recall occasions, and some meant for my compliment, when I met presidents, governors, grave jurists, reverend senators, and others of tallest honors in the land. They talked and they listened, did these mighty ones; they gave me their views and their reasons for them, and heard mine in return; and all as equal might encounter equal in a commerce of level terms. And yet, choose as I may, I have not the name of him who in a pure integrity of force, or that wisdom which makes men follow, was the master of Big John Kennedy. My old chief won all his wars within the organization, and that is the last best test of leadership. He made no backward steps, but climbed to a final supremacy and sustained himself. I was justified in steering by Big Kennedy. Respect aside, I would have been wrecked had I not done so. That man who essays to live with no shining example to show his feet the path, is as one who wanting a lantern, and upon a moonless midnight, urges abroad into regions utterly unknown.

Not alone did I observe those statutes for domination which Big Kennedy both by precept and example had given me, but I picked up his alliances; and that one was the better in my eyes, and came to be observed with wider favor, who could tell of a day when he carried Big Kennedy’s confidence. It was a brevet I always honored with my own.

One such was the Reverend Bronson, still working for the regeneration of the Five Points, He often came to me for money or countenance in his labors, and I did ever as Big Kennedy would have done and heaped up the measure of his requests.

It would seem, also, that I had more of the acquaintance of this good man than had gone to my former leader. For one thing, we were more near in years, and then, too, I have pruned my language of those slangy rudenesses of speech which loaded the conversation of Big Kennedy, and cultivated in their stead softness and a verbal cleanliness which put the Reverend Bronson at more ease in my company. I remember with what satisfaction I heard him say that he took me for a person of education.

It was upon a time when I had told him of my little learning; for the gloom of it was upon me constantly, and now and then I would cry out against it, and speak of it as a burden hard to bear. I shall not soon forget the real surprise that showed in the Reverend Bronson’s face, nor yet the good it did me.

“You amaze me!” he cried. “Now, from the English you employ I should not have guessed it. Either my observation is dulled, or you speak as much by grammar as do I, who have seen a college.”

This was true by more than half, since like many who have no glint of letters, and burning with the shame of it, I was wont to listen closely to the talk of everyone learned of books; and in that manner, and by imitation, I taught myself a decent speech just as a musician might catch a tune by ear.

“Still I have no education,” I said, when the Reverend Bronson spoke of his surprise.

“But you have, though,” returned he, “only you came by that education not in the common way.”

That good speech alone, and the comfort of it to curl about my heart, more than repaid me for all I ever did or gave by request of the Reverend Bronson; and it pleases me to think I told him so. But I fear I set down these things rather in vanity than to do a reader service, and before patience turns fierce with me, I will get onward with my story.

One afternoon the Reverend Bronson came leading a queer bedraggled boy, whose years – for all he was stunted and beneath a size – should have been fourteen.

“Can’t you find something which this lad may do?” asked the Reverend Bronson. “He has neither father nor mother nor home – he seems utterly friendless. He has no capacity, so far as I have sounded him, and, while he is possessed of a kind of animal sharpness, like the sharpness of a hawk or a weasel, I can think of nothing to set him about by which he could live. Even the streets seem closed to him, since the police for some reason pursue him and arrest him on sight. It was in a magistrate’s court I found him. He had been dragged there by an officer, and would have been sent to a reformatory if I had not rescued him.”

“And would not that have been the best place for him?” I asked, rather to hear the Reverend Bronson’s reply, than because I believed in my own query. Aside from being a born friend of liberty in a largest sense, my own experience had not led me to believe that our reformatories reform. I’ve yet to hear of him who was not made worse by a term in any prison. “Why not send him to a reformatory?” said I again.

“No one should be locked up,” contended the Reverend Bronson, “who has not shown himself unfit to be free. That is not this boy’s case, I think; he has had no chance; the police, according to that magistrate who gave him into my hands, are relentless against him, and pick him up on sight.”

“And are not the police good judges of these matters?”

“I would not trust their judgment,” returned the Reverend Bronson. “There are many noble men upon the rolls of the police.” Then, with a doubtful look: “For the most part, however, I should say they stand at the head of the criminal classes, and might best earn their salaries by arresting themselves.”

At this, I was made to smile, for it showed how my reverend visitor’s years along the Bowery had not come and gone without lending him some saltiness of wit.

“Leave the boy here,” said I at last, “I’ll find him work to live by, if it be no more than sitting outside my door, and playing the usher to those who call upon me.”

“Melting Moses is the only name he has given me,” said the Reverend Bronson, as he took his leave. “I suppose, if one might get to it, that he has another.”

“Melting Moses, as a name, should do very well,” said I.

Melting Moses looked wistfully after the Reverend Bronson when the latter departed, and I could tell by that how the urchin regretted the going of the dominie as one might regret the going of an only friend. Somehow, the lad’s forlorn state grew upon me, and I made up my mind to serve as his protector for a time at least. He was a shrill child of the Bowery, was Melting Moses, and spoke a kind of gutter dialect, one-half slang and the other a patter of the thieves that was hard to understand. My first business was to send him out with the janitor of the building to have him thrown into a bathtub, and then buttoned into a new suit of clothes.

Melting Moses submitted dumbly to these improvements, being rather resigned than pleased, and later with the same docility went home to sleep at the janitor’s house. Throughout the day he would take up his post on my door and act as herald to what visitors might come.

Being washed and combed and decently arrayed, Melting Moses, with black eyes and a dark elfin face, made no bad figure of a boy. For all his dwarfishness, I found him surprisingly strong, and as active as a monkey. He had all the love and loyalty of a collie for me, and within the first month of his keeping my door, he would have cast himself into the river if I had asked him for that favor.

Little by little, scrap by scrap, Melting Moses gave me his story. Put together in his words, it ran like this:

“Me fadder kept a joint in Kelly’s Alley; d’ name of-d’ joint was d’ Door of Death, see! It was a hot number, an’ lots of trouble got pulled off inside. He used to fence for d’ guns an’ dips, too, me fadder did; an’ w’en one of ‘em nipped a super or a rock, an’ wanted d’ quick dough, he brought it to me fadder, who chucked down d’ stuff an’ no questions asked. One day a big trick comes off – a jooeler’s winder or somet’ing like dat. Me fadder is in d’ play from d’ outside, see! An’ so w’en dere’s a holler, he does a sneak an’ gets away, ’cause d’ cops is layin’ to pinch him. Me fadder gets put wise to this be a mug who hangs out about d’ Central Office. He sherries like I says.

“At dat, d’ Captain who’s out to nail me fadder toins sore all t’rough. W’en me fadder sidesteps into New Joisey or some’ers, d’ Captain sends along a couple of his harness bulls from Mulberry Street, an’ dey pinches me mudder, who aint had nothin’ to do wit’ d’ play at all. Dey rings for d’ hurry-up wagon, an’ takes me mudder to d’ station. D’ Captain he gives her d’ eye, an’ asts where me fadder is. She says she can’t put him on, ‘cause she aint on herself. Wit’ dat, dis Captain t’rows her d’ big chest, see! an’ says he’ll give her d’ t’ree degrees if she don’t cough up d’ tip. But she hands him out d’ old gag: she aint on. So then, d’ Captain has her put in a cell; an’ nothin’ to eat.

“After d’ foist night he brings her up ag’in.

“‘Dat’s d’ number one d’gree,’ says he.

“But still me mudder don’t tell, ’cause she can’t. Me fadder aint such a farmer as to go leavin’ his address wit’ no one.

“D’ second night dey keeps me mudder in a cell, an’ toins d’ hose on d’ floor so she can’t do nothin’ but stan’ ‘round – no sleep! no chuck! no nothin’!

“‘Dat’s d’ number two d’gree,’ says d’ bloke of a Captain to me mudder. ‘Now where did dat husband of yours skip to?’

“But me mudder couldn’t tell.

“‘Give d’ old goil d’ dungeon,’ says d’ Captain; ‘an’ t’row her in a brace of rats to play wit’.’

“An’ now dey locks me mudder in a place like a cellar, wit’ two rats to squeak an’ scrabble about all night, an’ t’row a scare into her.

“An’ it would too, only she goes dotty.

“Next day, d’ Captain puts her in d’ street. But w’at’s d’ use? She’s off her trolley. She toins sick; an’ in a week she croaks. D’ sawbones gets her for d’ colleges.”

Melting Moses shed tears at this.

“Dat’s about all,” he concluded. “W’en me mudder was gone, d’ cops toined in to do me. D’ Captain said he was goin’ to clean up d’ fam’ly; so he gives d’ orders, an’ every time I’d show up on d’ line, I’d get d’ collar. It was one of dem times, w’en d’ w’itechoker, who passes me on to you, gets his lamps on me an’ begs me off from d’ judge, see!”

Melting Moses wept a deal during his relation, and I was not without being moved by it myself. I gave the boy what consolation I might, by assuring him that he was safe with me, and that no policeman should threaten him. A tale of trouble, and particularly if told by a child, ever had power to disturb me, and I did not question Melting Moses concerning his father and mother a second time.

My noble nonentity – for whom I will say that he allowed me to finger him for offices and contracts, as a musician fingers the keyboard of a piano, and play upon him what tunes of profit I saw fit – was mayor, and the town wholly in my hands, with a Tammany man in every office, when there occurred the first of a train of events which in their passage were to plow a furrow in my life so deep that all the years to come after have not served to smooth it away. I was engaged at my desk, when Melting Moses announced a caller.