The Mount Holly news. [volume] (Mount Holly, Burlington Co., N.J.) 1891-1942, 1902-11-25
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IN T II E III
SENATE 99
GALLERY
By A. H. JOHNSTON
Copyright, 1901, by A. H. Johnston


Representative of small resources with
out attracting attention. This is all
very vulgar. and not here to be dis
cussed. Certain 1t is that the king OF
the lobby never so fully realized until
that day that his business lay not with
banknotes iii the analysis, but with
subtle undercur .ents of a human soul
that no plummet fathoms.
He had spent-never mind, the fig
ures were nowhere set down-but he
had spent money actually and had
sweat blood fguratively to pass the
canal bill. The canal bill was to come
to final vote within fifteen minutes.
and If coin had been tossed I'D he
would have laid even money on heads
or tails. AS he looked out over the big
hall. swinging II pince neg idly, not a
muscle of his strong face twitched.
His intelligent eyes narrowed to two
| cunning predatory Sits, his glance fit
ting from the pink and white face of a
girl in the gallery TO the gray sprinkled
head of man who sat at a desk well
forward In the room below.
| w PNACOAtc RCA III LlfG dSbtl11Dll
knew how the vote would turn. he
thought. One of these was the girl
and the other the man. On second
thought the king of the lobby revised
his opinion. The girl did not know, for
Archibald, with the banknotes burning
In stuffy envelope in the inside pocket
of his coat. could not have told her.
Or if the banknotes were even now on
their way back to the king of the lobby
Archibald was still not the man to have
told her Archibald did not pose, what
ever he did. And at thirty and eight
politician and bachelor does not get
himself engaged to a girl for the pur-
pose of talkink statecraft with her, and
perhaps not even questions of ethics
This Is the way that matters stood,
as far as the king of the lobby could
know. The oldest senator. and the
memories of some of them went back
to the days when old Dick Yates, the
war governor, prorogued a refractory
legislature and fitted out regiments at
the expense of his own pocket, could
not recollect a measure that had pro-
1t was a bill about which one honest
man might hold an opinion diametric-
ally opposed to the opinion of another
honest man, and, as every one knows,
this brings about a state of affairs.
Such was the hue and cry that by the
time the bill had passed the lower
house and had reached the senate even
ifd af, 20
vote for it. At this juncture the men
Of money behind the bill, being also
men of graft, came to an understand
ing with the lobby.
The king of the lobby. according to
! his custom, wrote down on a sheet of
paper the names of all the honest men
who We're reckoned upon to vote against
the bill. on another sheet the names of
the honest men who would vote for 1t,
and still on third sheet he wrote the
names of the ''wabblers' and the sell
ers.' He employed plausible men to
convince the "wabblers' and dispatch
ed cunning lieutenants who bought the
sellers" All these names he added
to the list of the canal bIll's hackers,
=
number were lacking He got two
from the other slde-ao matter how
Then, as the days went on and the
third was not landed. the lobby king
sweat with fear. Archibald of Cook,
silent and patient and conservative,
had given no inkling of the way that
he intended to cast his vote. But
Archibald xyas q man Of obo pa ctcr On
they said, and the most timid were
never afraid to peep as Archibald
piped
The king of the lobby heard things
stories of debts. and Of the love affair
that was gossip, and being lobby
king he saw a desperate chance and
resolved to play 1t. 1t was not the
business of the lobby king to deal In
ethics, which In the long run every
man must attend to for himself. So.
late in the past evening. Archibald had
been informed In the most delicate
way that friends of the measure We're
deeply grateful to him for the vote
which he intended to cast In their
favor. AS a trihing return a very
small proportion Of the about to be in
creased dividends Of the canal COM
pany were transferred to him In a
plain brown envelope by the hands of
a messenger. The lobby king was ac-
customed to suspense, but 1t was a
matter of some concern to him as the
clerk stood up to read the long legal
title of the bill that afternoon as to
just what disposition had been made
of the brown envelope
Archibald sat composedly at his desk
in the senate writing letters Or. per-
haps he only pretended to write to
conceal latent nervousness. 1t is Ger
tain that he glanced at the girl in the
gallery but once, and then surreptitous-
ly and timidly. For that matter, poll
tician as he was and considerably ex
perienced In the ways of the world,
Archibald was always timid in the
presence of the girl. She was only
nineteen. slender slip of femlninity
just out of boarding school. but she
had taught Archibald a great many
things. or at least he thought that. she
had. and 1t Is much the same He did
not defer to her Judgment precisely,
but he shifted his point of view to
meet her sentiments For example, the
girl did not conceive Of riding through
life In other than a coach and four, as
she had ridden thus for nineteen years
by the grace of a parent who shaved
and another parent who managed.
Archibald was poor and latterly sunk
INF AnIf hr,k ~ -
coach and four as though he had
been born to it. And this is not say
ing that 1t was thrust upon him. 1t
was merely a part of the divinity that
hedged about a handsome girl who
spoke of ordinary politicians and their
wives as those people"
Where the money was to come from
he had not the least idea, and he
found it more tolerable on the whole
not to dwell upon ways and means.
He simply marked time, and his hair
grew whittier and something came up
every day to remind him that he was
not young any longer.
Ordinarily the coarse establishments
of the lobby had no terrors for Archi-
bald. But when you come to the love
of a woman, a nice sentiment about
marriage settlements, a mountain of
debt and dizzy sum of money in
plain brown envelope, and the bill is a
good one perhaps anyway, and no one
cares a copper whether you go up or
down, why, that is another thing.
Only that morning Archibald had !
taken the girl for a drive in fancy |
cutter behind a pair of thin fanked
bays. 1t might have been chance, but |
1t looked like fate. that as they dashed
past the steps Of the capitol the lobby
king, on the topmost step. had lifted