Year: 1874

Poor old Mr.. Havemeyer, though . vener-
able man and astute, is no match for the
politicians at Albany. He evidently has
notion that he winds up all the political
clocks; but his role is rather that Of the simple
animal whose paws are used to pull chestnuts
out Of the fire for the party monkeys. In the
good old days, perhaps, when the Mayor was
younger and the world was younger, too. the
head that now tops the venerable ruin we call
conceits and bright notions-that is to say,
notions bright enough for those times. There
were net many diamonds in the number but
it was period when paste passed very we'll
Dicky Riker was then great man. No
doubt the Mayor was person of respectable
altitude intellectually, measured by that stand
ard; but alas the times are changed There
are more ideas in the world. There are more
games on foot. There is o great deal more
money in this city to be stolen, and the awful
ingenuity and intellectual activity that this
temptation stimulates makes the old times of
city politics seem like ages of Arcadian SIM
plicity.


Shades of Riker and Havemeyer what men
there are now to compete with, compared to
the men there we're in the good old times
Now we have Mr. Green, the Comptroller, and
Mr.. Jimmy O'Brien and Mr.. Morrissey and
Mr.. Tom Murphy and Mr.. Charlick and
Mark Lanigan aud Denny Burns and
Jimmy Hayes and Corney Flynn, in short
too many to name, all men of the most be-
wildering political genius and altogether
transcendent capacity. With these names
written down We are ashamed to think what
pigmies in politics the contemporaries of Mr.
Havemeyer were Slmple-minded, moss-grown
old gentlemen-peace be to their ashes -
for it is the traditional style to talk of what
remains of them as ashes, though none Of
them were cremated. Mr.. Havemeyer, brought
up in the antique simplicity, is in the hands
of the sharp men of our time as clay in the
hands Of the potter, and takes unconsciously
the shapes they conceive for him. In the
political pools in which they paddle it is not
correct to say that Mr.. Havemeyer is out of
his depth, since the expression would seem to
suppose that he has some depth, while in fact
he is unconsciously shallow, always by CON-
parison. In the shallowest pools the poll :
icians have nowadays he would sink out of
sight head and ears In this expression about
head and ears it seems to be implied that
mans head sinks out Of sight while his ears
are yet seen above the water, and that these
still visible ears are the last to disappear, from
which perhaps the expression was originally
contrived for the case of some man like our
venerable Mayor.


We cannot soy which Of the great poll
ticians of the time inspired the Mayor with
the notion Of writing letter to the President
of the State Senate protesting against giving
him the sole power to create Police Commits
soners; but perhaps it is not a necessary
part Of the great plan of government that
this should be known. II Is not known who
invented the mariners compass, yet ships,
guided by it. come safely into port every day.
and thus, though we do not know who pro-
posed it, this letter will stand forever as an
evidence in our history of how wisdom and
patriotism and self-abnegation CRY aloud In