all meant votes to him. The opposition didn't believe this, and the more dignified candidates decreed that the voters must be educated to Fitzgeraldism, and made to realize the significance of the finance commission investigation and reports; but not so with Fitz. The opposition daily hurled pointed questions at him and dared him to answer that very day. In those early days of personalities in the advertisements the chaps from the "purchased press," who stuck to Fitz like leeches and refused to miss a word he said, used to expect that the accused would answer, and it would mean great copy; but not for a minute. Fitzgerald ignored these charges as if they were. being made against the great hunter in Africa and were matters with which a Boston candidate was not concerned, until somebody in the camp of the enemy made a silly mistake and accused Fitzgerald in a public advertisement of a grafting deal which occurred in the administration previous to 1906-07, when Fitz was mayor of Boston. Then he decided to notice the mean things.

"Need I answer such charges as those," he naively asked, his whole being suffused with the forgiving and patient air of injured innocence, "when my desperate opponents resort to such methods? I am accused of permitting coal to be purchased by the city of Boston which was inferior in grade and under weight, when those things occurred in the time of Mayor Patrick Collins, whom no man dared charge with dishonesty." And this was the truth.

The blunderers were forced to take back the things they said in that advertisement and Fitz made the most of it. Just how much that one incident figured in the defeat of Storrow will never be known, but it was factor.

a

With entire propriety the opposition did present much more serious charges, some of them along the same lines and all secured through the investigations of the finance commission during the Fitzgerald administration; but for a long time they made no impression on

Fitz. Night after night, when these additional counts were appearing in the press of the city and the public wanted to hear some kind of an answer, the doughty and resourceful accused contented himself, and apparently most of his audiences, by wailing against the men who could say such untruthful things as were described in that mistaken and revoked accusation about the coal. With all the remarkable cunning he possessed as a natural leader of a certain class who never fail to get to the polls, no matter what the weather, the "Little General" played on the innate sense of fair play in every man's bosom, and the real question of honesty or dishonesty never occurred to them when Fitz was crying out in his injured innocence.

There are few men in Boston who can talk faster than John F. Fitzgerald, although, undoubtedly, there are many who can say more in fewer words, and on this remarkable ability his campaign managers relied to take him through the most exhausting whirlwind speechmaking tours night after night.

The night's work always started from Young's Hotel, in the heart of the down-town district. While taking supper the tireless campaigner would dictate a speech to be sent to the newspapers, and it was this matter he was supposed to deliver during his slap-bang round of the night. It usually dealt with the number of corporations with which the principal opposing candidate was affiliated, and deplored the selection of a mayoralty aspirant who found it necessary to expend vast sums for his publicity work. With this plaint, of course, went the cry of the accused one's own poverty and inability to cope with a man of the opponent's type "if money were to be the deciding factor." In those few words Fitzgerald summarized his entire campaign. Night after night the newspapermen who accompanied him heard nothing but that one cry-the vague charges that his opponent was a very wealthy man, and had the usual failings of the big financier in manipulating great interests, mentioning one

or two specific instances which were never seriously considered by anybody that heard them. The only claim upon which Fitzgerald based his claim to election was that he refused to discharge the city laborers in the dead of winter, and this the opposition denied by saying the Central Labor Union practically determined the mayor's action in this instance.

It is almost impossible for type to describe the antics of the gatherings Fitzgerald addressed when he cried out his interest in the laborer. "See what the Hibbard administration did," he bawled before 600 men in an outlying hall just about New Year's. "You remember the New Year's present those men got. Getting $2.25 per day, and if they were thrown out in the middle of winter, their entire yearly pay reached the munificent sum of $25 per year. And they had six or eight in the family. They were fired by the Hibbard administration. That is what the finance commission blamed me for not doing. Discharge these men in the dead of winter. Would I? No; I'd lose my right arm first."

Fitzgerald verbally amputated that arm 500 times if he did it once during that 2500-mile ride. And when the amputation was discussed it brought the crowd to their feet with shrieks of delight. It was thrilling, and he had cornered every vote in that room when he uttered that statement. That was the way the city labor question was handled in some audiences. But, of course, that wouldn't go every place, and nobody knew it better than John F. Fitzgerald, who could intuitively size up his audience the moment he entered the room. He adopted entirely different tactics in other places. He said:

"The finance commission criticises me for hiring labor that was incompetent and not being able to get for the city 100 cents for every dollar expended. Do you know the way I was compelled to hire these men? The civil service commission had to be consulted. If I wanted ten men, they would be requisitioned and a list of

twenty would be sent to me. Could I select the youngest and the most ablebodied? No. The man with sixteen in his family got first choice-that was the law-the man with fifteen got second choice, the man with twelve, ten, nine and so on was chosen according to the size of his family, and I had nothing to do whatever with the matter of their selection. And then I am criticised for not getting the same returns for the city as the private contractor, who can get the maximum of service from foreign labor with a minimum of expense."

Such claims as those sounded plausible, and they went out in Dorchester and Brighton, where the improvement society fad has taken a strong hold on the people. And if it wasn't this plausible line of defense, then it was something equally nice-sounding, and, of course, showed Fitz to be innocent. And relative to that it may be said for a certainty that Fitz never once said that he was wrong. He was perfectly confident from the first that he had been mistreated by the combined forces of the reformers, finance commission and Good Government Association, and would refuse to admit that his administration had not been conducted properly. And he never made a statement for which he might be sorry.. The ordinary person going about at this mile-a-minute pace and reeling off minute speeches might say something in an audience which would "put him in bad," but not so with Fitz. Of course, there were instances when he skidded onto dangerous ground and started a sentence which began to make everybody feel uncomfortable; but before the period had been reached his intuitive mind had seen the danger, and the grease had been applied so generously before the phrase was finished that everybody was feeling comfortable again and the Fitz tact had again triumphed.

Fitz had the "great unterrified" with him, without doubt. In that environment lay his strength, and so certain was he that this element would vote right that it was hardly necessary for

found it necessary to directly admit that these charges must be answered.

The campaign of the opposition was comparatively dignified. The managers may have thought it uncultured and improper to rush about and speak with such haste; a more deliberate, but nevertheless complete, tour of the city was planned; but not so with Fitzy. Such dignity, he admits, is dangerous for a man who wants the vote of the great public; so, whenever he happened to pass a lighted hall, he would say: "What's going on there? Is it one of our places?" If it wasn't, a messenger was dispatched to the people conducting the dance or social, as the case happened to be, and they were asked if they would care to have "the next mayor appear and meet the ladies and gentlemen." In most cases this In most cases this request was granted, and after the candidate had entered and made a brief speech, non-political in its character if his best judgment so decided, he counted that as just so many more votes added to those already assured him. That was the way he went night after night. Any sort of a gatheringand there are many and diverse in Boston during a winter-from a smoke talk to a drawing-room festival-was not too small to be honored by a visit from Fitz; and in this way, by sheer force of personality, he gained a foothold that must be reckoned with in explaining the cause of his recent election.

Then those house parties: He decided to make an early start in his campaign, and, as it was too long a time to keep up the interest in rallies, he hit upon the idea of going from house to house and meeting gatherings of men who had been notified the night before of the fact that the candidate was coming. Every evening a list of seven or eight would be arranged, and here Fitzgerald met from thirty to sixty men and many women. In this way he also added to his strength.

There were many householders who read their paper rather carefully and wanted to hear about those finance commission charges, but when they heard Fitz talk transit improvements for any district he might happen to be in, garbage removal, pat the children on the head and speak to the lady of the household, it meant votes.

There are some people who may say that they voted against the dictates of their conscience, and that Fitzgerald was not a credit to his race or religion, and to his credit he never once mentioned either, no matter how safe the place happened to be; but there is this to be said even by his enemies-that he is an able man and can make a good mayor. He knows the needs of Boston as well as any man; has a remarkable grasp of the municipal subjects, and his resourcefulness has been a matter of comment since he found the way to get his name into the Congressional Record by frequent interruptions of speakers on the floor of the national House of Representatives. He wants to see the city prosper, no matter what his other motives may be; he has been tried, found wanting, and had publicly said that he is just going to show that the judgment was hasty and unjust. He has almost wept in his anger in the presence of newspaper friends because of the grief of his family felt when the sensational newspapers pictured him with the word "grafter" across his forehead, and his intimates say that the charges, if not untrue, were exaggerated. Since his election a hostile press wheeled about instantly, and with the warmest words of encouragement promised to stand by him. The speaker of the House of Representatives guaranteed the sympathetic support of that body; civic organizations are standing by to help him on, and if John F. Fitzgerald does not vindicate himself after that 2500-mile plea for just one more chance, then he himself is to blame.

T

HERE died not many months ago, in an cld country-house in Kentucky, attended only by an aged, black body-servant, a veteran of the Civil War, whose name-a proud one in the annals of the Bluegrass state-shall be here disguised under the pseudonym of Thomas Fairmont.

His case was one which, forty-five years ago, attracted widespread attention, on account of his distinguished ancestory, his own remarkable record as a soldier and the grotesquely terrible fate which condemned him to draw out a helpless existence of more than twoscore years. But with the silent lapse of time, both his gallantry and his sufferings had been well nigh forgotten, and the announcement of his death revived their memory only in the hearts of a few surviving comrades.

In the beginning of the great struggle which rent his native state from center to circumference, arraying friend against friend and brother friend and brother against brother, and bursting asunder social, business, and family ties, Tom Fairmont, true to the traditions of a line reaching back to Revolutionary times, espoused with sorrowful, but unflinching, determination the cause of the Union.

He was then twenty-four years old, a magnificent specimen of physical manhood, standing six feet two, with handsome, high-bred features, and muscles developed by athletic exercises and the practice of daring horsemanship. His mind was well worthy so noble a housing. He was just completing a brilliant course at the college of laws, in preparation for a profession to which his family had given many an eloquent advocate and profound jurist.

Relinquishing all the bright prospects of peaceful life, he enlisted as a private in the Regiment of Union Volunteers. He did not, however, remain long in the ranks, but rose rapidly through successive positions to the command of the regiment.

It was in this capacity that he participated July 2, 1863-the second day of the memorable battle of Gettysburg-in the fierce hand-to-hand struggle by which the Confederates were repelled from the rocky ridge known as "Little Round Top," and the decisive victory of the following day was rendered possible.

Fighting with almost incredible. valor, the young leader fell frightfully wounded. After the retreat of the enemy he was taken up for dead, but a close examination discovering a faint movement of the heart, he was tenderly carried to the hospital, where he suffered the amputation of both legs and his left hand. For many days he lay barely alive and totally unconscious of his surroundings. Then, as if by a miracle, his wonderful vitality asserted itself and he began slowly to

recover.

At length, a mere fragment of a man-in the words of one of his nurses, "barely enough of him to hold one of the bravest souls which God ever breathed," he was taken by careful stages back to the home which had been desolated during his brief absence by the death of both his par

ents.

He had been the only son of an only son, and was absolutely without any near kindred. Some of his boyhood friends had been alienated by the war, others were fighting in the ranks or filling soldiers' soldiers' graves. Rarely had one found himself more