The Boss, and How He Came to Rule New York. Lewis Alfred Henry

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СКАЧАТЬ Mr. Kennedy,” replied the grocer dubiously, looking me over with the tail of his eye, “I haf yet no wacancy. My wagons is all full.”

      “I’m goin’ to get him new duds,” said Big Kennedy, “if that’s what you’re thinkin’ about.”

      Still, the grocer, though not without some show of respectful alarm, insisted on a first position.

      “If he was so well dressed even as you, Mr. Kennedy, yet I haf no wacancy,” said he.

      “Then make one,” responded Big Kennedy coolly. “Dismiss one of the boys you have, d’ye see? At least two who work for you don’t belong in my ward.” As the other continued doubtful Big Kennedy became sharp. “Come, come, come!” he cried in a manner peremptory rather than fierce; “I can’t wait all day. Don’t you feed your horses in the street? Don’t you obstruct the sidewalks with your stuff? Don’t you sell liquor in your rear room without a license? Don’t you violate a dozen ordinances? Don’t the police stand it an’ pass you up? An’ yet you hold me here fiddlin’ and foolin’ away time!”

      “Yes, yes, Mr. Kennedy,” cried the grocer, who from the first had sought to stem the torrent of the other’s eloquence, “I was only try in’ to think up w’ich horse I will let him drive alreatty. That’s honest! sure as my name is Nick Fogel!”

      Clothed in what was to me the splendors of a king, being indeed a full new suit bought with Big Kennedy’s money, I began rattling about the streets with a delivery wagon the very next day. As well as I could, I tried to tell my thanks for the clothes.

      “That’s all right,” said Big Kennedy. “I owe you that much for havin’ you chucked into a cell.”

      While Grocer Fogel might have been a trifle slow in hiring me, once I was engaged he proved amiable enough. I did my work well too, missing few of the customers and losing none of the baskets and sacks. Grocer Fogel was free with his praise and conceded my value. Still, since he instantly built a platform in the street on the strength of my being employed, and so violated a new and further ordinance upon which he for long had had an eye, I have sometimes thought that in forming his opinion of my worth he included this misdemeanor in his calculations. However, I worked with my worthy German four years; laying down the reins of that delivery wagon of my own will at the age of nineteen.

      Nor was I without a profit in this trade of delivering potatoes and cabbages and kindred grocery forage. It broadened the frontiers of my acquaintance, and made known to me many of a solvent middle class, and of rather a higher respectability than I might otherwise have met. It served to clean up my manners, if nothing more, and before I was done, that acquaintance became with me an asset of politics.

      While I drove wagon for Grocer Fogel, my work of the day was over with six o’clock. I had nothing to do with the care of the horses; I threw the reins to a stable hand when at evening I went to the barn, and left for my home without pausing to see the animals out of the straps or their noses into the corn. Now, had I been formed with a genius for it, I might have put in a deal of time at study. But nothing could have been more distant from my taste or habit; neither then nor later did I engage myself in any traffic with books, and throughout my life never opened a half-dozen.

      Still, considering those plans I had laid down for myself, and that future of politics to which my ambition began to consider, I cannot say I threw away my leisure. If my nose were not between the pages of a book, my hands were within a pair of boxing gloves, and I, engaged against this or that opponent, was leading or guarding, hitting or stopping, rushing or getting away, and fitting to an utmost hand and foot and eye and muscle for the task of beating a foeman black and blue should the accidents or duties of life place one before me.

      And I prospered with my boxing. I think I owned much native stomach for the business, since in my sullen fashion I was as near the touch of true happiness when in the midst of a mill as ever I hope to stand. My heart, and with that word I mean courage, was of fighting sort. While I was exceedingly cautious, my caution was based on courage. Men of this stamp stay until the last and either conquer or fall. There be ones who have courage, but their construction is the other way about. Their courage is based on caution; such if hard bested run away. Should you seek the man who will stand to the work of battle to the dour end, pick him whose caution, coming first in the procession of his nature, is followed by his courage, rather than that one whose caution follows his courage to tap it on the shoulder, preach to it of peril, and counsel flight.

      You are not to assume that I went about these boxing gymnastics because of any savageries or blood-hunger dominant in my breast, or was moved solely of that instinct by which the game-cock fights. I went to my fist-studies as the result of thought and calculation. In my slow way I had noted how those henchmen of the inner circle who surrounded Big Kennedy – those who were near to him, and upon whom he most relied, were wholly valued by him for the two matters of force of fist and that fidelity which asks no question. Even a thicker intellect than mine would have seen that to succeed as I proposed, I must be the gladiator. Wherefore, I boxed and wrestled and perfected my muscles; also as corollary I avoided drink and tobacco as I would two poisons.

      And Big Kennedy, who had a little of his eye on me most of the time, was so good as to approve. He applauded my refusal of alcohol and tobacco. And he indorsed my determination to be a boxer.

      “A man who can take care of himself with his hands,” said he, “an’ who never lets whisky fool him or steal his head, can go far in this game of politics. An’ it’s a pretty good game at that, is politics, and can be brought to pay like a bank.”

      It chanced that I met with an adventure which added to my celebration in a way I could have wished. I was set upon by a drunken fellow – a stranger. He was an invader, bent upon mischief and came from an adjacent and a rival ward. I had offered no provocation; why he selected me to be his victim and whether it were accident or design I cannot say. Possibly I was pointed out to this drinking Hotspur as one from whose conquest honor would flow; perhaps some enemy of the pattern of Sheeny Joe had set him to it. All I know is that without challenge given, or the least offer of warning, the creature bore down upon me, whirling his fists like flails.

      “You’re the party I’m lookin’ for!” was all he said.

      In the mix-up to follow, and which I had neither time to consider nor avoid, the visitor from that other ward was fully and indubitably beaten. This was so evident that he himself admitted it when at the finish of hostilities certain Samaritans gave him strong drink as a restorative. It developed also that my assailant, in a shadowy subdued way, was a kind of prizefighter, and by his own tribe deemed invincible. My victory, therefore, made a noise in immediate circles; and I should say it saved me from a deal of trouble and later strife, since it served to place me in a class above the common. There came few so drunk or so bold as to ask for trouble with me, and I found that this casual battle – safe, too, because my prizefighter was too drunk to be dangerous – had brought me a wealth of peace.

      There dawned a day when Big Kennedy gave me a decisive mark of his esteem. He presented me to his father. The elder Kennedy, white-haired and furrowed of age, was known as “Old Mike.” He was a personage of gravity and power, since his was the only voice in that region to which Big Kennedy would yield. Wherefore to be of “Old Mike’s” acquaintance shone in one’s favor like a title of knighthood.

      Big Kennedy’s presentation speech, when he led me before his father, was characteristic and peculiar. Old Mike was in the shadow of his front porch, while three or four oldsters of the neighborhood, like a council or a little court about a monarch, and all smoking short clay pipes, were sitting about him.

      “Here’s a pup,” cried Big Kennedy, with his hand on my shoulder, “I want you to look over. He’s a great pup and ought to make a great dog.”

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