The canvass, however, did not last beyond the first saloon.

I was introduced with proper solemnity to the saloon-keeper--a very important personage, for this was before the days when saloon-keepers became merely the mortgaged chattels of the brewers--and he began to cross-examine me, a little too much in the tone of one who was dealing with a suppliant for his favor.

He said he expected that I would of course treat the liquor business fairly; to which I answered, none too cordially, that I hoped I should treat all interests fairly.
He then said that he regarded the licenses as too high; to which I responded that I believed they were really not high enough, and that I should try to have them made higher.

The conversation threatened to become stormy.Messrs.Murray and Hess, on some hastily improvised plea, took me out into the street, and then Joe explained to me that it was not worth my while staying in Sixth Avenue any longer, that I had better go right back to Fifth Avenue and attend to my friends there, and that he would look after my interests on Sixth Avenue.

I was triumphantly elected.
Once before Joe had interfered in similar fashion and secured the nomination of an Assemblyman; and shortly after election he had grown to feel toward this Assemblyman that he must have fed on the meat which rendered Caesar proud, as he became inaccessible to the ordinary mortals whose place of resort was Morton Hall.