This gave him fame and great respectability.

The position of alderman was forced upon him, and it was just the same as presenting him a gold mine.

He had fine horses and carriages, now, and closed up his whiskey mill.
By and by he became a large contractor for city work, and was a bosom friend of the great and good Wm.

M.Weed himself, who had stolen $20,600,000 from the city and was a man so envied, so honored,--so adored, indeed, that when the sheriff went to his office to arrest him as a felon, that sheriff blushed and apologized, and one of the illustrated papers made a picture of the scene and spoke of the matter in such a way as to show that the editor regretted that the offense of an arrest had been offered to so exalted a personage as Mr.Weed.
Mr.O'Riley furnished shingle nails to, the new Court House at three thousand dollars a keg, and eighteen gross of 60-cent thermometers at fifteen hundred dollars a dozen; the controller and the board of audit passed the bills, and a mayor, who was simply ignorant but not criminal, signed them.

When they were paid, Mr.O'Riley's admirers gave him a solitaire diamond pin of the size of a filbert, in imitation of the liberality of Mr.Weed's friends, and then Mr.O'Riley retired from active service and amused himself with buying real estate at enormous figures and holding it in other people's names.