mine worked a lifetime to build up that chair business! And now it's been swept away! And where's the money gone? I'll tell you where it's gone! It's gone to build such fine brown-stone mansions as the one you're living in right at this minute! And if you don't begin to do something for me, Drew," said he, "I'm going to get back at you! Sweet Jesus! Do you think I'm going to be a sucker and let you hook me like this all the time? I took the points you've been giving me, thinking you were done me dirt! When you've let me win once, you've on the square. And you've turned around and sucked it all back the very next day!... And it don't go any longer, Dan. You fellows in Erie have got to take me in with you. That's all there is to it. Or I'll make it so hot for you, you'll wish you'd never been born!"

I let him go on. Big barkers are small biters. I knew that if be blustered around like that beforehand, he wouldn't do much. It's the still fellows

that I've always been scared of. There's Vanderbilt. One of his mottoes used to be: "Never tell anybody what you're going to do until you've done it." When he was going to rip a 'fellow, he'd never let that fellow know beforehand. Beware of quiet dogs and still waters. it out in talk. Anyhow, he wasn't so poor as he So I let Tweed have tried to make out. He had a diamond in his shirtbosom which looked as big as an engine's head

light. And he went around town with a coach and a team of horses. I suppose it cost him more to support his kept women, than it would an ordinary householder to take care of a home.

By and by he got over his fury. Then I began to talk. I called him "Bill"! Tweed was a man that had a lot of good in his heart, spite of all that his enemies say against him. I always found I could do more with him by kindness than in any other way. You need smooth wedges to get into

a knotty piece of timber.

"Bill," said I, "why don't you get into Congress again? You've got gifts."

"Congress!" said he. "Congress is the pokiest old hole under heaven! Any young squirt can go down to Washington and, if he's got the gift of gab, can cut a figure. But as to money-making, there's nothing down there for a man of talent. I suppose I know more Parliamentary Law than anybody in Congress. But that doesn't make any money for you. I can make more in six months as Street Commissioner of New York, than I could in Congress in a hundred years. All they talk about down there is Fugitive Slave Laws. I'd like to know what in thunder I care about Fugitive Slave Laws! I never was interested in niggers, anyhow. They're no good. I've got a lot of them now, over there in that ward by the river. But they don't stay fixed like my Sixth Warders do. They're all

the time flopping to the other side, particularly now that the War has set in. I've got to have money. My expenses are heavy. I can't live like one of your goody-goods. And if you big wigs don't take me in with you, you'll wish you had.”

I turned on him sort of cool-like. “Bill,” said I, "how would you like to go in with a street railway deal? You are a Commissioner of Streets for the city. I guess you have a lot to do also with the Common Council, don't you?"

"I should say I had," said he. "I've got a ring in the nose of every mother's son of them.”

"Well," said I, "have you been following that application of some New York parties up at Albany to get a franchise to lay a pair of steel rails down Broadway?"

"Yes," he replied; "a little."

"Has it occurred to you that those fellows in the Legislature the Assemblymen and Senators would turn a pretty penny, if they were allowed to dispose of the Broadway franchise?"

"Of course, they would," said Tweed. "I'd like to know what earthly right they have to meddle with New York City affairs. This is our hunting ground. They had better keep off."

"Just what I was thinking of," said I. “And they tell me that Vanderbilt is starting in to head that Albany proposition off on his own account; because, in the charter of his Harlem Railroad,

there is a clause permitting him to extend his tracks down Broadway, whenever the Mayor and Aldermen of New York City give their consent."

He was a

Tweed began to prick up his ears. quick fellow to arrive at your meaning. He had a shrewd headpiece. It's true that women could lead him around by the nose. (The same with Richard Connolley — "Slippery Dick," we used to call him. That woman of his whom he picked up from the Turkish Bath where she had been an attendant, used to play him all kinds of tricks, and he wasn't any the wiser. If it had been a man, Dick would have seen through him at once.) But in other ways Tweed was very knowing. He now listened close.

I then went on to show how we could work the home Common Council in such a way as to squeeze Vanderbilt in his Harlem-Broadway enterprise, and make a neat little sum out of it.

We became friends again, whereas it had looked pretty squally half an hour before. Tweed was a gunpowder fellow. He got mad quick and got over it quick. Now that I had promised to help him get back by this Harlem-Railroad deal some of the money he had lost, he was willing to be on good terms again with me.

XIX

HE Harlem Railroad was the offspring
of the stage-coach that used to run by
my "Bull's Head" tavern.
That stage

line was from Park Row, New York City, up to Harlem Village, above where 110th Street now is. As the people moved out from New York and settled up in that section, Harlem grew to be a good-sized town. When railroads were at last seen to be practicable things, a line of rails was laid from that village down to New York, and was called the Harlem Railroad because it went to Harlem Village. The rails were not laid along the Old Boston Road. It would have scared the horses. Anyhow, the stage-coach people didn't like the new-fangled steam buggies any too much, and never would have allowed their post-roads to be encroached upon in that fashion. So the rails were laid a little to the west of the Boston Road, where Fourth Avenue

now runs.

The Harlem railroad first along wasn't much thought of. Its stock just before the War sold as low as eight dollars a share. But, instead of allowing it to stop with Harlem Village, they now began