It seems to me that a successful and faithful administration of the government of our city may be accomplished by constantly bearing in mind that we are the trustees and agents of our fellow-citizens, holding their funds in sacred trust to be expended for their benefit; that we should at all times be prepared to render an honest account to them touching the matter of its expenditure; and that the affairs of the city should be conducted as far as possible upon the same principles as a good businessman manages his private concerns.

It suffices to say that, so far as the mayor himself was concerned, and so far as his power and influence extended, he lived up fully to the letter and spirit of this suggestion.  Although hampered by an adverse political majority in the Common Council, still measurably under the influence of the old rings, and more intent upon preventing the mayor from winning public favor which might, perchance, inure to the benefit of his party (though standing himself entirely beyond party in his relations to the public welfare), than upon the faithful discharge of their own duties, he succeeded, by the force of his own earnest personality, by searching investigation into the workings of all the departments of city affairs, by the ruthless exposure and denunciation of various corrupt schemes of jobbery and plunder, and by the persistent recommendation of measures and methods which commended themselves to his judgment, in accomplishing much in the way of the reform for which his election had been sought.  He used the veto power with a vigor and a significance which had characterized the action of no predecessor in the office, and often regardless of the fact that its exercise might be distorted by designing enemies, personal or political, to insure him at least the temporary disapprobation of large classes of citizens; but he used it only when fully satisfied, through patient research and careful deliberation, that duty and obligation imperatively required it.  It is conceded that in his brief year’s administration he saved a million of dollars to the city treasury, stamped out numerous abuses, and stimulated the spirit of faithful devotion in various branches of the municipal service.  Men of all parties unite in saying that the city of Buffalo was never favored with the services of a more faithful, conscientious, and thoroughly impartial executive head.

But he was not to continue the work of administrative reform in that particular field of labor.  The people had called him “up higher.”  His reputation as a true Democrat, an honest reformer, and a faithful public servant, had spread abroad through the State, and when the Democratic State Convention assembled in the early autumn of that year it was clearly apparent that the nomination of Grover Cleveland, the reform mayor of Buffalo, as the candidate of the party for the supreme magistracy of the Empire State, was the one certain guaranty of overwhelming Democratic