“What kind?” He pondered the question with deep puffs of his cigar.  “Well, do you know, I don’t believe, to save my life, I could tell you.  The more you know of men, and of women, too, for they’re all alike, the more you understand, somehow, that you can’t judge unless you’ve been right in the other man’s place—­unless you know exactly what they’ve had to pull up against and how hard they have pulled.  Now, if I was drawing my last breath, and you asked me what I thought of Barney McGoldrick, I’d be obliged to answer that he was the best man I ever knew, though there are others in this town, I guess, and the newspapers among ’em, who would tell you that he was—­” He broke off abruptly, and she waited without speaking, until he solaced himself with his cigar, and went on less boisterously:  “It’s a downright shame, isn’t it, that the same man can’t manage to corner all the virtues.  I can’t explain how it is, but I’ve noticed that the virtues don’t seem able to work along peaceably in one another’s company, for if they did, I guess we’d have pure saints or pure sinners instead of the mixed lot we’ve got to make a world out of.  I’ve seen a man who wouldn’t have lied or stolen to save his wife from starving, and who was the first in the pew at church every Sunday, grind the flesh and blood out of his factory girls until they were driven into the streets, or crush the very life out of the little children he put to work in his mills.  Yes, and I’ve seen a tombstone over him with ’I know that my Redeemer liveth’ carved an inch deep in the marble.  Well, Barney wasn’t like that, but he had his weaknesses, and they were the kind people don’t raise marble tombstones over.  I never had a taste for politics myself, but it seems to be like any other weakness, and to drag a man a little lower down if it once gets too strong a hold on him.  It’s all right, of course, if you keep it in moderation, but there’s precious few chaps, particularly if it’s in their blood, and they’re Irish, who can keep the taste under control.  Barney was the most decent man to women I ever knew.  He wouldn’t have hurt one for a million dollars, in a factory or out of it, and he was faithful to his old wife up to the day of her death and long after.  He grieved for her till he died, and I don’t believe any woman ever asked his help without getting it.  His private life was absolutely clean, but his public morality—­well, I guess that wasn’t exactly spotless.  At any rate, they had an investigation—­there was a committee of citizens appointed to sit in judgment on his record.  The chairman was a pillar of the church and a public benefactor; he had led every political reform for a generation; and I happened to know that he kept two mistresses up somewhere in the Bronx, and his wife, who was old and ugly, wore herself to a shadow because he neglected her.  Mark you, I’m not upholding Barney, but, good Lord! ain’t it queer how easy men get off when they just sin against women and not against men or against the State?”