He knew well enough the way the votes would run; that every grog-shop in the ward was his recruiting station; that all Farnham’s tenants would vote against their landlord; that even the respectable Budsey and the prim Scotch gardener were sure for him against their employer.  Farnham’s conscience which had roused him to this effort against Metzger’s corrupt rule, would not permit him to ask for the votes of his own servants and tenants, and he would have regarded it as simply infamous to spend money to secure the floating crowd of publicans and sinners who formed the strength of Jacob.

His failure was so complete and unexpected that there seemed to him something of degradation in it, and in a fit of uncontrollable disgust he sailed for Europe the week afterward.  Metzger took his victory good-naturedly as a matter of course, and gave his explanation of it to a reporter of the “Bale-Fire” who called to interview him.

“Mr. Farnham, who led the opposition to our organize-ation, is a young gen’l’man of fine talents and high character.  I ain’t got a word to say against him.  The only trouble is, he lacks practical experience, and he ain’t got no pers’nal magn’tism.  Now I’m one of the people, I know what they want, and on that line I carried the ward against a combine-ation of all the wealth and aristocracy of Algonkin Av’noo.”

Jacob’s magnanimity did not rest with merely a verbal acknowledgment of Farnham’s merits.  While he was abroad some of the city departments were reorganized, and Farnham on his return found himself, through Metzger’s intervention, chairman of the library board.  With characteristic sagacity the butcher kept himself in the background, and the committee who waited upon Farnham to ask him to accept the appointment placed it entirely upon considerations of the public good.  His sensitive conscience would not permit him to refuse a duty thus imposed, and so with many inward qualms he assumed a chair in the vile municipal government he had so signally failed to overthrow.  He had not long occupied it, when he saw to what his selection was attributable.  He was a figure-head and he knew it, but he saw no decent escape from the position.  As long as they allowed him and the librarian (who was also a member of the board) to regulate the library to their liking, he could not inquire into their motives or decline association with them.  He was perfectly free to furnish what mental food he chose to two hundred thousand people, and he felt it would be cowardice to surrender that important duty on any pitiful question of patronage or personal susceptibility.