dollars?  When a show leaves New York, it carries posters wherewith to embellish each fence and bill board in the land; and yet no show ever paid more than ten thousand dollars for paper.  Five thousand dollars will cover every possible coign of bill-sticking advantage and hang, besides, a lithograph of Mr. Shepard in every window in the city of New York.  Then wherefore those three hundred thousand dollars of Tammany?  There be folk on the finance committee who should go into this business with a lantern.  The most hopeful name of these is Mr. McDonald, our great subway contractor and partner of Mr. August Belmont; he is a member of that committee.  He is, too, a gentleman of intelligence, business habits and high worth.  Mr. McDonald of the subway, for his own credit and that of Mr. Belmont, his partner, should never sleep until he turned out the bottom facts of that Tammany treasure which has disappeared.  Nor should a common interest with Mr. Croker and certain of that gentleman’s retainers in the Port Chester railway deter him.  Is there no honest man in Athens?”

* * * * *

It was at the close of the repast and when cigars were smokily going that Vacuum returned to the subject of Tammany Hall.

“Let me congratulate you, my dear Enfield,” observed Vacuum courteously, “on your genius for prophecy.  At our last meeting, you foretold the near overthrow of Mr. Nixon and the Croker regime.  The papers inform me that all came to pass within the two days following your warning.”

“Yes,” said Lemon sarcastically, taking the words from Enfield, “we have been visited with that fell calamity, the collapse of Mr. Croker and his rule.  We have seen the black last of him, and the very name of Croker already begins to be a memory.  But why should one repine?” Lemon’s sneer was deepening.  “In every age the other great have come and ruled and gone to that oblivion beyond.  They arose to fall and be forgot.  It is the law.  Then why not Mr. Croker?  True, even while we consent, there comes that natural sadness which I now observe to sparkle so brightly in every present eye.  What then?  We console ourselves as did Chief Justice Crewe full two centuries and a half ago when the decadence of De Vere claimed consideration.  ‘I have labored,’ quoth Crewe, who if that be possible was more moved over the waning of De Vere than am I concerning the passing of Mr. Croker, ’I have labored to make a covenant with myself that affection may not press upon judgment; for I suppose there is no man that hath any apprehension of gentry or nobleness but his affection stands to the continuance of a house so illustrious and would take hold on a twig or a twinethread to support it.  And yet Time hath his revolutions; there must be a period and an end to all temporal things—­finis rerum—­an end of names and dignities and whatsoever is terrene; and why not of De Vere?  For where is Bohun? where is Mowbray? where is Mortimer? nay, which is more and most of all, where is Plantagenet?  They are entombed in the urns and sepulchres of mortality!’ And, as it was of that ancient day of Crewe and the De Vere so must it be of us and Mr. Croker.  He goes; we stay; and so let us drink to all.”  Here Lemon filled his glass, and the rest having amiably followed his example, offered with a wicked twinkle, “The disappearance of Mr. Croker!”