My closest friend for the three years I was there was Billy O’Neill, from the Adirondacks.  He kept a small crossroads store.  He was a young man, although a few years older than I was, and, like myself, had won his position without regard to the machine.  He had thought he would like to be Assemblyman, so he had taken his buggy and had driven around Franklin County visiting everybody, had upset the local ring, and came to the Legislature as his own master.  There is surely something in American traditions that does tend toward real democracy in spite of our faults and shortcomings.  In most other countries two men of as different antecedents, ancestry, and surroundings as Billy O’Neill and I would have had far more difficulty in coming together.  I came from the biggest city in America and from the wealthiest ward of that city, and he from a backwoods county where he kept a store at a crossroads.  In all the unimportant things we seemed far apart.  But in all the important things we were close together.  We looked at all questions from substantially the same view-point, and we stood shoulder to shoulder in every legislative fight during those three years.  He abhorred demagogy just as he abhorred corruption.  He had thought much on political problems; he admired Alexander Hamilton as much as I did, being a strong believer in a powerful National government; and we both of us differed from Alexander Hamilton in being stout adherents of Abraham Lincoln’s views wherever the rights of the people were concerned.  Any man who has met with success, if he will be frank with himself, must admit that there has been a big element of fortune in the success.  Fortune favored me, whereas her hand was heavy against Billy O’Neill.  All his life he had to strive hard to wring his bread from harsh surroundings and a reluctant fate; if fate had been but a little kinder, I believe he would have had a great political career; and he would have done good service for the country in any position in which he might have been put.

There were other Republicans, like Isaac Hunt and Jonas van Duzer and Walter Howe and Henry Sprague, who were among my close friends and allies; and a gigantic one-eyed veteran of the Civil War, a gallant General, Curtis from St. Lawrence County; and a capital fellow, whom afterwards, when Governor, I put on the bench, Kruse, from Cattaraugus County.  Kruse was a German by birth; as far as I know, the only German from Cattaraugus County at that time; and, besides being a German, he was also a Prohibitionist.  Among the Democrats were Hamden Robb and Thomas Newbold, and Tom Welch of Niagara, who did a great service in getting the State to set aside Niagara Falls Park—­after a discouraging experience with the first Governor before whom we brought the bill, who listened with austere patience to our arguments in favor of the State establishing a park, and then conclusively answered us by the question, “But, gentlemen, why should we spend the people’s money when just as much water will run over the Falls without a park as with it?” Then there were a couple of members from New York and Brooklyn, Mike Costello and Pete Kelly.