us were informed that Kelly was in such financial straits that he and his family would be put out into the street before New Year.  This was prevented by the action of some of his friends who had served with him in the Legislature, and he recovered, at least to a degree, and took up the practice of his profession.  But he was a broken man.  In the Legislature in which he served one of his fellow-Democrats from Brooklyn was the Speaker—­Alfred C. Chapin, the leader and the foremost representative of the reform Democracy, whom Kelly zealously supported.  A few years later Chapin, a very able man, was elected Mayor of Brooklyn on a reform Democratic ticket.  Shortly after his election I was asked to speak at a meeting in a Brooklyn club at which various prominent citizens, including the Mayor, were present.  I spoke on civic decency, and toward the close of my speech I sketched Kelly’s career for my audience, told them how he had stood up for the rights of the people of Brooklyn, and how the people had failed to stand up for him, and the way he had been punished, precisely because he had been a good citizen who acted as a good citizen should act.  I ended by saying that the reform Democracy had now come into power, that Mr. Chapin was Mayor, and that I very earnestly hoped recognition would at last be given to Kelly for the fight he had waged at such bitter cost to himself.  My words created some impression, and Mayor Chapin at once said that he would take care of Kelly and see that justice was done him.  I went home that evening much pleased.  In the morning, at breakfast, I received a brief note from Chapin in these words:  “It was nine last evening when you finished speaking of what Kelly had done, and when I said that I would take care of him.  At ten last night Kelly died.”  He had been dying while I was making my speech, and he never knew that at last there was to be a tardy recognition of what he had done, a tardy justification for the sacrifices he had made.  The man had fought, at heavy cost to himself and with entire disinterestedness, for popular rights; but no recognition for what he had done had come to him from the people, whose interest he had so manfully upheld.

Where there is no chance of statistical or mathematical measurement, it is very hard to tell just the degree to which conditions change from one period to another.  This is peculiarly hard to do when we deal with such a matter as corruption.  Personally I am inclined to think that in public life we are on the whole a little better and not a little worse than we were thirty years ago, when I was serving in the New York Legislature.  I think the conditions are a little better in National, in State, and in municipal politics.  Doubtless there are points in which they are worse, and there is an enormous amount that needs reformation.  But it does seem to me as if, on the whole, things had slightly improved.