By and by he became a large contractor for city work, and was a bosom friend of the great and good Wm. M. Weed himself, who had stolen $20,600,000 from the city and was a man so envied, so honored,—­so adored, indeed, that when the sheriff went to his office to arrest him as a felon, that sheriff blushed and apologized, and one of the illustrated papers made a picture of the scene and spoke of the matter in such a way as to show that the editor regretted that the offense of an arrest had been offered to so exalted a personage as Mr. Weed.

Mr. O’Riley furnished shingle nails to, the new Court House at three thousand dollars a keg, and eighteen gross of 60-cent thermometers at fifteen hundred dollars a dozen; the controller and the board of audit passed the bills, and a mayor, who was simply ignorant but not criminal, signed them.  When they were paid, Mr. O’Riley’s admirers gave him a solitaire diamond pin of the size of a filbert, in imitation of the liberality of Mr. Weed’s friends, and then Mr. O’Riley retired from active service and amused himself with buying real estate at enormous figures and holding it in other people’s names.  By and by the newspapers came out with exposures and called Weed and O’Riley “thieves,”—­whereupon the people rose as one man (voting repeatedly) and elected the two gentlemen to their proper theatre of action, the New York legislature.  The newspapers clamored, and the courts proceeded to try the new legislators for their small irregularities.  Our admirable jury system enabled the persecuted ex-officials to secure a jury of nine gentlemen from a neighboring asylum and three graduates from Sing-Sing, and presently they walked forth with characters vindicated.  The legislature was called upon to spew them forth—­a thing which the legislature declined to do.  It was like asking children to repudiate their own father.  It was a legislature of the modern pattern.

Being now wealthy and distinguished, Mr. O’Riley, still bearing the legislative “Hon.” attached to his name (for titles never die in America, although we do take a republican pride in poking fun at such trifles), sailed for Europe with his family.  They traveled all about, turning their noses up at every thing, and not finding it a difficult thing to do, either, because nature had originally given those features a cast in that direction; and finally they established themselves in Paris, that Paradise of Americans of their sort.—­They staid there two years and learned to speak English with a foreign accent—­not that it hadn’t always had a foreign accent (which was indeed the case) but now the nature of it was changed.  Finally they returned home and became ultra fashionables.  They landed here as the Hon. Patrique Oreille and family, and so are known unto this day.

Laura provided seats for her visitors and they immediately launched forth into a breezy, sparkling conversation with that easy confidence which is to be found only among persons accustomed to high life.