Atlantic Narratives Part 42

About that time old Sam Follonsby died, bequeathing half a million dollars--twice as much as anybody knew he had--to be spent on fountains and statues in the city parks and along the boulevards.

The many attempts of the administration to divert the money to other uses; the efforts of the mayor to throw the estate into the hands of a hungry trust company in which he had friends--these matters need not be recited here. Suffice it to say that Barton was equal to all the demands made upon his legal genius. When the estate was settled at the end of a year, Barton had won every point. Follonsby's money was definitely set aside by the court as a special fund for the objects specified by the testator, and Barton, as the Chairman of the Committee on Munic.i.p.al Art, had so tied it up in a legal mesh of his own ingenious contriving that it was, to all intents and purposes, subject only to his personal check.

It was now that Barton, long irritated by the indifference of our people to the imperative need of munic.i.p.al reform, devised a plan for arousing the apathetic electorate. A philosopher, as well as a connoisseur in the fine arts, he had concluded that our whole idea of erecting statues to the good and n.o.ble serves no purpose in stirring patriotic impulses in the bosoms of beholders. There were plenty of statues and not a few tablets in our town, commemorating great-souled men, but they suffered sadly from public neglect. And it must be confessed that the average statue, no matter how splendid the achievements of its subject, is little regarded and serves only pa.s.sively as a reminder of public duty.

With what has seemed to me a sublime cynicism, Barton proceeded to spend Follonsby's money in a manner at once novel and arresting. He commissioned one of the most distinguished sculptors in the country to design a statue; and at the end of his second year in the Council (he had been elected for four years), it was set up on the new boulevard that parallels the river.

His choice of a subject had never been made known, so that curiosity was greatly excited on the day of the unveiling. Barton had brought the governor of an adjoining state, who was just then much in the public eye as a fighter of grafters, to deliver the oration. It was a speech with a sting to it, but our people had long been hardened to such las.h.i.+ngs. The mayor spoke in praise of the civic spirit which had impelled Follonsby to make so large a bequest to the public; and then, before five thousand persons, a little schoolgirl pulled the cord, and the statue, a splendid creation in heroic bronze, was exposed to the amazed populace.

I shall not undertake to depict the horror and chagrin of the a.s.sembled citizens when they beheld, instead of the statute of Follonsby, which they were prepared to see, or a symbolic representation of the city itself as a flower-crowned maiden, the familiar pudgy figure, reproduced with the most cruel fidelity, of Mike O'Grady, known as 'Silent Mike,' a big bi-partisan boss who had for years dominated munic.i.p.al affairs, and who had but lately gone to his reward. The inscription in itself was an ironic masterstroke:--

To MICHAEL P. O'GRADY PROTECTOR OF SALOONS, FRIEND OF CROOKS FOR TEN YEARS A CITY COUNCILMAN DOMINATING THE AFFAIRS OF THE MUNIc.i.p.aLITY THIS STATUE IS ERECTED BY GRATEFUL FELLOW-CITIZENS IN RECOGNITION OF HIS PUBLIC SERVICES

The effect of this was tremendously disturbing, as may be imagined.

Every newspaper in America printed a picture of the O'Grady statue; our rival cities made merry over it at our expense. The Chamber of Commerce, incensed at the affront to the city's good name, pa.s.sed resolutions condemning Barton in the bitterest terms; the local press howled; a ma.s.s meeting was held in our biggest hall to voice public indignation. But amid the clamor Barton remained calm, pointing to the stipulation in Follonsby's will that his money should be spent in memorials of men who had enjoyed most fully the confidence of the people. And as O'Grady had been permitted for years to run the town about as he liked, with only feeble protests and occasional futile efforts to get rid of him, Barton was able to defend himself against all comers.

Six months later Barton set up on the same boulevard a handsome tablet commemorating the services of a mayor whose venality had brought the city to the verge of bankruptcy, and who, when his term of office expired, had betaken himself to parts unknown. This was greeted with another outburst of rage, much to Barton's delight. After a brief interval another tablet was placed on one of the river bridges. The building of that particular bridge had been attended with much scandal, and the names of the councilmanic committee who were responsible for it were set forth over these figures:--

_Cost to the People_, $49,000.00 _Cost to the Council_, 31,272.81 ---------- _Graft_, $17,727.19

The figures were exact and a matter of record. An impudent prosecuting attorney who had broken with the machine had laid them before the public some time earlier; but his efforts to convict the culprits had been frustrated by a judge of the criminal court who took orders from the bosses. Barton broke his rule against talking through the newspapers by issuing a caustic statement imploring the infuriated councilmen to sue him for libel as they threatened to do.

The city was beginning to feel the edge of Barton's little ironies. At the club we all realized that he was animated by a definite and high purpose in thus flaunting in enduring bronze the shame of the city.

'It is to such men as these,' said Barton, referring to the gentlemen he had favored with his statue and tablets, 'that we confide all our affairs. For years we have stupidly allowed a band of outlaws to run our town. They spend our money; they hitch the saloons and brothels to the city hall, and manage in their own way large affairs that concern all of us. These scoundrels are our creatures, and we encourage and foster them; they represent us and our ideals, and it's only fitting that we should publish their merits to the world.'

While Barton was fighting half a dozen injunction suits brought to thwart the further expenditure of Follonsby's money for memorials of men of notorious misfeasance or malfeasance, another city election rolled round. By this time there had been a revulsion of feeling. The people began to see that after all there might be a way of escape. Even the newspapers that had most bitterly a.s.sailed Barton declared that he was just the man for the mayoralty, and he was fairly driven into office at the head of a non-partisan munic.i.p.al ticket.

The Boulevard of Rogues we called it for a time. But after Barton had been in the mayor's office a year he dumped the O'Grady statue into the river, destroyed the tablets, and returned to the Follonsby Fund out of his own pocket the money he had paid for them. Three n.o.ble statues of honest patriots now adorn the boulevard, and half a dozen beautiful fountains have been distributed among the parks.

The Barton plan is, I submit, worthy of all emulation. If every boss-ridden, machine-managed American city could once visualize its shame and folly as Barton compelled us to do, there would be less complaint about the general failure of local government. There is, when you come to think of it, nothing so preposterous in the idea of perpetuating in outward and visible forms the public servants we humbly permit to misgovern us. Nothing could be better calculated to quicken the civic impulse in the lethargic citizen than the enforced contemplation of a line of statues erected to the men he has allowed to govern him and spend his money.

I am a little sorry, though, that Barton never carried out one of his plans, which looked to the planting in the centre of a down-town park of a symbolic figure of the city, felicitously expressed by a bar-room loafer dozing on a beer-keg. I should have liked it; and Barton confessed to me the other day that he was a good deal grieved himself that he had not pulled it off!

WHAT HAPPENED TO ALANNA

BY KATHLEEN NORRIS

A CAPPED and ap.r.o.ned maid, with a martyred expression, had twice sounded the dinner-bell in the stately halls of Costello, before any member of the family saw fit to respond to it.

Then they all came at once, with a sudden pounding of young feet on the stairs, an uproar of young voices, and much banging of doors. Jim and Danny, twins of fourteen, to whom their mother was wont proudly to allude as 'the top o' the line,' violently left their own sanctum on the fourth floor, and coasted down such banisters as lay between that and the dining-room. Teresa, an angel-faced twelve-year-old in a blue frock, shut _The Wide, Wide World_ with a sigh, and climbed down from the window-seat in the hall.

Teresa's pious mother, in moments of exultation, loved to compare and commend her offspring to such of the saints and martyrs as their youthful virtues suggested. And Teresa at twelve had, as it were, graduated from the little saints, Agnes and Rose and Cecilia, and was now compared, in her mother's secret heart, to the gracious Queen of all the Saints. 'As she was when a little girl,' Mrs. Costello would add, to herself, to excuse any undue boldness in the thought.

And indeed, Teresa, as she was to-night, her blue eyes still clouded with Ellen Montgomery's sorrows, her curls tumbled about her hot cheeks, would have made a pretty foil in a picture of old Saint Anne.

But this story is about Alanna of the black eyes, the eight years, the large irregular mouth, the large irregular features.

Alanna was outrunning lazy little Leo--her senior, but not her match at anything--on their way to the dining-room. She was rendering desperate the two smaller boys, Frank X., Jr., and John Henry Newman Costello, who staggered hopelessly in her wake. They were all hungry, clean, and good-natured, and Alanna's voice led the other voices, even as her feet, in twinkling patent leather, led their feet.

Following the children came their mother, fastening the rich silk and lace at her wrists as she came. Her handsome kindly face and her big shapely hands were still moist and glowing from soap and warm water, and the s.h.i.+ning rings of black hair at her temples were moist, too.

'This is all my doin', dad,' said she comfortably, as she and her flock entered the dining-room. 'Put the soup on, Alma. I'm the one that was goin' to be prompt at dinner, too!' she added, with a superintending glance for all the children, as she tied on little John's napkin.

F. X. Costello, Senior, undertaker by profession, and mayor by an immense majority, was already at the head of the table.

'Late, eh, mommie?' said he, good-naturedly.

He threw his newspaper on the floor, cast a householder's critical glance at the lights and the fire, and pushed his neatly placed knives and forks to right and left carelessly with both his fat hands.

The room was brilliantly lighted and warm. A great fire roared in the old-fas.h.i.+oned black-marble grate, and electric lights blazed everywhere.

Everything in the room, and in the house, was costly, comfortable, incongruous, and hideous. The Costellos were very rich, and had been very poor; and certain people were fond of telling of the queer, ridiculous things they did, in trying to spend their money. But they were very happy, and thought their immense, ugly house was the finest in the city, or in the world.

'Well, an' what's the news on the Rialter?' said the head of the house, busy with his soup.

'You'll have the laugh on me, dad,' his wife a.s.sured him placidly.

'After all my sayin' that nothing'd take me to Father Crowley's meetin'!'

'Oh, that was it?' said the mayor. 'What's he goin' to have--a concert?'

'--_And_ a fair, too!' supplemented Mrs. Costello. There was an interval devoted on her part to various bibs and trays, and a low aside to the waitress. Then she went on: 'As you know, I went, meanin' to beg off. On account of baby bein' so little, and Leo's cough, and the paperers bein'

upstairs--and all! I thought I'd just make a donation, and let it go at that. But the ladies all kind of hung back--there was very few there--and I got talkin'--'

'Well, 't is but our dooty, after all,' said the mayor, nodding approval.

'That's all, Frank. Well! So finally Mrs. Kiljohn took the coffee, and the Lemmon girls took the grab-bag. The Guild will look out for the concert, and I took one fancy-work booth, and of course, the Children of Mary'll have the other, just like they always do.'

'Oh, was Grace there?' Teresa was eager to know.

'Grace was, darlin'.'

'And we're to have the fancy-work! You'll help us, won't you, mother?

Goody--I'm in that!' exulted Teresa.

'I'm in that, too!' echoed Alanna quickly.

'A lot you are, you baby!' said Leo unkindly.

'You're not a Child of Mary, Alanna,' Teresa said, promptly and uneasily.

'Well--well--I can help!' protested Alanna, putting up her lip. '_Can't I_, mother? Can't I, mother?'

'You can help me, dovey,' said her mother absently. 'I'm not goin' to work as I did for Saint Patrick's Bazaar, dad, and I said so! Mrs.

O'Connell and Mrs. King said they'd do all the work, if I'd just be the nominal head. Mary Murray will do us some pillers--leather--with Gibsons and Indians on them. And I'll have Lizzie Bayne up here for a month, makin' me ap.r.o.ns and little j.a.ppy wrappers, and so on.'