Then, lamenting, she brought a grave accusation against
their little son. She said: “He has
been saying his Aunt Mary is a fool and his Aunt Martha
is a damned fool.” Mr. Fiske reflected
upon the matter a minute, then said: “Oh,
well, it’s about the distinction I should make
between them myself.”
Mr. Washington, I beg you to convey these teachings
to your great and prosperous and most beneficent educational
institution, and add them to the prodigal mental and
moral riches wherewith you equip your fortunate proteges
for the struggle of life.
Mr. Clemens made his debut as
a campaign orator on October 7, 1901, advocating
the election of Seth Low for Mayor, not as a Republican,
but as a member of the “Acorns,” which
he described as a “third party having
no political affiliation, but was concerned
only in the selection of the best candidates and the
best member.”
Great Britain had a Tammany and a Croker a good while
ago. This Tammany was in India, and it began
its career with the spread of the English dominion
after the Battle of Plassey. Its first boss was
Clive, a sufficiently crooked person sometimes, but
straight as a yard stick when compared with the corkscrew
crookedness of the second boss, Warren Hastings.
That old-time Tammany was the East India Company’s
government, and had its headquarters at Calcutta.
Ostensibly it consisted of a Great Council of four
persons, of whom one was the Governor-General, Warren
Hastings; really it consisted of one person—Warren
Hastings; for by usurpation he concentrated all authority
in himself and governed the country like an autocrat.
Ostensibly the Court of Directors, sitting in London
and representing the vast interests of the stockholders,
was supreme in authority over the Calcutta Great Council,
whose membership it appointed and removed at pleasure,
whose policies it dictated, and to whom it conveyed
its will in the form of sovereign commands; but whenever
it suited Hastings, he ignored even that august body’s
authority and conducted the mighty affairs of the
British Empire in India to suit his own notions.
At his mercy was the daily bread of every official,
every trader, every clerk, every civil servant, big
and little, in the whole huge India Company’s
machine, and the man who hazarded his bread by any
failure of subserviency to the boss lost it.
Now then, let the supreme masters of British India,
the giant corporation of the India Company of London,
stand for the voters of the city of New York; let
the Great Council of Calcutta stand for Tammany; let
the corrupt and money-grubbing great hive of serfs
which served under the Indian Tammany’s rod
stand for New York Tammany’s serfs; let Warren
Hastings stand for Richard Croker, and it seems to
me that the parallel is exact and complete.
And so let us be properly grateful and thank God and
our good luck that we didn’t invent Tammany.
