A Political Agreement In the first and second wards of Chicago at this time--wards including the business heart, South Clark Street, the water-front, the river-levee, and the like--were two men, Michael (alias Smiling Mike) Tiernan and Patrick (alias Emerald Pat) Kerrigan, who, for picturequeness of character and sordidness of atmosphere, could not be equaled elsewhere in the city, if in the nation at large.

"Smiling" Mike Tiernan, proud possessor of four of the largest and filthiest saloons of this area, was a man of large and genial mold--perhaps six feet one inch in height, broad-shouldered in proportion, with a bovine head, bullet-shaped from one angle, and big, healthy, hairy hands and large feet.

He had done many things from digging in a ditch to occupying a seat in the city council from this his beloved ward, which he sold out regularly for one purpose and another; but his chief present joy consisted in sitting behind a solid mahogany railing at a rosewood desk in the back portion of his largest Clark Street hostelry--"The Silver Moon." Here he counted up the returns from his various properties--salons, gambling resorts, and houses of prostitution--which he manipulated with the connivance or blinking courtesy of the present administration, and listened to the pleas and demands of his henchmen and tenants.
The character of Mr.Kerrigan, Mr.Tiernan's only rival in this rather difficult and sordid region, was somewhat different.

He was a small man, quite dapper, with a lean, hollow, and somewhat haggard face, but by no means sickly body, a large, strident mustache, a wealth of coal-black hair parted slickly on one side, and a shrewd, genial brown-black eye--constituting altogether a rather pleasing and ornate figure whom it was not at all unsatisfactory to meet.

His ears were large and stood out bat-wise from his head; and his eyes gleamed with a smart, evasive light.