It was discovered that, owing to the temperaments of some of the new aldermen, and to the self-righteous attitude of their political sponsors, no franchises of any kind were to be passed unless they had the moral approval of such men as Hand, Sluss, and the other reformers; above all, no money of any kind was to be paid to anybody for anything.
"Whaddye think of those damn four-flushers and come-ons, anyhow ?" inquired Mr.Kerrigan of Mr.Tiernan, shortly subsequent to a conference with Gilgan, from which Tiernan had been unavoidably absent.
"They've got an ordinance drawn up covering the whole city in an elevated-road scheme, and there ain't anything in it for anybody.

Say, whaddye think they think we are, anyhow?
Hey ?" Mr.Tiernan himself, after his own conference with Edstrom, had been busy getting the lay of the land, as he termed it; and his investigations led him to believe that a certain alderman by the name of Klemm, a clever and very respectable German-American from the North Side, was to be the leader of the Republicans in council, and that he and some ten or twelve others were determined, because of moral principles alone, that only honest measures should be passed.

It was staggering.
At this news Mr.Kerrigan, who had been calculating on a number of thousands of dollars for his vote on various occasions, stared incredulously.

"Well, I'll be damned!" he commented.

"They've got a nerve! What ?" "I've been talking to this fellow Klemm of the twentieth," said Mr.
Tiernan, sardonically.