All this brought him much into company.
But at that time the brewers and saloonkeepers exercised a despotism over the politicians and public men of the city as absolute as is the despotism of the Czar over the Russians.

But there was this difference: instead of being slaves to a great monarch, these politicians were tools and lick-spittles to a set of coarse, brutal, low-bred liquor dealers, who were exceptionally ignorant, degraded and vile.

These wretched and vicious corrupters of the public morals insisted on controlling every caucus, and that the candidates, of whatever party, should be men well pleasing in their sight.

If not, then the fat was in the fire, and the candidate was forthwith slaughtered.

The writer of these Recollections has been a Republican as long as there has been a Republican party, and has probably loved the party as well as it has deserved.