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 yet, as the politicians who were always dropping into Chicago to correct their reckonings, paused an instant by the leather chair, the old white head would slowly wag from side to side, and the old man would say:

"No, I'm out of politics."

If Carroll had not conceived the idea of running for office, perhaps the colonel would have remained out of politics, but the boy, after a week of dreaming, dramatized himself as making a speech in the state senate chamber at Springfield. The colonel, as a man's duty is, advised him to keep out of politics, and yet within an hour after Carroll shyly confessed his ambition, the fever awoke in the old fellow's bones, his eyes flamed with the old fire, and he admitted that the experience might help a boy who was struggling in a pitiless city for a law practice.

Within a week the colonel had introduced Carroll to Superintendent of Street and Alley Cleaning Patrick F. Gibbons, who promised to be with him, and had taken him to the city hall for an audience with the mayor. After that the newspapers said that John D. Carroll had been slated for the senatorial nomination in the First District.