Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/64



know you’re Mark Fagan, and I know what you’re doing. And I’ll vote for you till hell freezes over.” He flung over the switch, and Mark retreated, abashed.

“He knows me,” he said wonderingly to me when he came down. Of course they all know the Mayor, but the Mayor can’t call them by name; he hasn’t a good memory for either names or faces, and I saw him talk to men he had talked to before. So there is no flattery, and no familiarity, and that was one point which missed Connolly, who couldn’t understand why those men didn’t laugh or josh the Mayor. “Why don’t they give him a song and dance?” he said.

One man in a group I joined before the Mayor reached it did say he was going to “have some fun with Mark,” and the others in a mood for horse play, dared the bold one to ask Fagan for “the price of a drink.” I thought the man would, but when Mark came up, saying, “I am Mark Fagan; I have been Mayor for two terms, and I have tried to serve you,” etc., etc., the bold man was silent; they were all respectful, and the psychology was plain enough.

The Mayor speaks, what Connolly calls “his little piece,” with dignity, with the grave dignity of self-respect, and you feel, and those men feel, the perfect sincerity of Mark Fagan.