“Citizens not only of the First Ward, but of the entire city, are to be congratulated upon the signal victory the Municipal Reform League has won in its campaign against Malachi Nolan. This man, who so long has misrepresented the ward mentioned in the city council, has at last been dislodged, and driven to the obscurity of private life, where his pernicious and dangerous tendencies, if not altogether abated, will at least be confined to a narrower sphere of activity. In announcing his retirement from politics, he gives as a reason his desire to pay a visit to his native land, but the public, while speeding his departure, will readily penetrate the gauzy excuse he advances for it. They know that he has been forced to fly from a field rendered utterly untenable by the onslaughts of those public-spiritedgentlemen who at great personal sacrifice have so freely contributed of their means, their energies and their time to the work of the Municipal Reform League, and to them and the press they will ascribe the credit and the praise. It would seem, however, that the Honorable Bull Nolan has lost none of his presumption, for he insolently declares that he leaves as his personal representative and successor in the aldermanic chair one of his henchmen, William Brennan. But the people will take care of Mr. Brennan at the proper time. They will see to it that Nolan’s successor shall not be a man whose political methods are such as will enable him to take vacation trips in Europe, and with the abundant encouragement they have now received, will continue to widen this breach already made in the walls of corruption and dishonesty and carry on the splendid work for good government and honest politics—”
“Citizens not only of the First Ward, but of the entire city, are to be congratulated upon the signal victory the Municipal Reform League has won in its campaign against Malachi Nolan. This man, who so long has misrepresented the ward mentioned in the city council, has at last been dislodged, and driven to the obscurity of private life, where his pernicious and dangerous tendencies, if not altogether abated, will at least be confined to a narrower sphere of activity. In announcing his retirement from politics, he gives as a reason his desire to pay a visit to his native land, but the public, while speeding his departure, will readily penetrate the gauzy excuse he advances for it. They know that he has been forced to fly from a field rendered utterly untenable by the onslaughts of those public-spiritedgentlemen who at great personal sacrifice have so freely contributed of their means, their energies and their time to the work of the Municipal Reform League, and to them and the press they will ascribe the credit and the praise. It would seem, however, that the Honorable Bull Nolan has lost none of his presumption, for he insolently declares that he leaves as his personal representative and successor in the aldermanic chair one of his henchmen, William Brennan. But the people will take care of Mr. Brennan at the proper time. They will see to it that Nolan’s successor shall not be a man whose political methods are such as will enable him to take vacation trips in Europe, and with the abundant encouragement they have now received, will continue to widen this breach already made in the walls of corruption and dishonesty and carry on the splendid work for good government and honest politics—”
Malachi did not read any further. The lights in the car were poor, after all, and then, his eyes were not so good as they used to be. He folded the paper carefully, looked all about, then hid it at last behind him. Then he bestowed his spectacles in his waistcoat pocket, and, like Nora, looked out of the window. They had gone through South Chicago, they had passed One-hundredth Street. They looked out now upon the dull prairies that sprawled flat all about them, with no sign of spring as yet, but deadand desolate, broken only by a black and stunted tree here or there. At wide, wide intervals a lonely gas lamp twinkled bravely in a legal way as if to preserve the prescription of what was only technically a street. The prairies stretched away until they faded into the gray gloom of the March evening, and they had left Chicago at last behind.