USA > New Jersey > Somerset County > Within a Jersey circle : tales of the past, grave and gay, as picked up from old Jerseyites > Part 4
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"Darling Mary!" he exclaimed, in the midst of con- tinued caresses, "how cruel of you to stay away so long!"
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"Poor, dear, big baby Billy!" responded she, with her brightest smile. "And so you missed me?"
"Did I miss you! Well, I wonder what you think of a fellow anyway!" he exclaimed, with an injured look. "But the truth is, I suppose, that after all your fine prom- ises, you're going to throw me over and marry this rich old Somerset doctor !"
"No, big, beautiful Billy," she answered. "I'm bad and heartless enough in a variety of ways, but I'll never marry the old doctor. He insists on believing I will, and my aunt is as determined as he is that I shall do so, but I would not marry him if he were covered with dia- monds !"
"And what about this idiotic Niagara trip?" Billy asked. "I suppose the amiable physician is getting up this grand expedition just to get you completely away from your friends and then-"
Just then Mary was seized with a severe fit of cough- ing, so hollow-sounding that it frightened even Billy. They were in an arbor of her McDougal street home, long after sunset, and though it was moonlight the air was damp and chilly. Mary told her companion that her uncle, Samuel Davenport, was going along with them to Niagara, and that otherwise she would not go at all.
"Run into the house, Molly, dearest; don't stay here," said Billy. "You are taking cold. But wait. Listen, Molly, just a second. Keep me posted, darling. If I can raise some money that I have in view, I'll meet you at any time and place you desire. Let it be at your aunt's, Mol- ly, after your return. Then I'll come again to the Pluck- emin tavern, but this time with my own horses and-
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Hark! It's your mother, Molly. Farewell! We'll meet at Pluckemin !"
In consequence of this exposure to the night air Mary suffered a serious relapse and when she was later taken to Niagara, a trained nurse was engaged to take care of her. After a comparatively short stay there the young woman's health seemed miraculously restored again. The doctor again pressed his suit and proposed that they should return home as a married couple. Still she hesitated and dallied with her aged lover, not seeming to have the moral cour- age to broach the truth to him.
Finding, however, that she could no longer stave off the inevitable, she wrote to Billy full particulars of the position in which she stood. Hearing from him in reply that he had obtained the money he had spoken of and was therefore ready to fly to her side, she wrote informing him on what day she would arrive at her aunt's house near Pluckemin and urged him not to fail to meet and rescue her from her terrible predicament.
His reply came promptly. In it he begged her to pos- sess her soul in peace and urged her on her arrival at her aunt's to say nothing and retire as usual to her room, but to look out into the night on hearing the call of the whip- poorwill, which bird Mary knew he could imitate per- fectly.
"Doctor," she said one morning, "if you will promise not to mention the subject of our marriage until two days after I get home to my Aunt Van Nest's house, can you guess what I'll do now? I'll tell you, for you never could guess, I will faithfully and seriously promise you to go then and be married." 5
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"You will?" asked the doctor earnestly.
"I will!" answered Mary seriously.
"Then, I do promise," said the doctor.
"And I do so in all sincerity." Mary said.
The subject as to the date of their marriage was there- fore dropped for the time being. After their return to the Van Nest homestead and when the doctor had made his adieus to his young bride-to-be he extended his hand to Mrs. Van Nest and thanked her heartily for her vast kindness, which, as he said, had "contributed so much to bring about this great happiness." He would devote the intervening short time before the marriage, he said, to the still further embellishment of his hitherto silent and deso- late house.
That night Mrs. Van Nest lay awake longer than was her wont. She felt an unaccountable restlessness.
"Dear me!" she said at length, raising her head from the pillow; "I could be sworn I heard the whippoorwill. Late in the season to hear that bird !"
Again she dozed, and again she awoke, this time with a start, at hearing a strange grating sound against the side of the house.
"There's something wrong going on about this house," the good lady said, and getting up she hastily donned some of her clothes. It was bright moonlight. She threw up the staircase window and peered out.
"Lawk a mercy on us! Thieves! Robbers! House- breakers on horseback!" she screamed. "Sam! Brother Sam! Wake up and call the servants! Help! help, for mercy's sake!"
"Dearest auntie," said a voice in the darkness, "don't
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be frightened or angry. It's Billy and I. He came a lit- tle late and so we thought we'd not disturb you. Good- by, auntie dear, and please tell the doctor that I've kept my promise; for I'm now going to be married. To-mor- row I shall be Mrs. Billy Elderson !"
Then the clatter of horse's hoofs was heard on the frost- crusted ground, and in a moment the couple were out of sight.
Mary married the young and handsome, but worthless, Billy. Her career was short. It was filled with priva- tions and pain, and she went to an early grave.
OUR GRANDFATHERS' PURE POLITICS.
A TALE OF THE GRAFT UNEARTHED AMONG THE DEMO- CRATS OF WARREN MANY YEARS AGO.
It is the wail of the pessimist that everything is in a bad way and steadily growing worse. The political croak- er particularly, as a rule, with some disappointment rank- ling in him, looks around and sees nothing but grasping cupidity and venality, or rampant "graft," everywhere among the servants of the people, and this every day in- creasing enormously.
"It's no use talking," he tells you; "we're a long way down grade from what our grandfathers were. People had consciences in those days and inflexible principle, upon which were established a just pride and honor which were dearer to them than their lives. Now," he avers, "we are the abject slaves of money. Every hour more and more brazenly we bow the knee to the golden calf. Those glorious twin sisters, Honest Integrity and Honor, are browbeaten, insulted and pushed aside in our wild scram- ble for filthy lucre. Now, there is absolutely none that can be trusted, no not one!"
All right, Mr. Sorehead Demagogue, but talking of our grandfathers, it might not be out of place to offer you a retrospective peep into political doings of those halcyon times you mention. We'll pass over the hackneyed story of iniquity of the Tweed gang in little old New York. Of course, cities always did and always will have rings of idle schemers on the lookout for money without work-
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ing for it. Let the cities take care of themselves and come along, Mr. Sorehead, out into the sweet, uncontam- inated atmosphere of the country of our grandsires.
Here is a county surely favored of the gods for purity for is it not elevated toward heaven upon the everlasting buttresses and bastions of the Pohatcong and Kittatinny mountains, with Mount Jenny Jump keeping her towering watch and ward in the centre? See also how it is washed clean on nearly all its sides by the stately Dela- ware and Musconetcong rivers, while the pleasant Pau- lins, winding through the once famous Walnut Valley, cleanses and refreshens it internally.
It must have been the creation of patriotic men, too, this county; for among its towns and townships we find the proud names of Washington, Columbia, Franklin, Frelinghuysen, Independence, Hope and Harmony. Here from Jenny Jump's mantling donjon let us survey this pleasant land. It is the fair county of Warren, N. J.
From time immemorial Warren was nothing if not Democratic. Generally it went Democratic to the tune of two to three thousand majority. A Democratic nom- ination in Warren used to be equivalent to election. In fact, at the period mentioned a Republican was literally so great a curiosity that if one was announced in town, all the women and children turned out to get a glimpse of him, really believing, it is said, that he must be exceed- ingly dark with kinky curled hair, or at least with a black streak on him somewhere.
All went well and merrily as the proverbial marriage bell for the sleek and joyful old, trusted Democratic family party, until one day by a mere accident the tax-
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payers discovered something that proved like a lighted match dropped in a powder magazine. That is to say they found that their freehanded representatives had paid a contractor's bill of $500 twice over and had never so much as noticed the slight mistake. This set the people thinking, then to doubting and finally to looking into money matters for themselves. And lo, an explosion fol- lowed that blew open the doors of the State prison and penitentiary and swept into their cells, amid filth unspeak- able, most of the honored officeholders of the Warren County of our grandfathers.
What furnished the $500 fulminate spark to the mag- azine was a contract for the building of a bridge over the river at Newburg. The contractor, happening to be a poor man, ordered a large consignment of pine wood to be sent along for the new bridge to be paid for C. O. D. He had arranged with the freeholders for an advance of money toward the work, and on arrival of the lumber two of them handed him $500. Notwithstanding this when the bridge was finished and taken over by the county the contractor was paid the full amount the contract called for, not a cent being deducted for the $500 advanced on account. This coming in some way to the ears of certain · taxpayers, they first questioned the freeholders about it and not receiving satisfactory answers they demanded an investigation and a committee was appointed to make it.
The cat was out of the bag. One discovery followed another of fraud upon fraud and such abandoned rascality that the committee stood dumfounded. They could not easily realize that these men, their chosen representatives, their intimate friends and neighbors, could be guilty of
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such crimes. But they waded through books of account, bills and vouchers and could not shut their eyes to what they saw in black and white before them. It was evident the methods used in the expenditure of the public money were through and through so grossly bad that in view of the persons involved it seemed perfectly incredible, in- conceivable.
Checks were raised to many times their original amounts in the most barefaced perpetration of common theft. To give a few from endless examples, a check for $7 on ac- count of the bridge work was raised and cashed as $70. For another similar bill, a check for $3 was put through as $300. Bills for hundreds upon hundreds of dollars for expensive carpeting charged against and paid by the county, purported to be for the court-house, while not a yard went to that building, but was all used to carpet the parlors of the officeholders. It was ascertained beyond the possibility of a doubt that over several years the confiding taxpayers of Warren County were robbed by their trusted Democratic representatives of upward of quarter of a mil- lion of dollars.
As the investigation committee proceeded, unearthing batch after batch of these terrible facts, the taxpayers went wild. They demanded instant prosecution of every of- ficial on the political roster. Henry S. Harris, a rising young lawyer, was appointed public prosecutor for War- ren County. His was a difficult and painful task, for all of the suspected men in office were his intimate acquaint- ances, many of them personal friends. But he buckled unflinchingly to the work and did his duty, facing fierce attempts at intimidation and even veiled threats against his
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life. Several times on dark nights anonymous missiles bearing the gruesome skull and crossbones were pushed underneath his door, but he never swerved to the right or to the left till his work was done, and done well.
It was a tremendous sensation when every officeholder in Warren County was indicted and haled before the grand jury to answer for malfeasance in office. There were no protests of innocence heard from the accused. The proofs of their guilt were far too palpable and direct for that. But they weakly whined a request that the investigators should extend their search back for fourteen years and prosecute their predecessors in office.
"That might not clear us of blame," they pleaded, "but it would show that we are no worse than others who were in office before us; for they did the same thing we have done. We have simply followed in their foot- stesps," they said.
Although their plea for retrospective justice could not be granted, seeing that indictments were inoperative for offenses committed beyond the space of two years, yet the investigators did probe the accounts away back as re- quested, and they found the statement true, that the same rottenness of maladministration had been sapping their county's foundation for over fourteen years.
All the accused officers were arrested and lodged in jail, but admitted to heavy bail. And, of course, most of them had no difficulty in finding sureties ready to go upon their bail bonds, and were liberated pending trial. But one of them, a prominent professional man, finding himself unable to procure bondsmen, had to remain in durance. Not being disposed to submit to this indignity,
" You are my prisoner," he said.
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he foolishly resorted to the vulgar plan of breaking his way out of jail, and fled through the fields and over the Oxford Mountains to his home in Washington, Warren County.
His heart yearned, however, not for his home and be- loved ones there, but for his wife's pocket money. He stole into his home like a burglar, extracted $160 of his wife's savings from her little private cupboard, and, sneak- ing away as he had come, went presumably to New York to another woman he had been supporting there. His es- cape from jail nettled, as well as mystified, the court when it was found that the fugitive had not been seen at his home. But the public prosecutor was an astute man, and, being put upon his mettle, he sent for a young man of whom he had the highest opinion in such matters.
"Bob," he said, when the young man came, "you're the very man for this job. I mean -," said he, ņam- ing the prison-breaker. "He has been foolish enough to break jail and has taken to his heels. He did not go home, I find, but is in hiding somewhere. You bring that man back here to his cake and milk, and your fee, what- ever the amount, will be ready, waiting for you."
Bob, who was almost entirely without a clue, started first to ferret out the woman in the case. It was an in- tricate and difficult piece of dovetailing disjointed facts into one another that led him to the then highly fashion- able London Terrace, between Ninth and Tenth avenues in New York. In a select boarding house, about the mid- dle of the row, a tall, auburn-haired, elegantly attired woman had been residing about a week when she came under Bob's close observation. At the old Fog Horn Inn,
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on the corner of Twenty-third street and Ninth avenue, where the young sleuth, Bob, put up, the lady in whom he was so interested was much discussed in the bar as the "strawberry blonde." She often walked up and down Twenty-third street and the "boys" over their cups were enthusiastic over her charming appearance. Bob joined with zest in the conversation, but all the time was in despair because his man did not put in his expected ap- pearance along with the woman. Suddenly, however, the strawberry blonde, rolled away in a cab with trunks on top, and though the "boys" did not have even an inkling of it, Bob promptly bowled away in the same direction in another cab.
The result was that two mornings later when the lady left her hotel in Richmond, Va., for a walk, accompanied by a dark smooth-shaven man wearing green glasses, Bob came sauntering up behind, tapped the man on the shoul- der and addressing him as , the man he wanted :
"You are my prisoner," he said.
The man indignatly protested that he was not the person named.
"Never mind," said Bob, coolly snapping an iron on his arm. "I'll take all the chances. This way, please." And he marched his man off to the station. The fugitive had had a long, black beard and was totally unlike the captured man, but Bob was relentless and paid not the slightest heed to the continued protestations and the ex- cited threats of the strawberry blonde, and next day de- livered the real runaway culprit into the hands of Mr. Harris, public prosecutor of Warren County, and was
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highly complimented and paid double the modest fee he asked.
"And, Bob, let me tell you, my boy," Mr. Harris said, heartily shaking the young man's hand, "I prophesy that the name of Robert Pinkerton will soon have national fame." And who that knows the widespread ramifications of the great Pinkerton Detective Agency of to-day but will admit that Mr. Prosecutor Harris's was a true prophecy ?
Eleven men were duly tried and every one of them convicted-all except one, and he, the master mind and arch conspirator of the whole gang, by turning State's evidence went Scott free. The eleven were drawn up in a row before Chief Justice Beasley for sentence. He first read them collectively a severe moral lecture. Then ad- dressing by name the prominent professional man who had vainly tried to escape, after some scathing personal re- marks the judge said :
"For your crime I sentence you to serve two years in the State prison at hard labor." There was a pause, and the prisoner, evidently surprised at the lightness of his sentence, took upon himself to thank the judge in flowing terms. But the justice, not noticing the interruption in any way, went on:
"And for breaking jail I also sentence you to two more years, making in all four years for you in State prison at hard labor." At which the prisoner hung down his head and offered no further remarks whatever. The nine oth- ers were also sent to the State prison, and one to the coun- ty jail. Their sentences varied from eighteen months to four years.
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As might well have been expected, the smashing of the ring utterly demoralized the Democratic party of Warren County; and the next Senator, Peter Cramer, of New Hampton, was a life-long Republican. Benjamin F. Howey, also an out-and-out Republican, was elected sheriff. This was the first time in the history of Warren County that a Republican ever beat a Democrat at an election.
The prosecutor of the ring rose to well earned fame and was elected to Congress. When his first term expired he was renominated. But the men he had sent to prison were now free again and being past masters of the art of politics, and as they were banded together as one man to be revenged, they effected their purpose by defeating him and sending a Democrat in his place.
And as time, the great mollifier and mellower of all things temporal, jogged along and the horror of the old ring gradually died away, the Democrats began to come into their own again. So now, once more, Warren County usually goes, as of old, decidedly Democratic.
Warren County's plan of providing for its poor about forty years ago, at the time of the ring's operations, was and I believe, still is unique and highly commendable. A very large farm, over six hundred acres, it is said, was fully stocked and equipped with proper implements, barns, etc., and was operated entirely by pauper labor. Every pauper in the county was brought to the farm, and each one allotted his work, according to his age and strength; and they all took kindly to it, as enabling even the oldest and weakest of them to preserve their self-respect, through participating in some small way in productive labor.
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Thousands of bushels of grain and tons upon tons of beef and pork were produced annually, besides much fruit, vegetables, milk and butter for market, after supplying their own needs. It was governed by a board of directors, who elected a resident steward, and was all, of course, ruled by politics. In fact, the fate of the ring hung in the balance over the election of sheriff, for which office the farm steward was the Democratic candidate. The bosses made sure that if their nominee was returned for this office they would be able to upset and prevent the then impending investigation. So they made tremendous ef- forts to effect their purpose.
My informant in these matters, then a callow and un- sophisticated youth just arrived at voting age, was ap- proached and made a delegate by the eager ringsters, who felt bound to have a man who would do exactly what he was told. The big boy was, of course, pleased at their choice of him, while having no more idea than one of his father's goslings what it really meant. His father was warned :
"Don't you let your boy be seen with those rascals!" a prominent citizen cautioned him.
But it was then too late to prevent it. Samuel Frome, the ring's choice, had served a term as steward of the poor farm and was immensely popular, especially with the paupers. For among other amiable features of his man- agement of the farm, he always had the traveling tobacco wagon drive up and supply sufficient of that seductive weed for all, men and women alike. Everyone that wanted tobacco could have it. In some quarters complaints were occasionally made that too much tobacco was used; but
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Sam Frome always met them with the same prompt an- swer:
"As long as I'm steward the old folks shall have their 'baccy.' If you don't like it, choose my successor. There are plenty aching for the job."
The election came off; the boy delegate did as he was told, but alas for the ring! The public rose up in its wrath and overthrew them. For the first time in the mem- ory of man the choice of the Democratic bosses of War- ren County was beaten. The trial, as before stated, went on and the malefactors were sent where they rightly de- served to go, to State prison.
But as to that great coup it was very likely true, as very many Warren County people claimed, and as, in- deed, only too frequently happens in wholesale punish- ment, that at least one righteous man suffered with the wicked. Simon A. Cummins, who held the office of coun- ty collector, was verily believed to have been the innocent victim of the frauds with which he was too hopelessly and incongruously mixed up ever to be able to shake off the contaminating filth and right himself. Yet, that he could have done so is pretty widely believed, though he never put it to the test; a thing that many still regret. For "Honest Simon," as he was admiringly and universally called, was held in the highest esteem. The great nervous shock and strain of the trial completely demoralized and ruined him.
Hufty Thaw, who was overseer of the poor at that time, had some amusing whimsicalities of character not out of keeping with his peculiar name. As a matter of fact, it may be noted that the country people of these parts
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are particularly happy in the aptness of their choice of nicknames. Hufty was a spare little, dried-up looking man with bushy eyebrows over little keen gray eyes, a long nose with a round knob on the end and rather fat, mobile lips that were usually pushed out with a self- satisfied pucker, expressive of great importance and in- tolerance of contradiction. He was hot-tempered but quick to change his choler to a smile, especially when the opposition proved too strong for him.
For a time his wife lost much crockery in arguments with him, for if she crossed him too much he would at- tack the china and smash plates, cups and saucers, etc., to smithereens-probably some of the Thaw "brain storms" of those early days, ere yet blood and boodle had lent them lurid fame. But one day when he began it again, the wife started also and smashed away harder than he did. Stopping immediately :
"Oh, lan's sakes, Mary; let up on this!" he implored with outstretched hands. "It do look so durned foolish to see you breaking things. Do stop, Mary, and I'll never break another thing in all my life!" And he never did.
At one period he quite frequently and grossly exceeded the bounds of temperance in liquid refreshments, and after a specially wet day always used to rise from his bed some time in the night to quench his raging thirst from a crock of buttermilk which was kept standing on a stone bench behind the kitchen door. One night after a whole day of unusually liberal potations, he arose with his mouth so parched that he did not detect the least difference in the favor of his favorite teetotal beverage, though it was very
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