126 POLITICAL LIFE-V 



associates, and to put in a new and thoroughly qualified 

 health board, I made a carefully prepared speech, which 

 took the character of a report. The facts which I 

 brought out were sufficient to condemn the whole existing 

 system twenty times over. By testimony taken under oath 

 the monstrosities of the existing system were fully re- 

 vealed, as well as the wretched character of the "health 

 officers, ' 9 " inspectors, ' ' and the whole army of underlings, 

 and I exhibited statistics carefully ascertained and tabu- 

 lated, showing the absurd disproportion of various classes 

 of officials to each other, their appointment being made, 

 not to preserve the public health, but to carry the ward 

 caucuses and elections. During this exposure Boole, the 

 head of the whole system, stood not far from me on the 

 floor, his eyes fastened upon me, with an expression in 

 which there seemed to mingle fear, hatred, and something 

 else which I could hardly divine. His face seemed to me, 

 even then, the face of a madman. So it turned out. The 

 new bill drove him out of office, and, in a short time, into 

 a madhouse. 



I have always thought upon the fate of this man with a 

 sort of sadness. Doubtless in his private relations he 

 had good qualities, but to no public service that I have 

 ever been able to render can I look back with a stronger 

 feeling that my work was good. It unquestionably re- 

 sulted in saving the lives of hundreds, nay thousands, of 

 men, women, and children ; and yet it is a simple fact that 

 had I, at any time within a year or two afterward, visited 

 those parts of the city of New York which I had thus 

 benefited, and been recognized by the dwellers in the tene- 

 ment houses as the man who had opposed their dramshop- 

 keepers and brought in a new health board, those very 

 people whose lives and the lives of whose children I had 

 thus saved would have mobbed me, and, if possible, would 

 have murdered me. 



Shortly after the close of the session I was invited to 

 give the Phi Beta Kappa address at the Yale commence- 

 ment, and as the question of the reconstruction of the 



