So Jurgis found himself in a large hall, elaborately decorated with flags and bunting; and after the chairman had made his little speech, and the orator of the evening rose up, amid an uproar from the band⁠—only fancy the emotions of Jurgis upon making the discovery that the personage was none other than the famous and eloquent Senator Spareshanks, who had addressed the “Doyle Republican Association” at the stockyards, and helped to elect Mike Scully’s tenpin setter to the Chicago Board of Aldermen!

In truth, the sight of the senator almost brought the tears into Jurgis’s eyes. What agony it was to him to look back upon those golden hours, when he, too, had a place beneath the shadow of the plum tree! When he, too, had been of the elect, through whom the country is governed⁠—when he had had a bung in the campaign-barrel for his own! And this was another election in which the Republicans had all the money; and but for that one hideous accident he might have had a share of it, instead of being where he was!