Tammany had its slimy tentacles everywhere and graft was the essence of success in every branch of public life. A police captain had his town and country house, perhaps his yacht as well.... The story of Tammany has been told again and again. It is too well known for repetition. I watched its vile methods from the inside with a vengeance; its loathsome soul I saw face to face. The city, too, I soon knew inside out, especially its darker, unclean quarters. Chinatown, Little Africa, where, after dark, it was best to walk in the middle of the street, "Italy," the tenement life of the overcrowded, reeking East side.... I made friends with strange people, feeling myself even in touch with them, something of an outcast like themselves. My former life became more and more remote, it seemed unreal; the world I now lived in seemed the only world; these evil, depraved, tempted, unhappy devils were not only the majority, but the real, ordinary humanity that stocked the world. More and more the under-dog appealed to me. The rich, the luxurious, the easily-placed, the untempted and inexperienced, these I was beginning to find it in me to look down on, even to despise. Mutatis mutandis, I thought to myself, daily, hourly, where would they be?... Where would I myself be...?
Bronx Park, Shelley, the violin, the free library, organ recitals in churches, my Eastern books, and meetings of the Theosophical Society, provided meanwhile the few beauty hours to which I turned by way of relief and relaxation. One and all fed my inner dreams, gave me intense happiness, offered a way of escape from a daily atmosphere I loathed like poison. Sometimes, sitting in court, reporting a trial of absorbing interest, my eye would catch through the dirty window a patch of blue between the clouds ... and instantly would sweep up the power of the woods, the strange joy of clean solitary places in the wilderness, the glamour of a secret little lake where loons were calling and waves splashing on deserted, lonely shores. I heard the pines, saw the silvery moonlight, felt the keen
wind of open and untainted spaces, I smelt the very earth
