The God of Politics has laid a heavy hand of wrath upon the benevolent Society of St. Tammany. Disinherited by the national democratic organization, harried by a Rooseveltian governor in Albany, and finally, in the ultimate cataclysm, kicked out of the city feed troughs, the society took to sack-cloth and ashes, fixed a Day of Atonement, and picked a Scape-goat.

Came the Day. They stole up behind the Hon. John F. Curry, seized him by the hands and feet, and swung him into the sacrificial fire, with tears of repentance flowing freely.

The tears were not for the antics of crooked judges nor for little black boxes. They were for a stupid and doddering leadership that had permitted the enemy to gain the advantage. Tammany is old in the ways of politics. It knows that a "reform" administration will sneak in every now and then, at intervals like business cycles, every time that the Wigwam relaxes its vigilance and permits its sentries to nod. It knows too that with an aging and incompetent leader dismissed, with a younger and more hard-boiled man in charge, the Happy Hunting Ground will be open again, with its little black boxes and its fat franchises, just as soon as the public is bored to death with the reforms of a reform administration, and goes to sleep in its turn.