IT'S worth while to see and talk with

the most famous.-But is he?-Let's consider.

Who's the mayor of London? Who's of Paris?-Birmingham?-St. Louis?San Francisco?-Philadelphia? And so forth and so forth and so on. Very few of my readers can name one of them. But when it comes to New York, -second city in the world for population, and first for a lot of other things

THE MAN I WENT TO SEE.

then it is, everybody says "Gaynor!" Admiral Togo knew all about him: he'd heard, in Japan. Gaynor figures in the English, French, and German papers; he is in fact the most picturesque conspicuously-forceful Mayor in the world, and the only one New York

has had, for quite some time, who has really mayored, much of any. He has been announced again and again as a Governmental and a Presidential "possibility" and, honest, he is certainly the most famous Mayor in the known world.

An interview, for a summer girl, with that sort of a male biped?-It is not so very hard a "stunt" at a resort-refugefrom-city-broiling, especially if the Biped happens to be there: but in officehours, at an office, and with a large crowd of resolute males ahead of youthat is about as different as often happens.

Still, I was slated to see Mayor Gaynor, or die with my eyes open looking for him. I had never thus far made a solemn vow to converse with a gentleman worth the effort of articulation, but what the dialogue was sooner or later pulled off: and had dismissed myself from the presence of several quite some celebrities, with a string of questions and answers streaming proudly away from my back-hair.

So, when the golden idea was held dangling before me of a little talk-fest with the Chief of this second-largest camp of citizens in the world, I made. up my mind that the chain of success should not be broken.

And I applied for the honor of an interview, until it became a habit: I wrote, and wrote, and wrote, and kept on writing, until-joy!-there came an answer. It was several hundred words shorter than the Mayor's average published letters-it was not as long as the village of St. James, where my intended

victim summered, or as wide as a garagedoor: but I was bound that it should serve. It said, "I will see you some day when you call."

Some day when I called, happened quite a number of times, and I was informed on two or three of those times, by two or three gentleman-friends of high position whom I also found waiting in various throngs, that my chances were pronouncedly microscopic. It was almost as bad as if I were trying to see a king. I began to wonder what sort of luck I would have next summer, with George, of England.

But, one day, Presto! the gates of the city or rather the doors of the inner office-OPENED!-and I was in the presence of New York's most enigmatical and picturesque character-Mayor Gay

nor.

A well-groomed and neatly-apparelled man saluted, without rising, gave me a good straight honest look, and then peered past me into the distance-what distance there was in the room-as if he were trying to find out what in the blessed known world a summer-girl wanted of him. (As an "s. g." I had signed my letters.)

His temporary preoccupation gave me a first-class little stare at the most eminent Mayor. He has gray, closetrimmed hair and beard; good-sized forehead, not too high; strong, prominent nose; and straight, firm-shutting mouth. His dark-brown eyes are nearer together than those of most brainy men, but sharper for the fact. He has the general appearance of being one of the care-takers of the world.

It was a year and a day from the time when he had been shot down by a halfcrazy nondescript whom he had neglected to give immediate employment: and an elaborate loving-cup was among the trophies of a celebration that had been held the day before, in commemoration of the fact that a live Mayor was loved much more fervently than a dead one could possibly be. He glanced at the flower-entwined article, but said nothing about it; and I felt that he did not at all crave my mentioning it. Sud

denly came the rather brusque words, "What can I do for you?"

"I wanted you to talk with me concerning yourself", I replied, with meek

ness.

"I don't care to do that", he murmured, wearily. "The people and the papers are perfectly willing to save me the trouble. And since the-accidentmy throat is bad. Somehow, things in there don't-work right. I have to save the vocal organs as much as I can."

Poor Mayor Gaynor! I pitied him away down in the cellarage of my heart; and I felt that he knew it. I had heard him address thousands of people at a time, and trade thunders of oratory for thunders of applause. And now-he had to be economical with every word. That miserable leaden bullet, which doctors say they dare not remove and Nature cannot dissolve, must always be reckoned-with by his vocal organs. A politician or statesman nowadays who has to be constantly heedful of his voice, is handicapped in a way that entitles him to pity.

"Well, if you won't talk about yourself, Mr. Mayor, suppose you give me your idea of woman's rights. Shall we vote?"

"The women do not want to vote", he answered, more energetically than he had spoken before. "I know of very few who are really anxious for the ballot, and they are not of the most reputable of their sex."

I was very much surprised-one might say thunderstruck. I had thought I knew several quite reputable ladies. who wanted to vote. One was a sweet good mother at home, who would go through a November rainstorm or a March blizzard, to demonstrate herself as a real American citizen. One was a lady of wealth, who is anxious to vote as to how her property shall be taxed: and she is also a sweet good reputable woman. One was a woman-preacher, who had picked and plucked many souls out of the muck-beds of sin and temptation. I knew a whole lot more-but dropped the subject: and realized that he was perfectly willing to do the same.

"Fiction?" he inquired, sententiously. I had with me a public-library book with which to improve the time when on city trains, and keep mashers from bothering me. Mashers do not like books-especially of a decent character. There are still such beings in New York. Young Young women adorned with delicate laces and white slippers have not been, as in some other towns, employed to go out and lure silly dude-flies. into the webs of a police-station.

"Yes," I answered: "fiction: and at pretty good novel. Do you like 'em?" "Haven't time for them," he replied, looking away and beyond me, as if there were some one else off there that he was trying to find, He has this peculiarity in conversation. "I do not object to fiction when it possesses the true ring: but there is reality enough nowadays to keep me busy-and very interestingly so.

"Both in this big city, and my village home at St. James, I am constantly finding that truth is not only stranger than fiction, but more attractive.

"Did you ever study the domestic animals that are among and around us? Nothing can be more interesting and attractive in fiction, than the real truth that displays itself in their lives.

"A fine old matron of the porcine tribes has since last week been very proud of a large family of children that squealed and clustered about her. I don't wonder: they are very pretty little toys of live meat, with their handsome blonde complexions, their little stemless leaves for ears, and their tiny leafless stems for tails. What could be prettier -what more entertaining than the study of such natural, unspoiled creatures? I am going to have them taken to the Bronx Park, where thousands of children can see and admire and enjoy them.

"The city children of the day are shown all kinds of foreign animated. creatures, over there at the Zoo: why. shouldn't they be taught something about our own domestic animals?"

I am sure, as an observant summer girl, and one who is trying hard to be a

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useful autumn and winter one, that I should wish Mayor Gaynor much success, in his proposed additions to the Zoo. I hope, for instance, that he will send a very tiny colt, an exceedingly juvenile cow, a flock of recently-incubated chickens, a few long- legged out sweet-faced lambs, three or four miniature ducks, a mule too young and softhoofed to be harmful, and other domestic animated minutiae, with mandatory instructions to the Park Commissioner, to keep the tiger away from them. Showing off the youngest wild animals in captivity, has been somewhat overdone, of late years: and it is surely. important for them to know something about American infantile Zoology.

"Are you satisfied with your life, Mayor Gaynor?" I ventured to ask,

next.

Few people are entirely satisfied with their lives, and I expected, of course, a negative answer. When, slowly, deliberately, emphatically, he turned out the word "Yes", there was perhaps an interrogation-point in each one of my eyes. He continued, thoughtfully:

"I have always tried to do what was right, tried to help others. True, I have found very little appreciation: but appreciation, as Daniel Webster said of confidence, is a plant of slow growth. Walk ten miles straight and true, and nobody particularly notices you: make one mis-step, and all the lookers-on laugh, jeer, or scold.

"I made the bridges free for horses and wagons: who of those that were saved big money by it, has thanked me?

"The Bureau of Weights and Measures now means that in this city a quart means a quart, an ounce an ounce, and a pound a pound-something that hasn't happened before for a good long while. Perhaps householders thank their stars for it but I am not included in the astronomical assemblage.

"I have stopped 'graft' in many ways: I haven't noticed that any one said 'Much obliged!' But-no matter!-the people are benefited, whether they know it or not. 'Work for the right, and not

for others' sight' has always been my motto."

"Is the toil of being Mayor hard upon you?"

"I wouldn't feel natural outside of hard work.

"When I first found myself, up in Oneida County, there were fields all around me they had to be tilled-and it wasn't very many years before I was at it.

"When I taught school, to earn education-money, I was perhaps the most industrious scholar in the whole little establishment: I worked hard to keep ahead of my pupils.

"In Boston, I worked hard instead of running around to see the sights, or going to concerts and theaters.

"In Brooklyn, I worked hard on the papers, all the while I was studying law.

"From that time on, study the history of our city, and you'll admit that I haven't been a star idler."

"Your work is of course interesting to you?"

"If you sat here where I am, you couldn't help being interested, even if you took an oath against it. The requests that people make, and the opinions they express, are every kind of interesting from hilarious to pathetic."

"And public opinion-is that also interesting to you, Mr. Mayor?"

"Yes: but not the counterfeit article that is presented by the worse sort of newspapers. Not that supplied by the journals that corrupt the eye with impure pictures, and soil the mind with vile stories.

"I do not pay any attention to what they say for it is not the opinion of real people, and they cannot make it so. They are lying about me, all the time: but what do I care? I have always been lied about, more or less, and I have always lived the falsehoods down."

Well, the Mayor had talked a good

deal about himself, after all, and notwithstanding his strongly-expressed disinclination to do so.

"Was that a lie when you said that if the people didn't like the fiercely crowded street-cars, they had better walk? And if not, how would you like. one of your lovely daughters, if she were obliged to go to business each day, to walk from Nassau and Beekman Street, to the Bronx, in a good nice little blizzard?

"When some one complained to you that the frightful noise attending night collection of ashes and garbage murdered sleep for a part of the night, did you say that if any one didn't like it, he could move out of the city'?-And how much do you think it would cost most of us, to 'move'?

"Did you say that the noise only lasted ten minutes, and that was nothing? And did you realize that several people, awakened from a sweet slumber by the rattling of cans, the jerky rumbling of a rude cart, and the yelling of angry drivers to their sleepy horses, required an hour or two to sink into somnolence again?"

These last questions ran through my mind, and out on the very tip of my tongue: I didn't unleash them. But I would like to have heard him say, either that they were newspaper-lies, or were merely grim jokes, which he did not mean literally.

But the day was all the time aging. I had not taken the life of the Most Famous Mayor, as Gallagher tried to do a year ago, but I had taken a part of it and he needed every minute in more important business than answering a summer-girl's questions-when she knew nothing about politics or much of anything else, and couldn't vote.

But his farewell was as polished and considerate as if I were a millionairess or a full-grown queen.