While many men think they can manage a hotel, a theater, or a newspaper, they are in the minority compared with those low-browed addle-pates who believe they could run the government. The freedom of the Republic is at once its peril and its pre-eminence, yet this pioneer has weathered the storms of nearly a century and a quarter, proving the eminent success of the government for and by the people. Sweeney, the hod-carrier, inspired by potations of "suds," dreams he has been elected president of a republic, and proceeds to "rush the can" right into the most sacred precincts of the ruling powers. His tads and flannel faces stumble into the halls of state, appear in social functions in misfit clothes and misfit manners: in fact, everything in the most dignified community takes the topsy-turvy low-comedy call that inspires laughter from a gurgle to a roar. Sweeney's first stroke of a pen (which simply makes his mark), is to settle the hod-carriers' strike and give the ladder-climbers $5 per hour, while the builders who came to argue are glumly permitted to escape with their lives. Mrs. Sweeney, who milks the cow on the State House lawn, gives a dinner to foreign diplomats that outrivals the newsboys' dinner for rush, war and rough-house. Sweeney is about to suppress the war in Mexico, when he wakes up with cold feet.