In its issue of
March 14, 1871, the Sun has this headline:

"A GREAT MAN'S MODESTY"

"THE HON. WILLIAM M. TWEED DECLINES THE SUN'S STATUE. CHARACTERISTIC
LETTER FROM THE GREAT NEW YORK PHILANTHROPIST. HE THINKS THAT VIRTUE
SHOULD BE ITS OWN REWARD. THE MOST REMARKABLE LETTER EVER WRITTEN BY THE
NOBLE BENEFACTOR OF THE PEOPLE."

Another kind of memorial to his genius for absorbing the people's money
was awaiting this philanthropic buccaneer. Vulgar ostentation was the
outward badge of these civic burglaries. Tweed moved into a Fifth Avenue
mansion and gave his daughter a wedding at which she received $100,000
worth of gifts; her wedding dress was a $5000 creation. At Greenwich he
built a country estate where the stables were framed of choice mahogany.
Sweeny hobnobbed with Jim Fiske of the Erie, the Tweed of Wall Street,
who went about town dressed in loud checks and lived with his harem in
his Opera House on Eighth Avenue.

Thoughtful citizens saw these things going on and believed the city
was being robbed, but they could not prove it. There were two attacking
parties, however, who did not wait for proofs--Thomas Nast, the
brilliant cartoonist of Harper's Weekly, and the New York Times. The
incisive cartoons of Nast appealed to the imaginations of all classes;
even Tweed complained that his illiterate following could "look at the
damn pictures." The trenchant editorials of Louis L. Jennings in
the Times reached a thoughtful circle of readers. In one of these
editorials, February 24, 1871, before the exposure, he said: "There is
absolutely nothing--nothing in the city--which is beyond the reach of
the insatiable gang who have obtained possession of it. They can get a
grand jury dismissed at any time, and, as we have seen, the legislature
is completely at their disposal."

Finally proof did come and, as is usual in such cases, it came from
the inside. James O'Brien, an ex-sheriff and the leader in a Democratic
"reform movement" calling itself "Young Democracy," secured the
appointment of one of his friends as clerk in the controller's office.
Transcripts of the accounts were made, and these O'Brien brought to
the Times, which began their publication, July 8, 1871. The Ring was
in consternation. It offered George Jones, the proprietor of the Times,
$5,000,000 for his silence and sent a well-known banker to Nast with an
invitation to go to Europe "to study art," with $100,000 for "expenses."

"Do you think I could g