"
[Illustration: Bandits' Roost--a Mulberry Bend Alley.]
I could not have laid it out for him to suit my case better than he
did. It was in the silly season, and the newspapers fell greedily
upon the sensation I made. The Bend, moreover, smelled rather worse
than usual that August. They made "the people's cause" their own,
and shouted treason until the commission charged with condemning
the Bend actually did meet and greased its wheels. But at the next
turn they were down in a rut again, and the team had to be prodded
some more. It had taken two years to get a map of the proposed
park filed under the law that authorized the laying out of it. The
commission consumed nearly six years in condemning the forty-one
lots of property, and charged the city $45,498.60 for it. The Bend
itself cost a million, and an assessment of half a million was
laid upon surrounding property for the supposed benefit of making
it over from a pig-sty into a park. Those property-owners knew
better. They hired a lawyer who in less than six weeks persuaded
the Legislature that it was an injury, not a benefit.
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