I used to say that to a very destructive crank who would have
nothing less, upon any account, than the whole loaf. My "remedies"
were an abomination to him. The landlords should be boiled in
oil to a man; hanging was too good for them. Now he is a Tammany
officeholder in a position where propping up landlord greed is his
daily practice and privilege, and he thrives upon it. But I ought
not to blame him. It is precisely because of his kind that Tammany
is defenceless against real reform. It never can make it out. That
every man has his price is the language of Fourteenth Street. They
have no dictionary there to enable them to understand any other;
and as a short cut out of it they deny that there is any other.
It helped me vastly that my associations in the office were most
congenial. I have not often been in accord with the editorial page
of my own paper, the _Sun_. It seemed as if it were impossible for
anybody to get farther apart in their views of most things on the
earth and off it than were my paper and I. It hated and persecuted
Beecher and Cleveland; they were my heroes.
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