The intercession of friends secured for the culprit immunity from arrest for libel, but in the newspapers of his city he received such a castigation as he will not soon forget. The _Daily Monitor_, in an editorial replying to the slanders that were being circulated concerning Mr. Herndon, said: "Mr. Herndon is not a pauper, is not a drunkard; whisky did not ruin him, and, in a word, the whole thing is a lie. Mr. Herndon lives on his farm near this city. He is a great admirer of nature, loves flowers, and spends his whole time on the farm, except when doing his trading, or coming into the city to see his children and grandchildren. He don't drink, he don't chew tobacco, he don't gamble, he is honorable and truthful, and he is highly respected by his fellow-citizens. He is a great reader, a great thinker, loves his neighbors and his neighbors love him. He has a great, big, kind heart for his fellow-man in distress, and, while never worth 'considerable property,' he has always had enough for his generous purposes. Just why this thing should be allowed we are at a loss to know, and have waited to see if some of those who profess so much of the Christ-like in their composition would not have enough of the man-like to be men, and not allow a good and true man as Mr. Herndon is to be thus infamously maligned and belied by those whose works in the salvation of men would have more effect if more akin to Christ in practice." After a life of honest toil, much of it in behalf of the poor and the weak, without reward and without the expectation of reward, to be in his old age thus shamefully robbed of his good name, was an outrage almost without a parallel, save in the treatment received by Thomas Paine. That Mr. Herndon was keenly sensitive to this great wrong is disclosed by the tone of his letters written at the time. In one he says: "I have done nothing in the spirit of self-laudation. I prefer moving down the grooves of time unnoticed and unknown, except to friends. I have no ambition for fame or money. My ambition is to try to do good. I spent ten or more years of my best life for the negro, liberty, and union, not forgetting Kansas and her brave people. But let it all go; I make no complaint. I try to live a moral and a manly life, love my fellow man, love freedom, love justice, and would die for the eternal right."