Tweed had seemed a wonderful figure; we boys knew him only in his largest successful aspects as a dictator: the originator of Riverside Drive, the constructor of the lavish Court House, the arbiter of the City’s destinies. He had made John T. Hoffman, Governor of the State, and A. Oakey Hall, Mayor of the City. I had come into personal touch with the picturesque Oakey Hall. I had to serve a summons on him in his official capacity and found him in his executive office wearing a red velvet coat. “Young man,” he said, with all the patronage of an emperor addressing some messenger from a remote province of his domains--and with a splendid accentuation of his title--“you can now swear that you have served the _Mayor_ of New York!” Sometime thereafter I saw this same mayor act in “The Crucible,” a play written by himself, to prove his innocence under the Tweed régime. We law-students had looked with veneration to the Supreme Court. We conceived of its members as men of immaculate morality, constantly practising an even balance of the scales of Justice. Our deepest admiration was evoked by their confidence and self-possession and the awe-inspiring manner in which they exercised their powers. Many a time when I went before one of these judges to ask an adjournment, or to have an order signed, I marvelled at the rapidity with which he grasped the contents of the papers submitted to him, and it was a severe blow to my faith in our legal and political institutions when the impeachment of several of these judges, and the removal of some of them, showed that not a few had been tools in the hands of a corrupt boss. Nor were we younger men alone in our disillusionment. Others had been deceived; the leading citizens of New York had associated themselves in business with the imposing dictator. I still have an advertisement of the New York (Viaduct) Railroad Company, and in the list of its directors the name of William M. Tweed appears between that of A. T. Stewart and August Belmont; Richard B. Connolly next to Joseph Seligman; John Jacob Astor has A. Oakey Hall on one side and Peter B. Sweeney on the other; immediately after Sweeney comes Levi P. Morton. The “Big Four” of Tammany were in good company. How far the Ring might have extended its power, it is impossible to say. Tweed had promoted Hoffman from the mayoralty to the governorship and no doubt intended to present him as a presidential candidate in ’72. Amongst my clippings I find one which shows that the West was already considering Hoffman as a national figure. It is from a New York newspaper and quotes the Western press as announcing the following slate: