Though I made speeches through the district as formerly, I asked no pledges of any person, but when the nominating convention assembled I was renominated in spite of all opposition, and triumphantly:--a gifted and honorable man, the late David J. Mitchell, throwing himself heartily into the matter, and in an eloquent speech absolutely silencing the whole Tammany and canal combination. He was the most successful lawyer in the district before juries, and never did his best qualities show themselves more fully than on this occasion. My majority on the first ballot was overwhelming, the nomination was immediately made unanimous, and at the election I had the full vote. Arriving in Albany at the beginning of my third year of service--1866--I found myself the only member of the committee appointed to investigate matters in the city of New York who had been re<e:>lected. Under these circumstances no report from the committee was possible; but the committee on municipal affairs, having brought in a bill to legislate out of office the city inspector and all his associates, and to put in a new and thoroughly qualified health board, I made a carefully prepared speech, which took the character of a report. The facts which I brought out were sufficient to condemn the whole existing system twenty times over. By testimony taken under oath the monstrosities of the existing system were fully revealed, as well as the wretched character of the ``health officers,'' ``inspectors,'' and the whole army of underlings, and I exhibited statistics carefully ascertained and tabulated, showing the absurd disproportion of various classes of officials to each other, their appointment being made, not to preserve the public health, but to carry the ward caucuses and elections. During this exposure Boole, the head of the whole system, stood not far from me on the floor, his eyes fastened upon me, with an expression in which there seemed to mingle fear, hatred, and something else which I could hardly divine. His face seemed to me, even then, the face of a madman. So it turned out. The new bill drove him out of office, and, in a short time, into a madhouse. I have always thought upon the fate of this man with a sort of sadness. Doubtless in his private relations he had good qualities, but to no public service that I have ever been able to render can I look back with a stronger feeling that my work was good. It unquestionably resulted in saving the lives of hundreds, nay thousands, of men, women, and children; and yet it is a simple fact that had I, at any time within a year or two afterward, visited those parts of the city of New York which I had thus benefited, and been recognized by the dwellers in the tenement houses as the man who had opposed their dramshop- keepers and brought in a new health board, those very people whose lives and the lives of whose children I had thus saved would have mobbed me, and, if possible, would have murdered me.