The effect on the Nevada public was unmistakable. It reminded me more of the motionless and breathless attitude of an audience at the third-act climax of a four-act drama, than anything else. The Senator was not seen on the streets of Reno for two months afterwards. For a fortnight afterward he didn't even call at the offices of the bank. When he did finally resume his visits to the bank he came in his automobile. He was whisked to the door of the building, immediately secreted himself in the directors' room and was not get-at-able. Leading citizens, including the directors of a number of banks in Reno, made clandestine calls at my office, shook my hand, felicitated me over the stand I took, and went away. Even George Wingfield, the Senator's partner, it was reported (and I afterward corroborated this from the lips of George Wingfield himself), backed me up in the stand I had taken. The general sentiment in the State appeared to be that the threat was a lowdown trick, and that of the two I had the less to be ashamed of. When the Senator read the article headed "Nixon a Senator with a Blackmailing Mind" it is said he telegraphed to former Governor Thomas of Colorado, his counsel, and asked him to come to Reno. "If I don't say something in answer to this awful attack, I'll choke!" cried the Senator as he nervously walked the floor. "Did you sign that interview which they published?" asked Governor Thomas. "Yes," said the Senator. "Well, then, if you say anything at all now, _they'll_ choke _you_," answered Governor Thomas. During the course of our attacks on Senator Nixon in the _Nevada Mining News_ which followed at various intervals, the newspaper accused him of making promises of early dividends to Goldfield Consolidated stockholders which he knew he could not keep; of having been the State Agent in Nevada of the Southern Pacific Company at $150 per month during the Huntington régime when legislatures were bought; of having bilked the investing public out of millions in Goldfield; of having carved his fortune, that made possible the acquisition by him and his partner of control of the Goldfield Consolidated, out of a gambling house in Tonopah; of having gathered his first mining property and mining-stock interests in Goldfield from prospectors who lost money and surrendered their mining claims and stock certificates to the gambling house in lieu of the cash; and of being generally a financial and political freebooter of the most despicable sort. And the Senator never sued for libel nor proceeded in the courts in any way whatsoever to obtain a retraction. MANIPULATING GOLDFIELD CON