While busy within the organization, deepening and broadening the channels of my power, I did not neglect conditions beyond the walls. I sent for the leaders of those two or three bands of Democracy which professed themselves opposed to Tammany Hall. I pitched upon my men as lumber folk in their log-driving pitch upon the key-logs in a “jam.” I loosened them with office, or the promise of it, and they instantly came riding down to me on the currents of self-interest, and brought with them those others over whom they held command. Within the twelvemonth Tammany was left no rival within the lines of the regular party; I had, either by purring or by purchase, brought about the last one's disappearance. It was a fair work for the machine, and I could feel the gathering, swelling confidence of my followers uplifting me as the deep sea uplifts a ship. There was a thorn with that rose of leadership, nor did my hand escape its sting. The papers in their attacks upon me were as incessant as they were vindictive, and as unsparing as they were unfair. With never a fact set forth, by the word of these unmuzzled and uncaring imprints I stood forth as everything that was thievish, vile, and swart. While I made my skin as thick against these shafts as I could, since I might neither avoid nor return them, still they pierced me and kept me bleeding, and each new day saw ever a new wound to my sensibilities. It is a bad business--these storms of black abuse! You have but to fasten upon one, even an honest one, the name of horse-thief and, behold you! he will steal a horse. Moreover, those vilifications of types become arrows to glance aside and bury themselves in the breasts of ones innocent. Blossom was grown now to be a grave stripling girl of fifteen. Anne conceived that she should be taught in a school. She, herself, had carried Blossom to a considerable place in her books, but the finishing would be the better accomplished by teachers of a higher skill, and among children of Blossom's age. With this on her thought, Anne completed arrangements with a private academy for girls, one of superior rank; and to this shop of learning, on a certain morning, she conveyed Blossom. Blossom was to be fitted with a fashionable education by those modistes of the intellectual, just as a dressmaker might measure her, and baste her, and stitch her into a frock.