The Americus Club was his favorite retreat, and there his satellites followed him. Scores of them were only too glad to pay the $1,000 initiation fee required, in addition to the $2,000 or so charged for sumptuously fitting the room to which each was entitled. The grandeur of their club badges well illustrated their extravagance. One style of the badges was a solid gold tiger’s[19] head in a belt of blue enamel; the tiger’s eyes were rubies, and above his head sparkled three diamonds of enormous size. Another style of badge was of solid gold with the tiger’s head in _papier-maché_ under rock crystal. It was surrounded by diamonds set in the Americus belt. Above was a pin with a huge diamond, with two smaller diamonds on either side. This badge was estimated to be worth $2,000. A third style showed the tiger’s head in frosted gold, with diamond eyes. Everywhere the prodigal dissipation of the plunder was visible. Sums of a few thousand dollars Tweed professed to hold in utter contempt. A city creditor once appealed to him to use his influence with Controller Connolly to have a bill paid. Twenty times he had asked for it, the creditor said, and could get it only by paying the 20 per cent. demanded. (This 20 per cent., it should be explained, was the sum extorted from all city creditors by the officials in the Controller’s office as their portion after the chiefs of the “ring” had taken the lion’s share.) Tweed looked at the man a moment and then wrote hastily to Connolly: “Dear Dick: For God’s sake pay ----’s bill. He tells me your people ask 20 per cent. The whole d----d thing isn’t but $1,100. If you don’t pay it, I will. Thine. William M. Tweed.” The “Boss’s” note being virtually a command, the bill was paid in full. FOOTNOTES [1] Statement of Rev. Dr. H. W. Billings, in Cooper Union, April 6, 1871. [2] Testimony _Senate Committee on Cities_, 1890, Vol. II, pp. 1711-12. [3] The amendments to the charter of 1857 had abolished the Board of Councilmen and reinstituted the Board of Aldermen and the Board of Assistant Aldermen, the two constituting the Common Council. The “Tweed charter” continued these two boards, legislating the then incumbents out of office, and ordering a new election in May. The “ring,” of course, secured a large majority in this new Council. [4] _The Tweed Case_, etc., Supreme Court, 1876, Vol. II, p. 1212. [5] _Document No. 8_, p. 73. [6] _Ibid._, pp. 84-92. [7] _Document No. 8_, p. 212. [8] _Ibid._, pp. 223-25. [9] For the passage of this bill Tweed paid “in the neighborhood of $50,000 or $100,000.” _Document No. 8_, p. 154.