But the new County Court House, the _Times_ demonstrated, was the chief means of directly robbing the city. All told, so far as could be learned, the sum of $3,500,000 had been spent for “repairs” in thirty-one months--enough, the _Times_ said, to have built and furnished five new buildings such as the County Court House. Merely the furnishing, repairing and decorating of this building, it was shown, cost $7,000,000. One firm alone--Ingersoll & Co.--received, in two years, the gigantic sum of $5,600,000 “for supplying the County Court House with furniture and carpets.” In brief, the County Court House, it was set forth specifically, instead of costing between $3,000,000 and $5,000,000, as the “ring” all along had led the public to believe, had actually cost over $12,000,000, the bulk of which was stolen. The members of the “ring” affected an air of unconcern regarding the disclosures. When Tweed was questioned as to the charges, he made his famous reply: “What are you going to do about it?” He professed not to care for newspaper attacks. Yet Thomas Nast’s terribly effective cartoons pierced him to the heart. “If those picture papers would only leave me alone,” he lamented, “I wouldn’t care for all the rest. The people get used to seeing me in stripes, and by and by grow to think I ought to be in prison.” Mayor Hall put on an air of jocose indifference, occasionally replying to the charges by references to the alleged frauds in the Federal Government,[1] but oftener by wondrously facetious jests such as: “Counts at Newport are at a discount”; “shocking levity--the light-ship off Savannah has gone astray”; “these warm, yet occasionally breezy days, with charmingly cool mornings and evenings, are an indication that we are likely to have what befell Adam--an early Fall.”[2]