Besides, his power there is absolute. The district comprises the most ignorant and most vicious portion of the city. It is full of low grog-shops, houses of ill-fame, low gambling-houses, and sailor boarding-houses, whose keepers enjoy protection and immunity, for which they pay by the most efficient electioneering services. Moreover, the district is full of sinecures paid from the city treasury. If, instead of having stolen millions, Mr. Tweed were accused of a dozen murders, or if, instead of being in human form, he wore the semblance of a bull or a bear, the voters of the Fourth District would march to the polls and vote for him just as zealously as they will do now, and the inspectors of election would furnish for him by fraudulent counting any majority that might be thought necessary in addition to the votes really given. Tweed was re-elected to the State Senate by twelve thousand plurality. The great robber-boss was a source of news from his rise in the late sixties to his death in 1878. As early as March, 1870, the _Sun_ gave its readers an intimate idea of Tweed’s private extravagances under the heading: “Bill Tweed’s Big Barn--Democratic Extravagance Versus That of the White House--Grant’s Billiard Saloon, Caligula’s Stable, and Leonard Jerome’s Private Theatre Eclipsed--Martin Van Buren’s Gold Spoons Nowhere--Belmont’s Four-in-Hand Overshadowed--a Picture for Rural Democrats.” Beneath this head was a column story beginning: The Hon. William M. Tweed resides at 41 West Thirty-sixth Street. The Hon. William M. Tweed’s horses reside in East Fortieth Street, between Madison and Park Avenues. That was the _Sun’s_ characteristic way of starting a story. Tweed was, in a way, responsible for the appearance of a _Sun_ more than four pages in size. Up to December, 1875, there was no issue of the _Sun_ on Sundays. In November of that year it was announced that beginning on December 5 there would be a Sunday _Sun_, to be sold at three cents, one cent more than the week-day price, but nothing was said, or thought, of an increase In size. On Saturday, December 4, Tweed, with the connivance of his keepers, escaped from his house in Madison Avenue. This made a four-column story on which Mr. Dana had not counted. Also, the advertisers had taken advantage of the new Sunday issue, and there were more than two pages of advertisements. There was nothing for it but to make an eight-page paper, for which Dana, who then believed that all the news could be told in a folio, apologised as follows: