Robinson’s acquittal was credited largely to Ogden Hoffman, whose summing up the _Sun_ described as “the most magnificent production of mind, eloquence, and rhetorical talent that ever resounded in a hall of justice.” This was the Ogden Hoffman of whom Decatur said, when Hoffman left the navy in 1816, that he regretted that the young man should have exchanged “an honourable profession for that of a lawyer.” Hoffman and his partner Maxwell, who shared in this tremendous fee of fifteen hundred dollars, had been district attorneys of New York before the time of the Jewett murder, and the _Sun_ inquired what would have been Robinson’s fate if Hoffman, and not Phenix, had been the prosecutor. On August 20, 1836, the _Sun_ announced that its circulation averaged twenty-seven thousand copies daily, or fifty-six hundred more than the combined sale of the eleven six-cent papers. Of the penny papers the Sun credited the _Herald_ with thirty-two hundred and the _Transcript_ with ten thousand, although both these rivals claimed at least twice as much. Columns were filled with the controversy which followed upon the publication of these figures. The _Sun_ departed from a scholarly argument with the _Transcript_ over the pronunciation of “elegiac,” and denounced it as a “nestle-tripe,” whatever that was. There was a little room left for the news. Aaron Burr’s death got a stick; Marcy’s nomination for Governor of New York, an inch; Audubon’s arrival in America, four lines. News that looks big now may not have seemed so imposing then, as this _Sun_ paragraph of September 22, 1836, would show: Two more States are already spoken of for addition to the Union, under the names of Iowa and Wisconsin. Richard Adams Locke left the _Sun_ in the fall of 1836, and on October 6, in company with Joseph Price, started the _New Era_, a penny paper for which the _Sun_ wished success. In less than a month, however, Locke and his former employer were quarrelling about the price of meals at the Astor House. That famous hotel was opened in May, 1836, with all New York marvelling at the wonders of its walnut furniture, so much nicer than the conventional mahogany! Before it was built, it was referred to as the Park Hotel. When it opened it was called Astor’s Hotel, but in a few months it came to be known by the name which stuck to it until it was abandoned in 1913. But to return to our meal. Said Mr. Locke’s _New Era_: A paragraph is going the rounds of the papers abusing the Astor House. Nothing can be more groundless. Where the arrangements are complete, the charges, of course, must be corresponding. We suppose the report has been set afloat by some person who was kicked out for not paying his bill. To this horrid insinuation Day replied: