The Ring was in consternation. It
offered George Jones, the proprietor of the Times, $5,000,000 for
his silence and sent a well-known banker to Nast with an
invitation to go to Europe "to study art," with $100,000 for
"expenses."
"Do you think I could get $200,000?" innocently asked Nast.
"I believe from what I have heard in the bank that you might get
it."
After some reflection, the cartoonist asked: "Don't you think I
could get $500,000 to make that trip?"
"You can; you can get $500,000 in gold to drop this Ring business
and get out of the country."
"Well, I don't think I'll do it," laughed the artist. "I made up
my mind not long ago to put some of those fellows behind the
bars, and I am going to put them there."
"Only be careful, Mr. Nast, that you do not first put yourself in
a coffin," said the banker as he left.
A public meeting in Cooper Institute, April 6, 1871, was
addressed by William E. Dodge, Henry Ward Beecher, William M.
Evarts, and William F. Havemeyer. They vehemently denounced Tweed
and his gang. Tweed smiled and asked, "Well, what are you going
to do about it?" On the 4th of September, the same year, a second
mass meeting held in the same place answered the question by
appointing a committee of seventy. Tweed, Sweeny, and Hall, now
alarmed by the disclosures in the Times, decided to make Connolly
the scapegoat, and asked the aldermen and supervisors to appoint
a committee to examine his accounts.
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