dollar mark. The same issue contained "The Mayor's Grand Jury "-twelve pictures of the Mayor himself-and that fearful front page-the Ring in the shadow of the gallows-Tweed lifting his hat, and the others cringing cravenly at sight of "The only thing they respect or fear."

It is doubtful if caricature in any nation had ever approached in public importance such work as this. Certainly America had never seen its like. The crushing of the Ring had become a national issue and, next to Grant himself, Thomas Nast, as leader of the greatest reform movement New York City had ever known, had become the conspicuous national figure. Carlyle once said:" He that would move and convince others must first be moved and convinced himself." Thomas Nast had long been moved and convinced in his crusade against the Ring. Now in a perfect frenzy of battle he had risen to achievements of attack and slaughter hitherto undreamed.

And just here came Samuel J. Tilden's great moment of entrance. His appearance on the stage was as dramatic as it was effective. It was the moment in the melodrama when the avenger rushes from the wings, holding high the damning proof that makes conviction sure.

The Booth Committee was ready to make its report. Through Andrew H. Green, Mr. Tilden knew precisely what that report would be. Two or three days previous he "happened causually," as he says in his affidavit, to drop into Mr. Green's office, and was there shown some startling figures from the books of the Broadway Bank. Traced through the bank's entries, these figures showed just how an account against the city-a sum of $6,312,641.37-had netted a clear profit of $6,095,309.17 to Tweed and his friends, and just in what measure the transaction had been arranged. Why the bank had not rendered so important a public service before, does not matter now. Neither does it matter why Mr. Tilden, who later acknowledged that he

"STOP THIEF

"They no sooner heard the cry, than, guessing how the matter stood, they issued forth with great promptitude; and, shouting 'Stop Thief!' too, joined in the pursuit like Good Citizens."-"OLIVER TWIST."

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knew as far back as 1869 that the Ring was opposed to all good government," should have waited until this particular and supreme instant for strenuous action. It is enough that it was the supreme instant, and with his affidavit and the clear and full statement of the Broadway Bank, Mr. Tilden strode

into the lime-light, and the Public rose up in a concord of cheers and commendation. Tilden in that moment must have believed that the greatest gift of the American people would be his reward.

On the next day the report of the Booth Committee removed the last breath of doubt. On that day William Marcy Tweed was arrested, and, though released on a million dollar bond, supplied by Jay Gould and others, that first arrest marked the beginning of the end. Samuel J. Tilden, like an avenging angel, with all the skill and knowledge and ambition of his kind, had linked his legal acumen with the brilliant daring of the Times and the relentless genius of Nast! The glory of dishonor was waning dim. In its declining day, long shadows of sombre prison walls reached out to enclose the Ring.

Yet perhaps hope was not wholly dead. In the issue of the Weekly prior to election week there was but one small cartoon, and this represented Tweed still holding the Democratic reins. It may be the Ring gleaned a grain of comfort from this confession of the "Boss's" strength, and believed it to be the last small shot of battle. Little did they guess that with the next number-issued two days before the election-Thomas Nast would fling into their midst a pictorial projectile so terrific in

its power, so far-reaching in its results, that Ring rule and plunder the world over shall never cease to hear the echo of its fall.

It was a great double page of that Coliseum at Rome which the young Garibaldian had paused to sketch on his way out of

"We presume it is strictly correct to say that the one consequence of thieving which they would now dread is a violent death. Public scorn, or even the penitentiary, has little terrors for them." "We do not know how the affair may end, but we do know that if they close their careers in peace, and ease, and affluence, it will be a terrible blow to political and private morality."-The Nation.

Italy. Seated in the imperial enclosure, gazing down, with brutal eager faces are Tweed and his dishonored band, with the Americus emblems above and below. But it is only the centre of the amphitheatre that we see. There, full in the foreground, with glaring savage eyes and distended jaws, its great, cruel paws crushing down the maimed Republic, we behold the first complete embodiment of that fierce symbol which twenty years before had fascinated a little lad who had followed and shouted behind the engine of the Big Six. The creature of rapacity and stripes, whose savage head Tweed had emblazoned on the Tammany Banner, had been called into being to rend and destroy him. In all the cartoons the world has ever seen none has been so startling in its conception, so splendidly picturesque, so enduring in its motive of reform as "The Tammany Tiger LooseWhat are you going to do about it?" In the history of pictorial caricature it stands alone to-day as then, and for all time -unapproached and unapproachable.

Two days later the people declared what they would do about it. The Ring had plotted to stuff the ballot and use their armies. of repeaters, but so great was their craven fear at this moment that a Nast picture of citizens voting into a waste-basket, with the Ring to do the counting, published with four others in the great Tiger issue (six altogether), frightened them into a fairly honest count which swept them out of power. The Ring was shattered. It existed but in the history of its misdeeds.

The Nast pictures of the results of the great defeat were worthy of the man who had made them possible. Tweed, wounded, bandaged, disgusted and disgusting, is shown as Marius among the ruins of Carthage. The "Boss," it is true, had been reëlected to the State Senate the vote in his district not being a matter of moral conviction-but he had lost all desire to claim his seat. On another page, "Something That Did Blow Over" graphically and humorously portrayed the ruins of