side. His very extravagances at once stimulated and satisfied the
national yearning for a hot chase, a good show--and in the complaints of
his victims, that the art of letters was being degraded, that the
country was made ridiculous, the newspaper-reading populace could see no
more than an affectation. The reform organization of 1876 lasted but
five years; and then disbanded without having accomplished anything;
Train was put on trial for "debauching the young" with an "obscene"
serial;[54] juries refused to bring in punitive verdicts against the
master showman.

In carrying on this way of extermination upon all ideas that violated
their private notions of virtue and decorum, Comstock and his followers
were very greatly aided by the vagueness of the law. It prohibited the
use of the mails for transporting all matter of an "obscene, lewd,
lascivious ... or filthy" character, but conveniently failed to define
these adjectives. As a result, of course, it was possible to bring an
accusation against practically _any_ publication that aroused the
comstockian blood-lust, however innocently, and to subject the persons
responsible for it to costly, embarrassing and often dangerous
persecution. No man, said Dr. Johnson, would care to go on trial for his
life once a week, even if possessed of absolute proofs of his innocence.
By the same token, no man wants to be arraigned in a criminal court,
and displayed in the sensational newspapers, as a purveyor of indecency,
however strong his assurance of innocence. Comstock made use of this
fact in an adroit and characteristically unconscionable manner. He held
the menace of prosecution over all who presumed to dispute his tyranny,
and when he could not prevail by a mere threat, he did not hesitate to
begin proceedings, and to carry them forward with the aid of florid
proclamations to the newspapers and ill concealed intimidations of
judges and juries.

The last-named business succeeded as it always does in this country,
where the judiciary is quite as sensitive to the suspicion of sinfulness
as the legislative arm. A glance at the decisions handed down during the
forty years of Comstock's chief activity shows a truly amazing
willingness to accommodate him in his pious enterprises. On the one
hand, there was gradually built up a court-made definition of obscenity
which eventually embraced almost every conceivable violation of Puritan
prudery, and on the other hand the victim's means of d