y suddenly
looming ahead of them,--since the Corn National Bank held certain
paper....

In short, when the case did come to trial, it "blew up," as one of our
ward leaders dynamically expressed it. Several important witnesses were
mysteriously lacking, and two or three school-teachers had suddenly
decided--to take a trip to Europe. The district attorney was ill, and
assigned the prosecution to a mild assistant; while a sceptical
jury--composed largely of gentlemen who had the business interests of the
community, and of themselves, at heart returned a verdict of "not
guilty." This was the signal for severely dignified editorials in Mr.
Tallant's and other conservative newspapers, hinting that it might be
well in the future for all well-meaning but misguided reformers to think
twice before subjecting the city to the cost of such trials, and
uselessly attempting to inflame public opinion and upset legitimate
business. The Era expressed the opinion that no city in the United States
was "more efficiently and economically governed than our own."
"Irregularities" might well occur in every large organization; and it
would better have become Mr. Greenhalge if, instead of hiring an unknown
lawyer thirsting for notoriety to cook up charges, he had called the
attention of the proper officials to the matter, etc., etc. The Pilot
alone, which relied on sensation for its circulation, kept hammering away
for a time with veiled accusations. But our citizens had become weary....

As a topic, however, this effective suppression of reform was referred to
with some delicacy by my friends and myself. Our interference had been
necessary and therefore justified, but we were not particularly proud of
it, and our triumph had a temporarily sobering effect. It was about this
time, if I remember correctly, that Mr. Dickinson gave the beautiful
stained-glass window to the church....

Months passed. One day, having occasion to go over to the Boyne Iron
Works to get information at first hand from certain officials, and having
finished my business, I boarded a South Side electric car standing at the
terminal. Just before it started Krebs came down the aisle of the car and
took the seat in front of me.

"Well," I said, "how are you?" He turned in surprise, and thrust his big,
bony hand across the back of the seat. "Come and sit here." He came. "Do
you ever get back to Cambridge in these days?" I asked cordially.

"Not since I graduated from newspap