“ Public plunder is devoted to greasing the political wheels, and burnishing, and twitching the mysterious wires, through which the honest laborer is burdened with taxes, that mangle his back like the last feather of the expiring camel. Connolly, Busteed, Doane, Wetmore, Nathan, Nelson, Draper, and Weed, got the Record Commissioners appointed, through which $550,000 have been squandered for printing the useless County Clerk and Register’s Records, which is the boldest robbery of modern times. ”

“ Should the people slumber when a gang of robbers, and devils, and assassins, and fiends of rapine, are thundering at the gates of the commercial emporium, and even at the very doors and firesides of our sacred domestic castles, and daily and hourly rob our coffers, and ravish our daughters, and cut our throats, in open day, and through their hellish robbery, and taxation, drive the mechanic and laborer, and their dear little ones, to hunger, and rags, and madness, and crime, and to the dungeon, or scaffold, [6] or suicide? ”

“ Talmadge as Recorder was too kind and lenient, but he erred on the side of humanity, which is preferable to err on the side of a pale and icy and bloodless liver, though we should steer between the heart and liver, and consign the culprits to the pits and gulches of the navel, where the voracious worms could soon devour them. The valor of Talmadge conquered the ruffians of Astor Place, and he has a Roman and Spartan nature, and is as generous and magnanimous as Clay or Webster, whom he loved as his own big heart. No man ever had a more genial or sympathising bosom, than Frederick A. Talmadge. ”

“ Beware, then, Cooper Tiemann, Gerard and Kingsland, and other trembling conspirators, or we will make you howl, and open the gates of Tartarus, and set a million dogs and devils at your heels, and when they bite, may God have mercy on your poor old bones. ”

“ Connolly has not voted since we exposed his perjured alienage in 1855, when he strove to bribe us to shield him from the odium arising from his alienage. A public thief, and perjurer, and alien, this man or devil announces himself for Comptroller of this mighty metropolis, with a prospect of nomination and election, unless his throat is cut by George H. Purser, a deeper and more dangerous public villain than Connolly. Purser has robbed this city for a quarter of a century, and is also an unnaturalised alien, and we have positive evidence of the fact, and he knows it. ”

“ Terry closed his story, and the other students left, leaving myself and Terry, who hauled up his pantaloons, and exclaimed: “Why, Branch, I think I must have fleas, for, good God, just look at my legs, they are covered with pimples, and they itch most awfully.” I inquired if a dog had been in his room recently, to which he negatively responded. I then said: “Perhaps you have not got fleas, but the itch.” He instantly straightened himself, and looking me dead in the eye, said: “Branch: If I had the itch, I think I would commit suicide.” ”

“ I left Andover for Boston, and caught the itch from a filthy bed at a hotel in Washington street. I went to Cambridge, and entered the law school of Judge Story and Professor Greenleaf. A law student from Providence asked me to gamble, and I won about $20 in cash, and he denounced me, because I would not gamble with him after he had lost all he had, and owed me $50. I told him that persons seldom paid gambling debts, and I could not stake cash against credit in a game of cards. ”

“ Flagg sputters a little in his reports, for show, against him, but he is not chasing Smith very hotly in the Courts, nor dare he, as we have good reason to believe. Through the Alms House, Navy Yard, County Clerks’ Office, Record Commissioners, metropolitan and suburban lots, and other plundering sources, Connolly has amassed a fortune of nearly a million of dollars, and now has the audacity to proclaim himself a candidate for Comptroller, at which the honorable citizens of New York should rise and paralyse his infamous effrontery. ”

“ Let Dad and Son Beware! Peter Cooper and Mayor Tiemann are old and sacred friends of George W. Matsell, who are more familiar with each other than they are with the Bible, or morning and evening prayers. Mayor Tiemann was elected with the express condition that Matsell should be restored to his old position, and Peter Cooper and Mayor Tiemann, and James W. Gerard, and Ambrose C. Kingsland are at work for their lives to effect the restoration of Matsell, and all impends on the election of a Commissioner in place of the noble Perrit. ”

“ I became a clerk in the Post-office, at $400 per annum. [Gen. Mallett’s second wife was a widow of the affluent Haight family, of this city, and he was the President of the St. Nicholas Bank.—He has just been appointed by President Buchanan, Commercial Agent to Florence, where he will probably die, as he is tottering in the bleak evening of life.] I had borrowed money from Israel Post, of New York, before I went to Washington, and when he learned that I was a clerk in the Post-office, he demanded payment, and threatened to write to Gen. Mallett, if I did not immediately cancel his claim. ”