Memoirs of an editor : fifty years of American journalism / Edward P. Mitchell.

DANA AND HIS PEOPLE

201

the second attempt and secured the decision of Judge
Addison Brown of the federal district court upholding
the principle affirmed by Judge Samuel Blatchford in
the earlier and similar case against Dana, thus establishing one of the bulwarks of the freedom of the press.
Probably not many clients in unimportant cases can
look back like myself to the aid of counsel afterward so
distinguished as Judge Bartlett and Secretary Root became. The only occasion on which I was ever arrested was
not for libel but on the more odious charge of passing
counterfeit money. The incident comes freshly to recollection as I write of these eminent professional gentlemen's
connection with theatrical affairs. It was for a while the
source of acute if unnecessary mental anguish.
Not long after I joined The Sun I presented myself as
usual on Saturday noon at the publication office and drew
the weekly pay envelope. It contained a single fifty-dollar
bill. Then I walked up Broadway, rich and happy as one
feels while honestly earned wealth has had no chance to
dissipate. At Twenty-first Street I entered the grocery
store of Park & Tilford, as had been the weekly custom,
to obtain a dollar's worth of cigars and at the same time
get the money changed. Instead of receiving any change
I was summoned to the cashier's cage and informed that
the bill was bad, the stupid person within the grille eying
me meanwhile as if he had at last hit the trail of a desperate gang.
"It may be bad," said I, "or it may be good. Let's go
over to the Second National Bank and find out."
The cashier delegated a youthful subordinate to accompany me and to hold the bill. The bank was at the
Twenty-third Street corner of the Fifth Avenue Hotel.

There, after some study of The Counterfeit Detector, the bill
was denounced. We went back amicably to the grocery.
I gave my name, my occupation, my abode in lower
Madison Avenue, and the friendly clerk at the cigar