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 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
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 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030319499 
 
Anthony Comstock, Fighter 
 
BY 
 
 CHARLES G. TRUMBULL 
 Messages For The Morning 
 
 W^atch : Devotional Studies in 
 Genesis. i2mo, cloth. ..net $i,oo 
 "Mr. Trumbull has had a life-long training 
 in writing simply, plainly, practically, help- 
 fully on the constantly recurring problems, tests 
 and opportunities of spiritual life. His point 
 of view in these devotional studies is that of 
 the average Christian seeking God's guidance 
 for the day's affairs and encouragement for 
 the day's trials." — Pacific Presbyterian. 
 
 Anthony Comstock, Fighter 
 
 Illustrated, i2mo, cloth, net $1.25 
 
 An authorized biography of this great fighter 
 for purity. The story is one of life-and-death 
 adventure, moral and physical heroism, and 
 incomparable achievement. During the thirty 
 years in which Mr. Comstock has been work- 
 ing for the suppression of vice he has destroyed 
 over 43 tons of vile books, 28,425 pounds of 
 stereotype plates, two and a half million 
 obscene pictures and 12,945 negatives. The 
 detailed account of how all this was done is 
 a most thrilling and remarkable story. 
 
(Xv-i-<^^i--frv«,M/feit;uJW< , 
 
Anthony Comstock, Fighter 
 
 Some Impressions of a Life- 
 time of Aflventure in Con- 
 flict with the Powers of Evil 
 
 By 
 CHARLES GALLAUDET TRUMBULL 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh 
 

 .Copyright, 1913, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 125 North Wabash Ave. 
 Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 
 
To 
 his mother, and to mine 
 
Contents 
 
 I. In Training for the Fight . . 9 
 
 II. The Man and the Boy . . .19 
 
 III. The Making of a Soldier . . 31 
 
 IV. First Glimpses of the Life- Work 43 
 
 V. Wanted : Money and Friends . 57 
 
 VI. Beginning an Organized Campaign 70 
 
 VII. " Learning Patience at the Hands 
 
 OF Congress . . . .83 
 
 VIII. Going After Big Game : The 
 
 Louisiana State Lottery . 100 
 
 IX. " Keeping Everlastingly at It " 115 
 
 X. Weapons That Did not Prosper 128 
 
 XI. Befriending the Criminal . .150 
 
 XII. " Persecuting " the Art Stu- 
 
 dents' League . . • i/S 
 
 XIII. Carefulness, and a Conscience , 180 
 
 XIV. Humours of the Work . . 196 
 
 XV. The Summit Burglaries . . 207 
 
 XVI. After Forty Years . . . 230 
 
 XVII. The Secret of His Life . .241 
 
Illustrations 
 
 Anthony Comstock Frontispiiet 
 
 The strenuous vice-fighter prolongs his life and use- 
 fulness by a month of midsummer vacation at 
 a Catskill resort . . . facing page 49 
 
 These are the citizens for whom " Uncle Tony " 
 has lived and " died daily " for more than 
 forty years, and to whom his heart goes 
 out ..... facing page 153 
 
 It is worth a lifetime of persecution and peril, 
 Mr. Comstock believes, to make the world 
 a cleaner, safer place for one such boy as 
 this ... . facing page 231 
 
I 
 
 IN TRAINING FOR THE FIGHT 
 
 EARLY one morning in the year 1862, 
 in the village of Winnipauk, Con- 
 necticut, an eighteen-year-old boy 
 who was clerk and general helper in the 
 country store was given the disturbing news, 
 by an Irishman who rushed excitedly in, that 
 a mastiff hound in the village had gone mad 
 and was running amuck, and "would be 
 bitin' the children." The hound, of the for- 
 midable sort used to hunt slaves in the South, 
 belonged to the local saloon-keeper. The 
 Irishman told the boy very emphatically that 
 somebody ought to put that dog out of 
 business. And the boy believed it. 
 
 He got a gun and a pistol, cleaned and 
 loaded them, and asked another young fel- 
 low about his own age to join him in looking 
 after the dog. Oh, yes, he would go, was 
 the answer, — after breakfast ; but his cour- 
 age oozed out and his mind changed before 
 the time for action came. 
 9 
 
10 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEB 
 
 The country-boy clerk was scared, too ; 
 thoroughly so. He was downright afraid to 
 go for that dog. So he went to his room 
 and prayed to God for courage, and for suc- 
 cess in killing the animal. He had a very 
 definite notion of what he proposed to do, 
 and he knew where to go for strength and 
 guidance to do it,^ — two characteristics of his 
 later life. Getting up from his knees, he 
 took his firearms, locked the door of the 
 store, and started to look for the dog. 
 
 There were two roads, either of which he 
 might take. One went up the side of a high 
 hill, the other ran along by the river, and 
 they left each other at a fork in the road 
 along which he started. In the angle of land 
 formed by the separation of these two roads 
 was a row of tenement houses, occupied by 
 the Irish and other poorer mill-workers of 
 the community. A retaining wall some seven 
 feet high supported the bank on the lower side. 
 
 Providence turned the young fellow's foot- 
 steps into the lower road. A woman screamed 
 to him from a tenement window that the beast 
 was "forninst the other end" of the row of 
 houses. Starting to climb up the wall to get 
 to the upper road, the boy heard an un- 
 
IN TBAINING FOE THE FIGHT 11 
 
 earthly howl, and saw the dog coming for 
 him on the run, about twenty feet away, the 
 jaws of his massive head wide open and 
 dripping with foam. 
 
 There was just time to jump down and 
 back, and get his gun up, as the dog 
 reached the edge of the wall. He fired, 
 hitting the beast between the shoulders, full 
 in the breast. The dog rolled over, and a 
 bullet through his brain, from the pistol, 
 finished the business. 
 
 And just then a call came to hurry over to 
 the schoolhouse, to take care of another 
 mad dog that was there I The young vol- 
 unteer dog-killer reloaded, went on the run, 
 and found his second dog in a little hollow. 
 This time he fired too high, over the animal's 
 head. Instantly the dog was up and away 
 on the dead run across a field, while the clerk 
 stood by the open bars at the edge of the 
 field, trying to get another charge into his 
 muzzle-loading gun. As the dog reached a 
 stone wall on the opposite side of the field 
 he must have caught sight of the figure in 
 the rear, for he wheeled squarely around and 
 came back as though shot out of a cannon. 
 
 The boy saw now that he could not get 
 
12 ANTHOIifY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 his gun loaded in time, and he stopped try- 
 ing, seizing it instead by the barrel, deter- 
 mined to stand his ground and club the dog 
 to death if possible. He was steadying him- 
 self for this harder battle, — the dog now 
 about thirty feet away, — when he heard two 
 sharp reports from behind, and the dog 
 dropped in his tracks. A neighbour had 
 come to the rescue and fired the saving shots 
 in the nick of time. 
 
 The Connecticut boy had had his first 
 taste of mad-dog hunting, and in the experi- 
 ence he had learned that a man who will 
 throw himself and all that he has into an 
 effort to protect ^ others will be protected by 
 his heavenly Father while the dangerous work 
 goes on. So he determined to try his hand 
 at another kind of mad-dog extermination. 
 
 The owner of the first dog killed kept an 
 infamous "joint" in Winnipauk, where he 
 sold liquor to women and children, who 
 made a practice, as it was alleged at the time, 
 of taking groceries to him and exchanging 
 them for drink. The boy who had put an 
 end to the dog wanted to see the more 
 dangerous work of its owner closed up. He 
 appealed to the sheriff. That official was 
 
KT TBAINING FOE THE FIGHT 13 
 
 afraid to take any action. After a while the 
 saloon-keeper sold out his business and 
 " good-will (!) " to some men from New York, 
 who let it be known that they were going to 
 keep the place going whether or no, and run 
 both a gin-mill and a gambling hell. The 
 fact that they had not even a liquor license 
 was a detail that did not trouble them. 
 
 One day the boy whose fighting blood was 
 up went to the place and asked if they had 
 any apples for sale. The people in charge 
 knew the young fellow only as a clerk in the 
 village store, and suspected nothing, giving 
 him a good opportunity to look things over. 
 A few nights later a self-appointed vigilance 
 committee, consisting of the boy alone, — he 
 had taken no one into his confidence, — went 
 up to the gin-mill, wrenched off a shutter, 
 climbed in, opened the faucets and drained 
 off on to the floor every drop of liquor in 
 the place, fastened up a conspicuous notice 
 stating that unless the place was now closed 
 and kept closed the building would come 
 down, and retired with something of the same 
 consciousness of having done a good job 
 completely that was felt when the first mad 
 dog lay dead and harmless. 
 
14 ANTHONY COMSTOOK, FIGHTEE 
 
 To be sure, the dive-keepers had given out 
 word that if anybody tried to interfere with 
 them they'd shoot him. But the mad dogs 
 had given notice of similar aggressiveness if 
 anybody should interfere with them; and 
 somebody had interfered. The dive-keepers 
 did not keep their word ; instead, they went 
 back to New York, where they could be freer 
 — for a while — from the attentions of a fanat- 
 ical and determined young countryman ; and 
 they never came back to Winnipauk again. 
 " And that," says the man who ran them 
 out, as he tells the story to-day with a 
 twinkle in his eye, " was the only temperance 
 lecture I ever delivered in that town, though 
 I was a member of the ' Sons of Temper- 
 ance.' " 
 
 The first saloon-keeper had gotten into 
 the clutches of delirium tremens before this. 
 Some time after, the country clerk happened 
 to be driving this man's wife from the rail- 
 road station to the village, and she, not know- 
 ing that he had had anything to do with 
 cleaning out the dive, told him with hearti- 
 ness what a blessing it had been to her hus- 
 band that he had given up the business and 
 that the place had been closed out. Later 
 
IN TEAINING FOR TKB FIGHT 15 
 
 the man broke entirely with his drink habits, 
 and became a sober, dependable workman, • 
 
 As in the hunt for the mad dogs, the 
 eighteen-year-old country boy had to go into 
 this thing alone, — except for Him before 
 whom he laid the whole matter as he talked 
 it over on his knees before he dared make 
 the attempt. Either affair might easily have 
 cost him his life. He went into both en- 
 counters because he saw that the lives of 
 others were being imperilled, and no one 
 seemed ready to accept the responsibility of 
 ending the public peril. No one but him- 
 self. And he had no more equipment for 
 the task than had David with his sling and 
 his pebbles — and his God — against the Philis- 
 tine bully. The thing had got to be done ; 
 no one else seemed likely to do it ; so young 
 Anthony Comstock volunteered. 
 
 His life was at stake each time, — but what 
 of that? The lives of others were at stake, 
 and he had been brought up during his eight- 
 een years of boyhood to understand that 
 moral heroism was the only thing really 
 worth while in this life. A Christian mother 
 of the old-fashioned New England sort had 
 filled her boys' heads and hearts with the 
 
16 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTBB 
 
 realization that we are in this world simply 
 to make it a better world for others to live in, 
 and if our lives get lost in our efforts to ac- 
 complish this, that is a good way and a good 
 time to die. From that morning in 1862 
 when the Connecticut boy started out deter- 
 mined to make it either the dog's life or his 
 own for the lives of others, down to this present 
 year 1913, when he is still vigorously at it, he 
 has been recklessly throwing his life, always 
 for the sake of others, into the teeth of brutes 
 who are worse than mad dogs, bent on de- 
 stroying the bodies and souls of all whom they 
 can reach, and savagely determined to de- 
 stroy any one who tries to interfere with their 
 business. 
 
 He has not always come off as easily and 
 as unscathed as he did in his Winnipauk en- 
 counters. As you look into Mr. Comstock's 
 face to-day you may notice a deep scar, 
 several inches long, running across his left 
 cheek. It is a lifelong reminder of the slash 
 of a knife, severing four facial arteries, made 
 by a criminal whom he was taking to jail one 
 day in a closed carriage in Newark, New 
 Jersey. The knife cut deep, but not deep 
 enough to end the life of the man whose work 
 
IK TRAINING FOE THE FIGHT IT 
 
 God intended should go on for a while longer. 
 So an infernal machine that was carefully 
 prepared to blow him into eternity, and that 
 even reached his hands and was opened by 
 him, was hindered in its mission at the last 
 moment by the God who arranged for the 
 firing of those needed shots over the country 
 boy's shoulder just before the mad dog 
 reached him. And some smallpox scabs, sent 
 to him by mail, might have done deadly work 
 with him, but they failed. Through all the 
 failures of others to stop his work, or kill his 
 body, or ruin his name, or destroy his char- 
 acter, he has pushed steadily on, making a 
 shining mark of himself for deadly attacks 
 from many a death-dealing human creature 
 because of his relentless and successful pur- 
 pose to put just as many of such creatures as 
 he could out of their sphere of activity while 
 God gives him life and opportunity. 
 
 It has always been a source of profound 
 gratitude to Mr. Comstock that those two 
 mad dogs in his boyhood adventure were 
 killed before a single child had been bitten. 
 It is one of the heart-sorrows of his life that 
 this cannot be said of the more dangerous 
 beasts of prey against whom his life-work is 
 
18 Alf THONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 directed. He knows, as others cannot who 
 are not intimately familiar with the far-reach- 
 ing ramifications of the traffic in vice and 
 obscenity that fears him as it fears no other 
 living man, what an endless web of moral 
 entanglement may be started by any one of 
 the venders of this sort of thing before he is 
 held up in his crime. 
 
 But the brighter side of the battle is the 
 tremendous repressive result of Anthony 
 Comstock's work, worth even more to our 
 land than his directly suppressive work. No 
 one can ever know how much traffic of this 
 sort has been prevented from ever coming 
 into existence simply because of the relentless 
 war waged by this uncompromising fighter 
 against the men who have dared to engage 
 in the traffic. For every criminal that is put 
 out of this business, still more criminals 
 wisely decide to refrain from entering the 
 business. And for both these blessings we 
 have Mr, Comstock to thank. 
 
II 
 
 THE MAN AND THE BOY 
 
 AT sixty-nine years of age, Anthony 
 Comstock is a man whom few would 
 care to " run up against," either 
 physically or legally. Standing about five 
 feet ten in his shoes, he carries his two hun- 
 dred and ten pounds of muscle and bone so 
 well that you would not judge him to weigh 
 over a hundred and eighty. His Atlas shoul- 
 ders of enormous breadth and squareness, his 
 chest of prodigious girth, surmounted by a 
 bull-like neck, are in keeping with a biceps 
 and a calf of exceptional size and iron soli- 
 darity. His legs are short, and remind one 
 somewhat of tree-trunks ; but they carry out 
 Abraham Lincoln's recommendation as to de- 
 sirable leg-length by being long enough to 
 reach to the ground. His calling is that of a 
 fighter, and he has a fighter's build. 
 
 When you come to look into his face, you 
 find that his light blue-gray eyes, set moder- 
 ately deep under a splendidly broad brow and 
 dome-like forehead, look out at you straight 
 19 
 
20 AlTTHOIinr COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 and fearlessly, with never any shifty roving, 
 but always an arrow-like directness that can 
 win confidence and love or throw down un- 
 compromising challenge. His eyes are almost 
 exactly of the colour of his old-time friend's 
 — the late H. Clay Trumbull, — who could also 
 fight upon occasion. A characteristic com- 
 mon to the two men is the quick flash of Mr. 
 Comstock's eye when he is crossed in any 
 way. He is intolerant of opposition, and im- 
 patient even of interruption. Like most men 
 of conspicuous achievement, he is a " this- 
 one-thing-I-do " man. He brushes aside in- 
 terruptions as though saying, " Vm going 
 through with this to the finish : let me alone." 
 He fairly bristles with an atmosphere of un- 
 stoppable determination. Two or three deep- 
 cleft vertical lines cut into the brow just be- 
 tween the eyes. The mouth is not enough 
 covered by the moustache to 9onceal its bull- 
 dog set. The chin is smooth-shaven ; the 
 " mutton chop " side-whiskers — delight of the 
 cartoonists employed by the papers that take 
 their fling at the man who wastes no time 
 over them — only half conceal the long scar 
 on the left cheek, relic of one of the many at- 
 tempts on his life. 
 
THE MAN AND THE BOY 21 
 
 Those blue-gray eyes that can flash fire can 
 also look at you very winsomely, when their 
 owner wants them to. One has but to see a 
 child come within Mr. Comstock's range of 
 vision to realize the love for children that is a 
 mainspring of his ceaseless warfare against 
 the enemies of childhood. Over and over 
 again have I seen him turn from what he was 
 doing or saying to speak lovingly to some 
 little child — whether acquaintance or stranger 
 made no difference — who came within reach. 
 He has a smile brimming over with kindli- 
 ness. When talking about anything that 
 stirs him deeply, he has a way of drawing in 
 his upper lip, as he speaks, that gives an im- 
 pression of self-restraint coupled with an in- 
 tensity of feeling that one realizes is a source 
 of power. 
 
 All this goes with Anthorly Comstock's 
 sturdy, indomitable, self-sinking fidelity to his 
 life-task. He was, as he tersely puts it, sta- 
 tioned in a swamp, at the mouth of a sewer, 
 some forty years ago. The assignment was 
 not a pleasant one ; but it was his assignment. 
 When on picket duty in the army he had 
 learned to accept assignments of unpleasant 
 duty, and to stay by them until relieved. If 
 
22 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEE 
 
 stationed in a Southern swamp, as he was in 
 army life, it made no difference that there 
 were rattlesnakes and other poisonous dan- 
 gers thick about him. That was his post of 
 duty, until relieved ; and from picket duty at 
 the sewer-mouth position to which he was 
 called in 1872 he has never been relieved ; 
 therefore he is still on guard. He says of it 
 with a heartiness that carries its own convic- 
 tion, " I have more joy in the service of my 
 Master at the point where He has assigned me 
 than I could get anywhere outside that nar- 
 row little place." 
 
 It is dreary work, much of it ; but he never 
 lets that make him a dreary or a cast-down 
 man. His cheery good nature is fairly effer- 
 vescent. He loves a joke, either in the tell- 
 ing or the doing, and keeps his hand in with 
 both kinds. His optimism and love are never 
 overshadowed by the conflicts of his daily 
 life. His devoted wife testifies that, in spite 
 of the degrading matters with which Mr. 
 Comstock has to deal, and the maligning 
 and abuse that are heaped upon him, he 
 comes home at night, after the strain of a day 
 at his office or in the courts, showing no trace 
 of bitterness or resentment against his enemies. 
 
THE MAN AND THE BOY 23 
 
 His very prayers, — which are a sure test of the 
 real man, — after a day of such strain reveal 
 only the simple, childlike Christian faith that 
 the New England boy breathed in at his 
 mother's knee. 
 
 It is to that mother, who died when her 
 boy Anthony was only ten years old, that this 
 man of faith and daring believes he owes all 
 — next to divine strength — that has enabled 
 him to live his life and do his work. She 
 was Polly Ann Lockwood, daughter of 
 Samuel and Deborah Lockwood, and wife of 
 Thomas Anthony Comstock ; and it was in 
 the village of New Canaan, Fairfield County, 
 Connecticut, on March 7, 1844, that she 
 brought into the world the boy who was to 
 make his father's, name famous. Those were 
 not the days of race suicide, and Mrs. Com- 
 stock had ten children, of whom seven lived 
 to grow up. The family home was a farm, 
 two and a half miles from the village. From 
 their farmhouse they could see Long Island 
 Sound shining in the sunlight, and Long Is- 
 land itself. Still more interesting, in sight 
 ten miles away at Horse Neck, Greenwich, was 
 the old church by the long flight of stone sjteps 
 down which General Israel Putnam — "Old 
 
24 A2!fTH0NY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 Put " — was said to have ridden on horseback 
 at full gallop, that venturesome day when he 
 preferred this breakneck risk to sure capture 
 by the British. 
 
 The Comstock home was an unpainted 
 farmhouse, with a workshop beside it. Mr. 
 Comstock senior, a devout Christian man, 
 was a farmer who also owned two sawmills 
 and supplied lumber for buildings in Stam- 
 ford, ten miles off, and elsewhere. With a 
 farm of a hundred and sixty acres, he would 
 sometimes employ as many as thirty men, 
 and kept several yoke of oxen busy. 
 
 Week-day mornings Anthony would be up 
 and out at four o'clock to feed the stock, cut 
 wood and bring it in, and make himself gen- 
 erally useful. The mother was one of those 
 who taught her boys to do everything. To- 
 day one of Mr. Comstock's hobbies and pas- 
 times is expert cabinet-work. His home is 
 filled with pieces of the most beautiful work- 
 manship in this line — done to rest and amuse 
 himself when he wants to forget for a while 
 the stern pressure of his life-calling. Another 
 hobby is stamp collecting. He has carried 
 on his collection for years, and has some eight 
 thousand varieties now, with perhaps thirty 
 
THE MAN AND THE BOY 25 
 
 thousand duplicates. He is always ready to 
 " trade " stamps with fellow collectors. 
 
 On both sides of the family, the Comstocks 
 were sturdy, typical, long-lived New England 
 folk. Many of Anthony's great-aunts and 
 uncles attended the Episcopal church in New 
 Canaan. But his own family church was the 
 Congregational. His father would hitch up 
 a four-seated wagon Sunday mornings, fill it 
 with family and farm hands, and drive the two 
 and a half miles to church. In winter it was 
 no uncommon matter to have to take along 
 shovels to clear away the snow-drifts. Sun- 
 day-school was held immediately after the 
 morning preaching service, in the gallery of 
 the church ; then lunch was eaten in the horse- 
 sheds. About the time lunch was finished 
 the bell would ring for afternoon preaching 
 service ; then followed the drive home. One 
 of the family always remained at home on 
 Sundays to cook four o'clock dinner for the 
 returned and hungry worshippers, — the boys 
 and girls taking turn about with their mother 
 at this. Many a time did young Anthony 
 thus cook the family meal. In the evenings 
 some would frequently go back to the clos- 
 ing church service of the day, returning to be 
 
26 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, PIGHTEB 
 
 refreshed with pie and milk. Daily prayers 
 were conducted every morning, before break- 
 fast, and the hired men and servants, as well 
 as the family, were expected to be present. 
 
 This was the sort of home and life in which 
 the boy Anthony grew up ; and the centre of 
 that life was the New Engla^d Christian 
 mother. She was loved by every one. 
 Twenty-five years after her death one of the 
 men who had worked on the farm said : 
 " Anthony, there wasn't a workman on your 
 father's farm but fairly worshipped the ground 
 your mother walked on. She was never 
 known to speak an unkind word to any one." 
 
 To-day, nothing is quite so sacred to her 
 grown-up boy as the memory of the children's 
 Sunday nights with their mother. Sunday 
 was no bugbear in that home. She would 
 gather the children round her, close up, and 
 tell them stories. These stories Jwere often 
 from the Bible, sometimes from other sources ; 
 but always they were stories of moral hero- 
 ism. That one thing she instilled into the 
 minds and hearts and breath and blood of her 
 children, until it became, fpr one at least of 
 those children, the great outstanding essential 
 in character and manhood. Purity, principle, 
 
THE MAN AND THE BOY 27 
 
 duty, were watchwords often on the mother's 
 lips ; expediency and policy, never. She 
 acted upon the principle that a child's mind 
 is receptive, and must have something to 
 think about. It must have an ideal, too ; so 
 she deliberately sought to create in her chil- 
 dren an ideal that was lofty, clean, and heroic. 
 She kept them well supplied with stories of 
 adventure and heroism, — and always with 
 moral courage as their key-note. " Such 
 stories to-day fascinate me," Mr. Comstock 
 will tell you. " I don't care that " — with a 
 contemptuous snap of his finger — " for your 
 blood and thunder stories. But I do enjoy 
 the story of any man or woman, boy or girl, 
 who sacrifices self for principle." 
 
 Harking back to his mother again, he says 
 with earnestness : " I'm not entitled to much 
 credit if I stand out against some things in a 
 way that makes people characterize me as 
 puritanical " ; and he adds with some convic- 
 tion : " / cannot but feel that the teachings of 
 my mother are vastly superior to anything 
 that my opponents can offer or recommend." 
 
 The boy lived on the farm until he was in 
 his teens, and attended the district school half 
 a mile away. He was healthily mischievous 
 
28 ANTHONY OOMSTOCK, FIGHTEB 
 
 at school, and remembers plenty of lickings 
 that he undoubtedly deserved. For example, 
 when sent out to the woods to fetch a switch 
 for his own chastising, he would thoughtfully 
 nick the switch on his way back so that if he 
 was struck an extra hard whack it would 
 break ! A worse punishment, because more 
 humiliating, was being sent over to sit with 
 the girls, wearing a sunbonnet the while. 
 
 Perhaps a boyhood experience with the 
 liquor problem made it easier for Anthony to 
 be the total abstainer from alcohol as a bever- 
 age that he has been all his life. One of his 
 duties was to drive the cows home from 
 pasture every night. On the way lived a 
 certain boy whose house he was forbidden to 
 visit. One night Anthony did visit there, 
 while coming back with the cows, and the 
 boy brought out some^home-made wine which 
 he warmly recommended. The boys drank 
 it together. Anthony felt somewhat hilarious 
 that evening at home, and was glad to get to 
 bed. The next morning he had quite a 
 " head " when he woke up. But he got up, 
 and he and his father retired to the cow-shed. 
 That is the only time he remembers ever 
 having drunk liquor as a beverage in his life. 
 
THE MAN Amy THE BOY 29 
 
 The reformation was quick, drastic, complete. 
 He has never used tobacco. When the 
 doctor was sewing up the facial arteries that 
 an assassin's knife had severed in Mr. Com- 
 stock's cheek, years later, he remarked signif- 
 icantly, " There's no rum or tobacco to come 
 out of ikai wound." 
 
 The boys of that day had their games, 
 such as tag, quoits, and ball, but none of the 
 organized baseball that is so common now. 
 The moral life of children of that time was 
 just as exposed to danger as it always is in 
 city and country, — and always probably more 
 so in the looser atmosphere of the country. 
 While the boy's childhood days were chiefly 
 filled with the things that make for good, 
 yet there were vicious characters in school 
 and on the farm, — some of the hired help 
 being abundantly so, which was a great sor- 
 row to the mother. Mr. Comstock bears 
 testimony to the common experience of many 
 when he says that certain things that were 
 brought into his life in those boyhood days 
 started memories and lines of temptation that 
 are harder for him to overcome than anything 
 that ever came into his life in later years. 
 
 And so it is that he has spent himself 
 
30 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEE 
 
 to the uttermost, during a long lifetime, to 
 stop the poisoning of other children's minds 
 and lives if he can. He knows what an aw- 
 ful and lasting poison is the poison of im- 
 purity. Once gaining entry into a life, 
 through book or story or picture, it stays. 
 It is so much more to be dreaded than the 
 mad dogs of his Winnipauk experience. 
 Yet we are better safeguarded from mad 
 dogs, for if a boy or a girl is bitten, an out- 
 cry is raised, the parents know of it at once, 
 and everything that can be done is done. 
 Not so with the images of defilement that 
 strike into boy and girl life. Often none 
 know of it but themselves ; and there the 
 images stay, to be called up freely and used 
 at will by the Devil. But the Devil has had 
 greater difficulty in making deposits in 
 childhood's banks to draw upon at will, since 
 Anthony Comstock entered business against 
 him. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE MAKING OF A SOLDIER 
 
 IN an Episcopal church on the Plaza in 
 old St. Augustine, Florida, one Sunday 
 during the dark days of our Civil War, 
 a Connecticut army chaplain was conducting 
 services. He had been doing this work since 
 the arrival of his regiment, the Tenth Con- 
 necticut, for there was no Protestant pastor 
 in the city, and the townspeople as well as 
 the boys of the camp needed his care. But 
 now his regiment was to move on, the 
 Seventeenth Connecticut having come to re- 
 lieve it ; and this was his last service in the 
 church. The meetings must not stop, — he 
 was sure of that ; but who was there to con- 
 tinue them ? Finally he singled out a twenty- 
 year-old Connecticut lad in the regiment 
 that had just arrived, and, after the meeting 
 had come to a close, he handed the boy the 
 keys of the church and said to him with 
 magnetic heartiness, " Keep up these meet- 
 ings." 
 
 31 
 
32 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 The boy took the keys from the older man, 
 with bewilderment and a sinking heart. He 
 was not a seasoned veteran in either the 
 Federal or the Christian army, having been 
 enlisted in both but a short time. Yet he 
 was accustomed to obeying orders ; he had 
 been trained in that all his life, and army dis- 
 cipline was fixing obedience deeper than ever 
 in his nature. 
 
 The chaplain who turned over the keys 
 and the heavy obligation was H. Clay Trum- 
 bull, of Stonington and Hartford. The pri- 
 vate who received the new commission was 
 Anthony Comstock, of New Canaan. The 
 incident strengthened an acquaintance which 
 grew into intimacy and friendship as the 
 years passed ; the two men loved and ad- 
 mired each other throughout the lifetime of 
 the elder. 
 
 While Comstock's regiment remained at 
 St. Augustine, he carried the responsibility of 
 the meetings that his chaplain friend had 
 begun. Whenever a minister could be se- 
 cured to preach, that was done ; when no 
 minister was available, Comstock would get 
 a religious paper and read a sermon aloud. 
 The young layman was sexton and supply at 
 
THE MAKING OP A SOLDIEE 33 
 
 the same time ; he would call the meetings 
 by going up to the belfry and ringing the 
 bell for five minutes ; then he would wait five 
 minutes, then toll for another five. And in 
 that five-minute interval he would pray hard 
 for help for the task that he so dreaded. His 
 prayers seemed to count; a number of the 
 men of the regiment were converted there. 
 
 The Comstock boys could not stay out of 
 army life while there was a fight for principle 
 waging, though there were the usual — and un- 
 usual — inducements for them to keep out of 
 active service. The old homestead at New 
 Canaan was in the hands of the sons when 
 the war broke out, for the loved mother had 
 died half a dozen years earlier, and the father 
 had gone to Europe on a business venture that 
 promised much, but that did not succeed. 
 The farm was mortgaged, and the mortgage 
 was held by certain local sympathizers with 
 the South who threatened to foreclose the 
 mortgage if the boys entered the Northern 
 army. This did not stop the boys' enlisting. 
 The threat was carried out; the mortgage 
 was foreclosed, and the farm was lost. But 
 the Comstocks had learned to believe that 
 some things are more valuable than others, 
 
34 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 and they preferred to lose a farm and hold 
 on to honour and duty, rather than to keep 
 the farm at the expense of those less market- 
 able commodities. 
 
 Anthony's older brother Samuel was the 
 first to enlist, and was made a sergeant in 
 the Seventeenth Connecticut. Just before 
 the battie of Gettysburg he was in charge of 
 a commissary train, and had a comparatively 
 easy and safe time of it in this position, — 
 entirely too easy and safe to suit him. So he 
 applied to his colonel to be relieved in order 
 that he might share the hardships and 
 dangers of the other men. His request was 
 granted ; he joined the fighting ranks ; and 
 in the first day's engagement at the battle of 
 Gettysburg, on Barlow's Knoll, he received 
 his death wound. He lived through weeks 
 of suffering, wasting away from one hundred 
 and eighty pounds in weight to less than one 
 hundred, and died in a field hospital. His 
 army comrade, Justus M. Silliman, told the 
 grief-stricken younger brother that the brave 
 soldier's last words, in that rough field hos- 
 pital, were 
 
 " Jesus can make a dying bed 
 Feel soft as downy pillows are," 
 
THE MAKING OP A SOLDIEE 35 
 
 and then he fell asleep. His name is cut in 
 a monument at Gettysburg to-day. 
 
 It was to fill this brother Samuel's place 
 that Anthony, two years younger, enlisted in 
 December of 1863, before he was twenty, — a 
 " high private in the rear rank." He had 
 united with the Congregational church a 
 year or two earlier. In '63 the Seventeenth 
 was in the Department of the South, and the 
 new recruit joined it on Folly Island, South 
 Carolina. They were just leaving there, to 
 start for Keowee Island, from which they 
 drove off the enemy. This first introduction 
 to army life was as severe as anything the 
 Connecticut boy had during his entire serv- 
 ice. The men had to lie in a swamp all 
 night, spreading rubber blankets under them, 
 covering themselves with what other blankets 
 they could, and huddling close enough to- 
 gether to keep warm. When day broke, they 
 were deployed in an open field, and made 
 tempting targets for a battery less than a 
 quarter of a mile away, which opened fire 
 upon them. Mr. Comstock recalls still the 
 sickening, sinking sensation of being under 
 fire for the first time, the wounded increasing 
 on every side as the minutes dragged on. 
 
36 AITTHONT COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 In those perilous days, and in the countless 
 times of danger through which he has 
 passed since '65, and in which he still lives, 
 Anthony Comstock has never had the story- 
 book lack of fear which, in real life, marks 
 only the stolidly useless or the brutally in- 
 different. He has always had that keen 
 sensitiveness to danger, and the conquered 
 consciousness of fear, which go with true 
 courage wherever it is found. He was afraid 
 to go out and meet the mad dogs in Winni- 
 pauk ; but he went. He feared and suffered 
 under fire during army life ; but he stuck to 
 his post. To this day he claims no courage 
 save that which comes to the man who seeks 
 to do his duty. " As God equipped His serv- 
 ants of old, so I believe He equips His 
 servants to-day," he says with faith-filled 
 confidence. He fairly lives on some of the 
 Scripture promises. He finds lasting com- 
 fort in two passages : 
 
 "Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be 
 not dismayed ; for I am thy God ; I will 
 strengthen thee ; yea, I will help thee ; yea, 
 I will uphold thee with the right hand of my 
 righteousness." 
 
 " No weapon that is formed against thee 
 
THE MAKING OF A SOLDIER 37 
 
 shall prosper ; and every tongue that shall 
 rise against thee in judgment thou shalt con- 
 demn." 
 
 At Folly Island the regiment had no chap- 
 lain, and no religious services. The country 
 boy from Connecticut grew so homesick that 
 he felt he must have the comfort of religious 
 meetings of some sort ; therefore he helped to 
 get them going. It was very hard for him 
 to take a leading part, — harder than being 
 under fire ; but he did both duties in the 
 same Strength, and he found that there was 
 a little group of twenty or thirty men who 
 gladly joined with him in keeping up prayer- 
 meetings wherever the regiment went. These 
 were a great comfort to the few who felt their 
 need of them. 
 
 At Volusia, Florida, the regiment threw up 
 earthworks that were known as Redoubt 
 Kellogg. There was a thick clump of wild 
 plum-trees there, and in the centre of these 
 the men cut out enough trees to make a little 
 clearing, and there they held their meetings. 
 This wooded chapel was the scene of one of 
 the most remarkable conversions of the regi- 
 ment. 
 
 While the regiment was at St. Augustine, 
 
38 ANTHONY OOMSTOOK, FIGHTEE 
 
 Christopher Rhinelander Robert (later founder 
 of the famous missionary institution, Robert 
 College, at Constantinople), with the Rev. 
 Charles V. Reynolds, came there as repre- 
 sentatives of the Christian Commission, and 
 it was in this connection that Comstock and 
 Mr. Robert first met. The famous philan- 
 thropist became the Connecticut boy's warm 
 friend, and was in close touch with him in 
 later years. Anthony acted for the Christian 
 Commission at St. Augustine, rendering 
 services to the sick and destitute, receiving 
 keepsakes and forwarding them to friends at 
 home, and distributing religious reading mat- 
 ter. When, in this work, he would come 
 across men who were drinking and gambling, 
 they would sometimes blackguard him 
 roundly. One man who was under arrest, 
 having been court-martialed for drunkenness, 
 was particularly abusive of Comstock, who 
 retaliated simply by leaving his best papers 
 always with this man. Years afterward, in 
 Brooklyn, in a meeting of the Sons of Tem- 
 perance, a man came up to Mr. Comstock 
 and said, " Do you know me ? " When Mr. 
 Comstock failed to recognize him, he ex- 
 plained that he was that abusive camp-mate, 
 
THE MAKING OF A SOLDIBB 39 
 
 now converted, a " Son of Temperance," and 
 active in Christian work. The seeds sown 
 by the country boy who would not get mad 
 were beginning to bear fruit. 
 
 There was strong inducement to smoke 
 and drink in war-time life, when the strain 
 and exposure tempted to artificial stimulant, 
 and the camp-fire comradeship made smok- 
 ing an almost universal accompaniment of 
 leisure hours. But Anthony held out against 
 both these indulgences with characteristic 
 fortitude. Not merely was tobacco a part of 
 the good-fellowship of the camp, but there 
 were times when the smoke would have been 
 a most grateful protection, — when, in the 
 Southern swamps, the onslaughts of gnats 
 and mosquitoes became almost unbearable. 
 The others smoked ; Comstock built smudges. 
 If "smoking" of some sort was a necessity, 
 he preferred to have the smoke chiefly out- 
 side of his system. 
 
 Whiskey was supplied to all the men, as 
 part of their regular rations ; and the raw 
 recruit came in for rounds of vigorous abuse 
 when it was seen that he persisted in throw- 
 ing away his whiskey-ration instead of giving 
 to the others what he would not use himseli 
 
40 ASTROWI COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 But when, a little later, the whiskey-drinking 
 veterans fell out of line on the terrible forced 
 marches, and the teetotaler country boy, 
 green and unused to service, not only stood 
 the strain, but carried the rifles of the ex- 
 hausted veterans in addition to his own, the 
 note of abuse turned into another tune. 
 Then, as always, this man could endure more 
 without whiskey than the others could with. 
 He has followed his rule rigidly through life ; 
 not only for himself, but in declining to make 
 ♦ it possible for others to drink. As a sales- 
 man, after the war, he never " treated " a 
 customer to a drink, — and in those days such 
 treating was considered almost imperative. 
 During thirty-seven years of close association 
 with detectives and policemen he has never 
 offered to buy a drink for one of them, though 
 the doing so might oftentimes have promised 
 to smooth the way for his work. He is ready 
 to provide policemen, arid others who may be 
 helping him, with first-class dinners, and to 
 take care of any other legitimate needs for 
 them ; but if they want liquor, they must look 
 elsewhere for it. 
 
 In the summer of 1865 Anthony Comstock 
 was mustered out, and given his honourable 
 
THE MAKING OF A SOLDIEE 41 
 
 discharge from army service — of one kind. 
 His life was endangered during war-time, of 
 course, but not more so than during his 
 longer warfare of later years ; and his faith 
 was to meet tests afterward that had no 
 parallel at all during his service as an en- 
 listed man. But his army experience helped 
 in the making of a good soldier, and deepened 
 his faith. More than ten years later that faith 
 was to be tested by an experience that the 
 boy of twenty could not have borne up 
 under, when working for vice-suppressing 
 legislation at the nation's capital, — a story 
 that will be told here later. It was with that 
 experience in mind that Mr. Comstock said 
 to the writer, one day during the summer of 
 1908, as illustrating his view of the way in 
 which God cares for those who trust Him : 
 
 " You are in the surging billows, and all 
 you've got to hold on to is a little thread, 
 anchoring you to the pier ; and it's very frail, 
 and you're afraid it will break. And then it 
 does break, — it is Self, — and you're about to 
 go down. Just then you hear, ' Fear thou 
 not, for I am with thee ; be not dismayed, for 
 I am thy God ' ; and you see a strong cable 
 thrown out, and you lay hold on it, and feel 
 
42 AlfTHONY COMSTOOK, FIGHTBE 
 
 safe again. And when your hands grow 
 numb, and you fear that you'll have to let go, 
 you find that some one has put it under your 
 arms and around your body, and you cannot 
 sink." 
 
 That is Mr. Comstock's idea of God's 
 keeping as he has tested it 
 
IV 
 FIRST GLIMPSES OF THE LIFE-WORK 
 
 FROM his early young manhood, Com- 
 stock showed that he combined an 
 ambition for big things that lay way 
 ahead with an instant readiness to do the 
 little things that were close at hand. The life 
 that most attracted the country boy was that 
 of the successful New York City dry-goods 
 merchant ; his dream was to become the pro- 
 prietor and director of a big establishment of 
 his own. But he took the first opening he 
 had, after the close of the Civil War, by 
 accepting employment in a New Haven 
 grocery store. 
 
 Here, as earlier, he was under the influ- 
 ence of a missionary family. He boarded 
 with a Mrs. Robert W. Hume, a returned 
 missionary's wife who was educating her 
 two sons to become missionaries. These 
 boys worked their way through Yale, helping 
 out expenses by getting up early in the 
 morning and delivering papers ; and after 
 graduating they both went to India. It was 
 43 
 
44 AlifTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 worth Anthony's while to live in the atmos- 
 phere of such a family. One of the sons, 
 Robert A. Hume, became a missionary of the 
 American Board in Ahmednagar, India. 
 
 While he was clerking and keeping books 
 in the grocery store, working from early 
 morning till late at night, Mr. Christopher 
 R. Robert, who had first met Comstock in 
 war-time while the boy was conducting serv- 
 ices in St. Augustine, and had found the 
 young private useful in helping the work of 
 the Christian Commission, came across him 
 again and packed him off to Lookout Moun- 
 tain, Chattanooga, Tennessee. Here he 
 spent several months as outdoor superin- 
 tendent for the Lookout Mountain Educa- 
 tional Institution, transforming hospital build- 
 ings erected by the government into dining 
 hall and dormitories for the school. This 
 institution was established by Mr. Robert, 
 Peter Cooper, and others. 
 
 After working himself sick at Chatta- 
 nooga, Comstock came north again, and 
 went to his brother's home in New Canaan. 
 He was in Norwalk, one day, when he met a 
 banker whom he had previously known, Mr. 
 Le Grand Lockwood. The banker stopped 
 
FIEST GLIMPSES OP THE LIPB-WOEK 45 
 
 him, and said : " Comstock, why don't you 
 go to New York and make your mark?" 
 
 " I haven't any money," was the answer. 
 
 The banker drew a five-dollar bill from his 
 pocket and handed it to the young man. 
 Comstock accepted the money in the spirit 
 in which it was offered, bought a ticket to 
 New York, and arrived at the City Hall with 
 about three dollars and forty-five cents, alone 
 in the world. But he believed that he was 
 now headed on the road for his goal, a self- 
 made merchant. 
 
 Without home or friends, the Connecticut 
 boy took a room in a cheap lodging house in 
 Pearl Street, near the City Hall. Then he 
 walked the streets of New York, — putting 
 into practice the teachings of his mother 
 by praying for something to do and try- 
 ing to answer his own prayer. 
 
 At the end of the first week he stepped 
 into an office at 37 Warren Street, and had 
 an interview with a member of the firm of Am- 
 midon, Lane and Company. " Young man, we 
 have nothing you could do," said Mr. Lane. 
 "There is a vacancy, but not such as you 
 would probably take. There's a third porter 
 needed." 
 
46 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 It was not just what Comstock had 
 wanted, but he had been asking God for 
 something to do, and here was something to 
 do, — and he felt bound to take it. On Mon- 
 day morning he went to work, making up 
 his mind that, if the place wouldn't honour 
 him, he would honour the place. The pay 
 was good, — twelve dollars a week, — but the 
 work was very hard, chiefly handling large 
 cases of dry-goods, the concern being a 
 commission house that sold only by the case. 
 
 The new porter had been taught at home 
 to have a place for everything and have 
 everything in its place. So he set to work 
 to straighten up and clean out the base- 
 ment, putting everything in order where 
 he was assigned to work. One day the 
 " boss " happened to go down into the base- 
 ment, and asked the first porter, in surprise, 
 who had " been doing this." " That green- 
 horn," was the answer. Not long after, the 
 greenhorn was sent for from the ofi&ce and 
 made a shipping clerk. The wages were the 
 same, but the work was pleasanter, and the 
 promotion was a welcome one. 
 
 Because he saw, however, that there was 
 little chance for real advancement and devel- 
 
FIEST GLIMPSES OF THE LIFE-WORK 47 
 
 opment in that business, in the early part of 
 1869, Comstock resigned his twelve-dollar 
 position to accept a five-dollar place with a 
 wholesale dry-goods notion house, J. B. Spell- 
 man and Sons, a few doors below, at 30 
 Warren Street. Here he had an opportunity 
 to sell goods, learn a business, and grow. 
 He began as a stock clerk ; but at once he 
 began to drum up trade at night and make 
 sales for the house, sometimes succeeding in 
 getting customers that other salesmen had 
 failed to land. 
 
 But the long hours, night work, and poor 
 food, — when one pays two dollars a week for 
 a room, a five-dollar-a-week salary does not 
 leave an abundant board-margin — began to 
 tell, and the clerk came down sick. The 
 pay had been increased to seven dollars and 
 a half, but the sickness kept Comstock out for 
 two or three weeks. On his return, his 
 employer sent for him and told him that his 
 services would no longer be required in the 
 notions stock. Things looked pretty black 
 to the young fellow. Then the employer 
 added that they wanted a city salesman, and 
 suggested that Comstock take the position, 
 at $13.25 a week. Things brightened up. 
 
48 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEB 
 
 Now that he could give his whole atten- 
 tion to selling, he threw himself heartily into 
 it, and reached difficult customers. It was 
 not a great while before his pay went to 
 nineteen dollars, then to twenty-seven dollars 
 a week. By 187 1 he had saved up quite a 
 little money, and had bought a house in 
 Brooklyn by paying five hundred dollars 
 down. His marriage to Margaret Hamilton, 
 daughter of John Hamilton, a New York 
 merchant and Presbyterian elder, took place 
 on January 25, 1871. 
 
 About this time Mr. Comstock accepted a 
 position in the notions department of the 
 large wholesale dry-goods and general mer- 
 chandise house of Cochran, McLean and 
 Company, just organized and opening at the 
 corner of Broadway and Grand Street. He 
 went to them as a salesman at fifteen hundred 
 dollars a year, and a commission on whatever 
 he might sell above a hundred thousand 
 dollars a year. The first year he sold nearly 
 up to that high mark set. 
 
 Soon he was transferred to a travelling 
 salesmanship, and was sent out to open up 
 new accounts for the house in Pennsylvania 
 and elsewhere. To a certain customer he 
 
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FIRST GLIMPSES OF THE LIFE-WORK 49 
 
 sold a bill of fifteen hundred dollars, and 
 upon returning to the store found that the 
 goods had not been shipped. The credit man 
 said to him brusquely, " We won't ship those 
 
 goods to ; we'll sell him nothing except 
 
 for cash.'' 
 
 " He has a very fine store," ventured the 
 young salesman. The other man shook his 
 head gloomily. "We'll ship him nothing," 
 he said decidedly. 
 
 A day or two later, Comstock's customer 
 himself happened to be in New York, and 
 dropped in on Cochran, McLean and Com- 
 pany. He was a handsome big chap, six 
 feet two or three inches tall. Comstock 
 greeted him cordially, said nothing about 
 any uncertainty as to the shipping, and then 
 slipped into the credit man's office. "Mr. 
 is here," he said ; " I'd like to intro- 
 duce him to you." 
 
 " Don't want to meet him ; there's no use 
 in my doing so," was the prompt answer. 
 
 " Won't you, as a personal favour to me, 
 simply let me introduce him to you ? " pressed 
 the salesman. 
 
 " Bring him in, then, — but there's not the 
 slightest use in it." 
 
50 ANTHONY COMSTOOK, FIGHTEE 
 
 Mr. Comstock introduced the two men, 
 and left them alone. In a few minutes he 
 heard his name called. The credit man was 
 bowing his visitor out of his private office ; 
 turning to the salesman he said impressively, 
 
 " Mr. Comstock, just take Mr. 's order 
 
 for anything in our place that he wants." 
 The undiscouraged Anthony brought his 
 total sales to this man up to a little more 
 than five thousand dollars before he left that 
 day. As the heaps of big packing cases 
 were piling up on the pavement, later, one of 
 the salesmen asked another, " Whose order's 
 that?" 
 
 "Oh, that's that young greenhorn Com- 
 stock' s," was the reply. 
 
 Mr. Comstock was very happy in his new 
 work. He had a lovely Christian wife, a 
 comfortable home, an assured position of 
 large future ; and he seemed to be in the way 
 of realizing his ambition by pushing straight 
 ahead until he should own a successful busi- 
 ness for himself. But he had been coming into 
 contact with something that was destined to 
 have a part in his life entirely beyond his 
 planning or dreaming. 
 
 He was twenty-one when he was mustered 
 
FIEST GLIMPSES OF THE LIPE-WOEK 61 
 
 out of army service, in the summer of '65 ; 
 he was twenty-seven when he was married, 
 and in the midst of his successful career with 
 Cochran, McLean and Company. During 
 these six years of varied business experiences 
 he had come to know young business men, 
 over and over again, whose lives were 
 plainly being ruined by their interest in the 
 obscene pictures and literature and other 
 devilish things that they had easy access to. 
 One of his friends had been led astray and 
 corrupted and diseased. In a spirit of bitter 
 resentment young Comstock determined to 
 make the responsible person pay for the ruin 
 he had worked. He found that a man 
 named Charles Conroy, occupying a base- 
 ment in Warren Street, — in the next block to 
 where Comstock was then employed, — had 
 sold the stuff to his friend. Comstock bought 
 a book from Conroy, found where the fellow 
 kept his stock secreted, then showed the 
 police captain of the precinct what he had 
 bought. The police captain went personally 
 with Comstock and arrested the criminal, 
 seizing his stock of books and pictures. 
 That was in 1868, and was the first arrest 
 that Anthony Comstock ever made for the 
 
52 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEE 
 
 selling of obscene books. He was twenty- 
 four years old then, and little dreamed of the 
 life-and-death struggle that he and Conroy 
 were to have together years later. 
 
 This arrest was made while Comstock was 
 a clerk with Spellman and Sons. When he 
 had entered the employ of Cochran, McLean 
 and Company, he again found his young 
 men associates being demoralized by vicious 
 books and pictures of the sort that Conroy 
 had circulated. This time he learned that a 
 man named William Simpson, who kept a 
 paper and stationery store in Center Street, 
 near the Tombs Court and city prison, had a 
 circulating library of the worst books ever 
 published in this country. Again in the 
 spirit of an avenger of wrongs done to 
 young men, the clean-lived young Connecti- 
 cut Christian started on the trail of one of 
 those worse than murderers. He proceeded 
 to secure evidence. 
 
 Being green at the work, and not unnatu- 
 rally assuming that the public guardians of 
 law and morality would be as interested as he 
 in putting a stop to this traffic, he made the 
 mistake of speaking to a patrolman before en- 
 tering the place, telling him what he was about 
 
FIEST GLIMPSES OF THE LIFE-WOEK 53 
 
 to do. He asked the officer to wait outside 
 until he should call him in to arrest the man. 
 
 Comstock stepped into the store, and was 
 handed a printed price-list from which to 
 select a book. While he was looking it over, 
 his policeman entered, called a clerk to the 
 back of the store, " tipped him off," and went 
 out. Of course, Simpson's people would 
 make no sale to their would-be customer after 
 that, — but the customer carried the price-list 
 away with him. 
 
 Outraged by the treachery of the patrol- 
 man, Comstock went to police headquarters, 
 preferred charges, and had the man dismissed 
 from the force. He was beginning to show 
 signs of being the kind of person who has to 
 be reckoned with. 
 
 The police-dismissal incident precipitated 
 a fierce newspaper attack on the unknown 
 young countryman named Anthony Com- 
 stock. If he had known then what a long 
 line of vilifying newspaper abuse and perse- 
 cution this was but the beginning of, it might 
 have been more than human nature could 
 have faced. God mercifully shields His chil- 
 dren from any such foreknowledge of what 
 awaits thepi in His service. 
 
54 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 The New York newspapers ridiculed An- 
 thony as an officious meddler in affairs that did 
 not concern him, and one paper said that 
 " if this young Comstock is the Christian he 
 professes to be, he can find plenty of these 
 places in Ann and Nassau Streets." This 
 turned out to be valuable information, of ex- 
 actly the sort needed by one who made a 
 practice of living up to his professions. Act- 
 ing on the advice that the newspaper never 
 expected him to take, Comstock went to the 
 editor of the New York Tribune and asked 
 that a reporter be assigned to make a trip of 
 investigation with him. A reporter named 
 Gifford was sent ; together they went through 
 Ann and Nassau Streets, got plenty of evi- 
 dence, made their complaints, called in the 
 police, and made seven arrests, on March 3, 
 1872. That was Anthony Comstock's first 
 busy day. He has had a good many since. 
 But it marks the real beginning of his work. 
 The other experiences he had had were but 
 skirmishes. 
 
 The Tribune now came out strongly for 
 Comstock, publishing a story of the day's 
 work. The other papers merely " roasted " 
 him, as usual. At that time the traffic in vile 
 
FIEST GLIMPSES OF THE LIFE-WOEK 55 
 
 merchandise was brazenly open. There were 
 no federal laws against it ; there were only 
 feeble state statutes concerning books and 
 ^pictures, with nothing against other articles. 
 The business was conducted so freely, evi- 
 dently under the protection of the police, that 
 men actually stood on the sidewalks and 
 solicited passers-by to go into basement shops 
 and purchase books. News-stands displayed 
 such books openly. Peddlers carried the 
 worst kinds of pictures in their pockets, and 
 accosted pedestrians in the hope of sales. 
 About that time Mr. Comstock raided a news- 
 stand against a railing on the sidewalk in 
 front of the church where the Fulton Street 
 prayer-meetings were being held, taking the 
 most unspeakable books and pictures from it. 
 During these beginnings of the fight young 
 Anthony Comstock had acted wholly by 
 himself. He had had no human friend in 
 the fight. Whatever money had been needed 
 to press the fight had come out of his own 
 pocket. The extent of the traffic was appall- 
 ing. If any serious effort to stamp it out was 
 really to be made, more persons than a 
 young salesman, who could give only a little 
 time out of business hours, were needed. 
 
56 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, PIGHTBB 
 
 What was to be done? It was a cruciax 
 time ; the man who, through no planning of 
 his own, had become the sole representative 
 of righteousness and decency in this struggle, 
 turned to God and asked what God would 
 now have him do. 
 
V 
 WANTED : MONEY AND FRIENDS 
 
 BEFORE that eventful third day of 
 March, 1872, when Comstock, accom- 
 panied by a New York Tribune re- 
 porter, really began in earnest by forcing the 
 police to make seven arrests of men who 
 were selling obscene books and pictures, he 
 had had an experience that tested his mettle. 
 It was not unlike that of the closing out of 
 the gin-mill and gambling dive during his 
 boyhood days in Winnipauk, Connecticut. 
 After his marriage, in 1871, he lived in 
 Brooklyn and attended the Congregational 
 church of which William Ives Buddington, 
 D. D., was pastor. The church was about 
 six blocks from the Comstocks' home, and in 
 going back and forth they had to pass a no- 
 torious saloon, which ran openly all day Sun- 
 day. A special attraction of this saloon was 
 the holding of cock fights and dog fights in 
 the cellar. It was less than a block from Mr. 
 Comstock's house. Chapman, the saloon- 
 keeper, was the bully of the ward ; everybody 
 67 
 
58 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEB 
 
 was afraid of him, and the police never inter- 
 fered. 
 
 In the latter part of 187 1 Mr. Comstock 
 gave Chapman a surprise by having him ar- 
 rested for violating the Sunday law. From 
 that time on Comstock was a marked man. 
 One of the friends who came to his side was 
 a near neighbour, Mr. H. B. Spelman, the 
 father-in-law of John D. Rockefeller. Learn- 
 ing that Mr. Comstock was being threatened, 
 Mr. Spelman went with him into court, and 
 offered him his personal support in any way 
 that should be needed. Another friend, 
 Prof. Homer B. Sprague, whose wife's family 
 was connected with the Winchester Repeat- 
 ing Arms Company, presented Mr. Comstock 
 with a handsome sixteen-shot Winchester re- 
 peating rifle, — upon which Mr. Comstock 
 sent word to the Chapman gang that he was 
 prepared to take care of them at the rate of 
 sixteen a minute. 
 
 Chapman sent him word that he and his 
 gang would " raid his shanty and drive him 
 out of that neighbourhood." And Chapman 
 told the Comstocks' servant girl that he was 
 going to " do up " Mr. Comstock the first 
 time he met him. One day the dive-keeper 
 
WANTED : MONEY AND FEIENDS 59 
 
 and bully saw his man coming towards him 
 on the street. He stopped him and asked, 
 " Is your name Comstock?" 
 
 " That is my name," was the quiet reply. 
 
 " I'm going to break your neck for 
 
 you," was Chapman's immediate threat. 
 
 " I have consulted with the Chief of Police 
 and the District Attorney," said Mr. Com- 
 stock, " and they have advised me to defend 
 myself against you." 
 
 " To with the Chief of Police and the 
 
 District Attorney," snarled Chapman. 
 
 " And this is what I propose to do it with," 
 said Mr. Comstock, ignoring the interruption 
 and drawing a revolver ; "and if you make 
 any attempt to interfere with me I'll put day- 
 light through you." The bully made for his 
 saloon in lively fashion, and the incident was 
 closed. Later on Mr. Comstock was way- 
 laid by six toughs, one Sunday night on his 
 way home from church, but he disposed of 
 them with equal success. He did not let up 
 on Chapman, of course, until he had lost him 
 his license and had driven him out of busi- 
 ness. The incident is worth noting because it 
 illustrates both the courage and the practical 
 sagacity of this man whose Ufe was to be de- 
 
60 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 voted to a calling that demanded wisdom 
 and fearlessness in a high degree. 
 
 It was in the second year of Mr. Com- 
 stock's married life that the seven arrests in 
 New York were made. He had had a 
 prosperous business experience in the house 
 of Cochran, McLean and Company ; there was 
 every reason to expect a brilliant future 
 there, and little reason to doubt his ability to 
 meet the new obligations that he had as- 
 sumed as husband and householder. Yet a 
 heavy burden lay on his heart. In his close 
 contact with the young business men of the 
 city, he saw them falling about him almost 
 like autumn leaves, withered at the blighting 
 touch of the obscenities that were the staple 
 of so much commercialized traffic. He felt 
 that he must do more to stop it than he had 
 yet done, — he had only touched the surface 
 of the evil so far. But how this could be, 
 with his business obligations, was what 
 weighed upon him. 
 
 Soon after, he got possession of a clue that 
 there were four men who were responsible 
 for the printing and publishing of 169 differ- 
 ent vile books, — William Haynes, George 
 Ackerman, Jeremiah H. Farrell, and a Ger- 
 
WANTED : MONEY AND FEIENDS 61 
 
 man whose name he never learned, but who 
 was credited with publishing two of the 
 books. 
 
 Comstock realized what a wholesale stroke 
 it would be to get possession of the entire 
 stock in trade of these strategic publishers, 
 and he was fired with zeal to do so. But 
 how could it be brought to pass ? He was 
 informed that the men were well known to 
 the police and under their protection, the 
 police seldom if ever arresting any dealer in 
 that business. The publishers sent their 
 trade-circulars broadcast, giving titles and 
 prices ; the business was enormously profit- 
 able, for the books rarely sold for less than 
 two dollars each, and some brought five dol- 
 lars and ten dollars. They were even adver- 
 tised openly, and by name, in the news- 
 papers. One dealer had 113 catalogues of 
 the best schools in the country, — a choice 
 business asset. A good man named Mc- 
 Dowell had tried, years earlier, to suppress 
 the evil by denouncing it in the public press, 
 describing the books, telling how they were 
 advertised and sold, and naming the persons 
 whom he denounced. The result was only a 
 welcome advertisement and exploitation of 
 
62 ANTHOlinr COMSTOCK, FIGHTBE 
 
 the whole traffic, with no apparent gain at all 
 in suppression. 
 
 Making no announcement of his pur- 
 poses, Mr. Comstock ascertained that on^ of 
 his quartet, Haynes, was an Irish surgeon, of 
 the Royal College of Surgeons, and that he 
 was living at 50 Balchen Place, Brooklyn. 
 At that address Mr. Comstock found a Mrs. 
 Haynes, who, the instant she learned her 
 caller's name, began to denounce him bit- 
 terly. " You killed my husband," was her 
 greeting. 
 
 " I never saw your husband, madam," Mr. 
 Comstock answered. 
 
 " Well, Grandin [afterward found to be a 
 middleman between publishers and retailers] 
 sent my husband word that Comstock, a 
 
 fool who won't look at money, was after 
 
 him, and he'd better get out of the way if he 
 didn't want to be taken. That night he 
 died." It was commonly believed that 
 Haynes had committed suicide. 
 
 The caller now made a demand upon 
 the widow for the plates and book stock of 
 her husband. She wanted to know what he 
 would pay her for them, saying that Grandin 
 had tried to purchase them from her, and had 
 
WANTED : MONEY AND FEIENDS 63 
 
 offered $3,ock). She was a widow with de- 
 pendent young children, not fairly to be held 
 responsible for her husband's business, and 
 poor because of the heavy blackmail paid by 
 her husband to the police. Comstock had 
 found that the books were printed in Brook- 
 lyn and stored in a hotel room in Jersey City, 
 the orders from middleman Grandin being 
 filled from there. Four hundred and fifty 
 dollars was finally agreed upon as a price 
 that seemed fair. 
 
 Then came the real problem. The young 
 business man had no money and no friends, 
 yet he felt that he must get those plates into 
 his possession. There was nothing to do 
 but to pray for friends and for means. He 
 did so, asking that he might be shown what 
 he should do in order to stop the circulation 
 of the awful stuff that was now so nearly 
 within his reach. Then he did what he had 
 been taught to do at home, put himself in 
 the way of receiving an answer to his prayer. 
 
 The only way that seemed open to him 
 was an appeal to the Young Men's Christian 
 Association of New York City. A letter was 
 sent to R. R. McBurney, the secretary. Mr. 
 McBurney responded by asking Comstock to 
 
64 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, PIGHTEE 
 
 write out the whole matter more fully and 
 plainly in order that he might present the 
 case to his committee. Mr. Morris K. Jesup 
 "happened" into McBurney's office, saw 
 Comstock's letter lying on the desk, picked 
 it up and read it. At once the influential 
 and wealthy New York banker and man of 
 affairs called at Cochran, McLean and Com- 
 pany's and asked for a young man named 
 Anthony Comstock. The doorman called 
 out the salesman, who came forward and 
 received a greeting, he will tell you to-day, 
 that he will never forget in this world. Never 
 had he seen a face that seemed more noble 
 in its character, nor a hand-shake more hearty 
 in its encouragement, than when he faced 
 this princely Christian layman, who told him 
 of his interest in the letter. That was the 
 first meeting of these two men who worked 
 shoulder to shoulder in the fight with vice 
 from that day in March, 1872, until Mr. 
 Jesup's death on January 21, 1908. Only a 
 few days before his death the philanthropist 
 sent by his secretary the message, " Give Mr. 
 Comstock my love." 
 
 The result of this call was that Mr. Jesup 
 invited Comstock to come to his home, 
 
WANTED : MONEY AND FEIENDS 65 
 
 where the younger man told the story of the 
 four publishers and what a little money 
 would do. On the day after this call Mr. 
 Jesup sent Comstock, through Mr. McBurney, 
 a check for $650, telling him to use $500 of 
 it for securing the Haynes plates and prose- 
 cuting the cases, and the other $150 to reim- 
 burse himself, Comstock, for the money and 
 time he had already expended in this work 
 for the public good. "It is not fair," said 
 Mr. Jesup, "that you should be at any ex- 
 pense in this matter." 
 
 Soon after this, but before getting posses- 
 sion of any plates, Mr. Comstock had an 
 experience that deepened, his faith in God's 
 guidance and in prayer. He was on his way 
 to his place of business one morning, and 
 had not yet reached the Brooklyn ferry, 
 when something seemed to say to him, " Go 
 over to Balchen Place." Expediency urged, 
 " But you must go to the store ; your pres- 
 ence is needed there to-day for certain cus- 
 tomers who are likely to call." He walked 
 on, deeply perplexed, and as he walked he 
 prayed hard for guidance. A cross-town 
 Brooklyn car-line lay between him and the 
 ferry for New York. When he reached that 
 
66 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEE 
 
 car-line, guided unmistakably by prayer, 
 instead of going on to New York he took 
 the car to Balchen Place. He found Mrs. 
 Haynes at home, and had been in the house 
 but a few minutes, talking with her, when he 
 saw her glance out of the window with a 
 startled look, seemingly much disturbed. Fol- 
 lowing her look, the caller saw a covered ex- 
 press wagon backing up in front of the door ; 
 in another moment the driver had unstrapped 
 and raised the curtain at the rear of the 
 wagon, and it was seen that he had a load of 
 boxes filled with stereotyped plates. 
 
 Comstock stepped out on to the pavement, 
 saying to Mrs. Haynes, " I'll take charge of 
 those," jumped up to the driver's seat, and 
 drove the wagon at once to the Young Men's 
 Christian Association, where he unloaded its 
 contents, — the plates of the twenty-four books 
 that Haynes had published. The Associa- 
 tion gave him a small room in which to store 
 the plates until they could be destroyed. 
 Shortly after, the engravings among them 
 were taken to the laboratory of the Polytech- 
 nic Institute of Brooklyn, where on Saturday, 
 April 6, 1872, President Cochran, Professor 
 Plympton, and Mr. Comstock destroyed by 
 
WANTED : MONEY AND FEIENDS 67 
 
 acid one hundred and forty steel and thirty- 
 six copper plate engravings. These plates 
 had cost more than a hundred dollars each ; 
 it took nearly an entire day to destroy them. 
 Mr. Comstock's next move was to demand 
 from Mrs. Haynes her stock of books and 
 sheets. She said that she had sold them all 
 to Grandin, on Liberty Street, New York. 
 So they agreed to go together to Grandin's 
 office, where Mrs. Haynes was to order him 
 to turn over the stock. On the morning 
 when they were to do this, Mrs. Haynes hap- 
 pened to meet Grandin before she met Mr. 
 Comstock, and the latter followed them with- 
 out their knowing it. He heard her say to 
 Grandin, " Comstock has got the plates, and 
 there's the Devil to pay." The two were 
 greatly excited. Mr. Comstock joined the 
 pair, and added, " Yes, and I am here now 
 to demand the books that are stored in 
 Jersey City." When they reached the mid- 
 dleman's office, Grandin talked about throw- 
 ing Comstock out of the window, — but he 
 didn't do it. Instead, Comstock told him 
 that he knew just what business he was in, 
 and would give him forty-eight hours to turn 
 over the entire stock. 
 
68 ANTHONY OOMSTOCK, FIGHTEK 
 
 Before the forty-eight hours were up Mr. 
 Comstock received by mail a notification 
 that several packages were awaiting him at 
 the Adams Express Company offices on 
 Broadway, New York. There he found 
 eleven cases of books that had been shipped 
 to him from Philadelphia ; these he sent for 
 safe-keeping to the American Tract Society 
 Building, where he secured a room to store 
 them. They were valued at $7,000, and 
 were the books of which Comstock had 
 already seized the plates. Grandin had sent 
 them from Jersey City to Philadelphia in the 
 hope of saving them, but when he found that 
 he was dealing with a man who meant busi- 
 ness, he sent them directly to Mr. Comstock. 
 
 This was but the beginning of the adven- 
 tures with the four publishers. Grandin was 
 subsequently arrested and convicted by Mr. 
 Comstock. The hunt for Ackerman will be 
 told later. But the young fighter for the 
 Lord was no longer alone on earth in his 
 fight. Mr. Jesup was back of him from the 
 time of their first meeting. A few weeks 
 later, on May 9, 1872, Mr. Jesup invited his 
 young friend to come to his home to meet a 
 number of the leading men of New York, 
 
WANTED : MONEY AND FRIENDS 69 
 
 and tell them the story of what was being 
 done. At that meeting in Mr. Jesup's home 
 were such men as Morgan Dix, D.D. ; Wil- 
 liam E. Dodge, senior, and his son of the 
 same name ; Irenaeus Prime, D.D., and Wil- 
 liam M. Taylor, D.D. ; William M. Adams, 
 D.D., and J. Cotton Smith, D.D. ; Henry 
 R. Jones, a Brooklyn merchant; District 
 Attorney Garvin, an assistant district attor- 
 ney named Sullivan, and still other promi- 
 nent business men, lawyers, and clergymen. 
 To this group the unknown young salesman 
 told how he had, at a cost of $450, seized 
 from $30,000 to $40,000 worth of steel and 
 copper plate engravings, electroplates and 
 woodcuts, book-plates for the printing of 167 
 vile books, and thousands of the books and 
 sheets themselves. The presenting of such 
 facts to a group of Christian men of the 
 character and calibre that Morris K. Jesup 
 would invite into his home meant that God 
 had now started a work that could not soon 
 cease. Even now, neither Mr. Comstock 
 nor Mr. Jesup clearly saw what was to be 
 the outcome. But two men had been brought 
 together who, having put a hand to the 
 plow, were not of the kind to turn back. 
 
VI 
 
 BEGINNING AN ORGANIZED CAM- 
 PAIGN 
 
 T 
 
 "^HE tracking down of two of the 
 other publishers in the infamous 
 quartet whom Mr. Comstock had 
 determined to put out of business gives an 
 interesting glimpse of the acuteness, thor- 
 oughness and fearlessness that the young 
 New Englander showed from the start in this 
 difficult work, and without which he would 
 have been helpless as a child in the fight 
 against shrewd and desperate criminals. 
 
 After checking off in his printed list of 
 books the titles of those he had captured 
 from the Haynes estate and Grandin, Mr. 
 Comstock mentally charged the rest of the 
 books to George Ackerman ; and with two 
 exceptions he was correct in this. Then he 
 set out to find Ackerman. 
 
 No one could give him any information as to 
 his man's whereabouts. He did learn, how- 
 ever, that an ex-convict named McDowell 
 70 
 
AN OEGANIZED CAMPAIGN 71 
 
 who had formerly worked for Ackerman was 
 now supposed to be living with a woman 
 called " Irish Mary " somewhere in Williams- 
 burg, New York, — a suburb of Brooklyn 
 where Comstock himself had previously 
 boarded. It was said that McDowell could 
 be seen at certain times at Broadway and 
 Fourth Street, Brooklyn ; also that he was 
 in hiding from the New York police, who 
 wanted him for a robbery of bonds that he 
 was charged with having received and sold. 
 McDowell was said to be a very suspicious 
 man, never going directly home, and often 
 doubling on his tracks and turning to see if 
 he was being followed. Yet this was the 
 human clue by which Comstock hoped to 
 reach Ackerman. 
 
 One Saturday night Mr. Comstock located 
 McDowell at his Fourth and Broadway ren- 
 dezvous. He followed him down Fourth 
 Street to Grand, in Williamsburg, and noted 
 that he would stop every little while, turn, and 
 look sharply for any signs of being " shad- 
 owed." In order to guard against discovery, 
 Mr. Comstock kept on the opposite side of the 
 street, and played the part of an intoxicated 
 man ; thus he was able unchallenged to fol- 
 
72 AJifTHOET COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 low McDowell up Grand Street two or three 
 blocks, then down a cross street another block, 
 where the ex-convict entered a house. As it 
 was then late at night, the self-appointed de- 
 tective decided to defer his interview until the 
 following Monday morning. 
 
 Early on that day he went over to Wil- 
 liamsburg again, and found that the building 
 entered by McDowell had two doors, close 
 together. Providentially, he stepped up to 
 the right-hand door, and knocked. A woman 
 corresponding to the description of "Irish 
 Mary " answered the knock. 
 
 " Is Mac in ? " familiarly inquired the caller. 
 
 " He is," answered the woman, " but he's 
 not up." 
 
 Glancing through the door to the right of 
 where they stood, Mr. Comstock saw a man 
 dressing. Without further parley he pushed 
 by " Irish Mary " and went up to the man, 
 asking if his name was McDowell. 
 
 " Yes," was the answer, " and who are 
 you ? " 
 
 The visitor said he had come to see if Mc- 
 Dowell could tell him where he could find 
 George Ackerman. McDowell didn't know 
 him. 
 
AN OEGANIZED CAMPAIGN 73 
 
 " You do" firmly retorted the visitor. 
 
 " Wiio are you, anyway ? " said McDowell 
 again, surprised at the challenge. 
 
 " Anthony Comstock," was the reply ; " you 
 and Irish Mary used to bind obscene books 
 for George Ackerman, and you know all about 
 him. I also happen to know you're hiding 
 from the police just now for receiving stolen 
 goods." 
 
 " Oh, Mac, we're lost intirely ; tell the man 
 where he is," broke in Irish Mary despair- 
 ingly ; and Comstock knew that the day was 
 won. 
 
 McDowell still persisted that he did not 
 know where Ackerman was to be found, but 
 he said he could name a man who did : the 
 superintendent of a prominent news agency 
 in Nassau Street, who was also trustee of a 
 church in Morrisania McDowell said he 
 had often taken this man's notes for five hun- 
 dred dollars in payment for books and had 
 them discounted for Ackerman. 
 
 As the two men talked together McDowell 
 had been dressing, and Comstock now left 
 the house with his mind made up to one 
 thing : McDowell would get to Ackerman's 
 friend on the jump ; the smartest fellow would 
 
74 ANTHONY OOMSTOOK, PIGHTEB 
 
 be the one who got there first ; and Comstock 
 preferred to be that one. 
 
 He was off for Nassau Street, New York, 
 on the instant, and in a few minutes was be- 
 ing shown into the news company superin- 
 tendent's office. There he found a stout man 
 busily at work, who asked shortly what his 
 caller wanted. 
 
 " I want to know where George Ackerman 
 is." 
 
 " Don't know him," was the prompt reply. 
 
 " You do." 
 
 " I don't." 
 
 "You do." 
 
 Surprised, as McDowell had been, by his 
 visitor's confident insistence upon the facts, 
 the superintendent demanded his caller's 
 name. This was given. Then the caller 
 went on to tell the superintendent what he 
 knew about the discounting of his notes to 
 Ackerman for the latter' s vile books, and an- 
 nounced with convincing earnestness that he 
 proposed to have Ackerman's stock in trade 
 if he had to expose publicly the man he was 
 talking to in order to bring this to pass. 
 
 The perspiration began to come out on the 
 church trustee's brow. He then remembered 
 
AN OEGANIZBD CAMPAIGN 75 
 
 that he did know Ackerman. " But, young 
 man," he added impressively, " I'll give you 
 a bit of advice. This man Ackerman has 
 been blackmailed by the police until he claims 
 that he is not in his right mind. There was 
 a fire in his place ; the police seized his stock, 
 then sold it back to him at a round price ; 
 now Ackerman has threatened to shoot any- 
 body who interferes with him again." 
 
 " That's a game two can play at ; I'll take 
 my chances," quietly responded the twenty- 
 eight-year-old Yankee ; and he did not leave 
 until he had insisted on the superintendent's 
 securing for him an interview with the des- 
 perate and hounded publisher. 
 
 While this conversation was going on, 
 Ackerman's own son was in the same build- 
 ing, working in the employ of this news com- 
 pany superintendent. 
 
 The present offices of the Secretary of the 
 New York Society for the Suppression of 
 Vice are in a building on the corner of Nassau 
 and Beekman Streets, New York City. In 
 safe-keeping in those offices to-day are speci- 
 mens of some of the books that Ackerman 
 once published, held with other evidence of 
 the vice-suppressing work that has gone on 
 
76 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 uninterruptedly during the more than forty 
 years since that day. And it was in a hotel 
 on that selfsame corner, Nassau and Beek- 
 man Streets, that Anthony Comstock and 
 George Ackerman first met face to face, by 
 appointment of the news agency man. 
 
 Mr. Ackerman was dressed in the austere 
 garb of an Episcopal clergyman. He gravely 
 inquired what Mr. Comstock desired. 
 
 "All of your books and stock in trade, and 
 plates for making French transparency play- 
 ing cards," was the answer. 
 
 "What books do you want?" a§ked the 
 " clergyman." 
 
 Mr. Comstock took from his pocket the 
 catalogue list and indicated the titles of all 
 those that had not been seized from Haynes. 
 Ackerman pointed to one title and said, 
 " That isn't my book," — thus virtually ad- 
 mitting that the rest were. 
 
 " What will you pay me ? " was Acker- 
 man's next question. 
 
 " Not a cent," quietly answered his caller. 
 
 " You paid Mrs. Haynes for hers," grumbled 
 Ackerman. 
 
 " Do you think I'm going to pay you to get 
 out of this devilish business ? " asked Com- 
 
AN OEGANIZED CAMPAIGN 77 
 
 stock, indignantly. And he went on to tell 
 him some of the details of his life and busi- 
 ness, just to show the man that more was 
 known about him than he suspected. That 
 seemed to startle the criminal publisher. 
 " You will hear from me," he assured Mr. 
 Comstock, and the interview ended. The 
 same afternoon. May 4, 1872, a covered wagon 
 drove up in front of the American Tract 
 Society Building, and unloaded ^16,000 
 worth of steel and copper plate engravings 
 and electroplates for the printing of sixteen 
 different books and unspeakably vile playing 
 card pictures. There were 150 steel and 
 copper engravings, 100 woodcuts, 6,000 
 French cards, five cases of unbound sheets of 
 books, and half a ton of stereotyped plates. 
 Ackerman was not arrested, but died shortly 
 afterward. 
 
 Jeremiah Farrell, the third of the publishers, 
 was Mr. Comstock's next quarry. He had a 
 place in Ann Street, New York, His books 
 differed from the others in that they con- 
 tained no pictures. Comstock submitted one 
 of the vilest to a police justice. The justice's 
 response was that he would take no action in 
 the matter because there were no pictures 
 
78 ANTHONY COMSTOGK, FIGHTBE 
 
 displayed ; and Mr. Comstock was prac- 
 tically insulted and ordered out of the court 
 room. 
 
 With the same statement of facts, however, 
 the determined prosecutor went into the 
 General Sessions Court and laid his com- 
 plaint before Recorder Hackett. The Re- 
 corder at once issued both a search warrant 
 and a warrant for Farrell's arrest. Before 
 the latter was served the publisher fied the 
 state and went South. It was openly charged 
 that the officer entrusted with the warrant 
 had sent Farrell the message : " Jerry, get 
 out of the way if you don't want to be taken ; 
 I have a warrant for your arrest." Farrell's 
 escape was not for long ; within two weeks 
 his dead body was brought back from the 
 South and buried. Mr. Comstock was never 
 able to ascertain the cause of his death. 
 
 The r61e of clergyman or religious publisher 
 seems to be a favourite method of attempting 
 to screen themselves from discovery, by those 
 who engage in obscene traffic of any sort. 
 Years later, Mr. Comstock once noticed a 
 photographic studio in the Bowery with a 
 sign reading, " Photographers to the clergy." 
 Suspecting it at once, he investigated, and 
 
AIsT OEGANIZED CAMPAIGN 79 
 
 found a regular business in vile photograph- 
 ing, which he succeeded in breaking up. 
 But for their sign he might never have dis- 
 covered that gang of vice-dealers. 
 
 A man named Thomas Holman was known 
 to have a printing house on the corner of 
 White and Center Streets, in New York, 
 where the Criminal Court Building now ap- 
 propriately stands. When Mr. Comstock 
 visited him, Holman kept racks full of 
 Spurgeon's sermons and tracts for free dis- 
 tribution in his ofifice, while within a few feet 
 of these racks, on the other side of a board 
 partition separating the ofifice from his press- 
 room, he had just printed the sheets of 10,000 
 copies of obscene books. These sheets had 
 been sent to a bindery across Center Street, 
 and were there being bound up by young 
 girls when Mr. Comstock entered the premises 
 and seized the stock. They were Farrell's 
 books. From Farrell's Ann Street place Mr. 
 Comstock took several tons more of bound 
 books, making about eleven tons in all. 
 And from Holman's vaults he took almost 
 six tons of stereotyped plates. The plates 
 were broken up and sold to the Rogers 
 Locomotive Works as old metal. The books 
 
80 ANTHOIO: COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 were taken in sealed cases to the Platnel 
 Porter Company Paper Mills of Unionville, 
 Connecticut, where the cases were opened, 
 one at a time, and the contents thrown into 
 large vats of soda ash and ground into pulp 
 in Mr. Comstock's presence. He was ready 
 to " take his chances " with his own life, but 
 he took none with the lives of the children 
 whom he was trying to protect against 
 destruction by the literature that now ended 
 its course at his hands. The proceeds of 
 these sales of metal and paper, more than a 
 thousand dollars, were subsequently turned 
 over to the widow of Jeremiah Farrell. 
 
 This was the sort of achievement, wrought 
 single-handed in the face of heavy odds, that 
 Mr. Morris K. Jesup wanted his friends to 
 hear about from the lips of the young fellow 
 himself who had brought it to pass. It was 
 after Mr. Comstock had taken supper with 
 Mr. Jesup in the latter's home that the note- 
 worthy evening meeting was held, of busi- 
 ness men, clergymen, and lawyers, as de- 
 scribed in the preceding chapter. This con- 
 ference was followed by the appointment of 
 a special committee from the Young Men's 
 Christian Association to take charge of the 
 
AN OEGANIZED CAMPAIGN 81 
 
 movement against organized vice which 
 Comstock had already so vigorously begun, 
 and which he, of course, was to continue to 
 lead. On May 27, 1872, he was invited to 
 meet with this committee at the office of Mr. 
 Jesup, and there they presented him with a 
 purse of $500 as a token of appreciation of 
 what he had done. His journal entry of that 
 date reads : " Surely the hand of God is in 
 this. Let me glory only in Him. To His 
 holy name be all the praise and glory. I 
 knew His promise would come true : ' In due 
 time ye shall reap if ye faint not.' " 
 
 Young Comstock was still in the dry-goods 
 business, and conducting his anti-vice work 
 entirely as an "aside." But God had an- 
 swered his prayer as to what to do next. He 
 was now backed and supported in whatever 
 he might do by a group of strong men 
 representing one of the great Christian asso- 
 ciations of the age. An individual Christian 
 worker of large means was deeply interested 
 in both the man and his work, and stood 
 ready to counsel, support, and encourage. 
 The whole future was not revealed, nor did 
 it need to be. Enough light was at hand to 
 make it plain that God still had work in this 
 
82 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 field for the young business man to do. 
 Every step of the way had been preceded 
 by prayer. That being so, Anthony knew 
 that, no matter what the opposition and the 
 difficulties were, he might expect to surmount 
 them. Up to this writing, his expectations 
 have not been disappointed 
 
VII 
 
 LEARNING PATIENCE AT THE HANDS 
 OF CONGRESS 
 
 THE year 1872, following the forma- 
 tion of the committee from the 
 Young Men's Christian Association 
 to back Comstock in his fight against vice, 
 was an eventful one. When once the young 
 man had commenced a systematic campaign 
 against the offenders, the enormous reach of 
 the traffic began to be revealed. It soon 
 appeared that there was a tremendous busi- 
 ness being done through the mails. How 
 could this branch of the traffic be reached 
 and stopped? There was no law adequate 
 to meet the need. _The newspaper exposure 
 of the business following Comstock's first 
 arrests had led to a feeble statute which per- 
 tained to the sending of books and pictures 
 through the mails ; but this law did not in- 
 terfere with the transmission of improper 
 articles of other sorts. 
 
 So it became increasingly clear to Com- 
 83 
 
84 ANTHOinr COMSTOCK, FIGHTBE 
 
 stock that a federal statute covering the 
 whole evil in all its forms must be secured, 
 and at once, if effective work was to be done. 
 He brought the matter before his committee. 
 The majority disapproved of making any 
 attempt to secure federal legislation at that 
 time. It was drawing towards the close of 
 the session of Congress ; there had been 
 fierce assaults on Comstock in the news- 
 papers, owing to the prosecutions and con- 
 victions he was securing ; his own life was 
 being threatened, and he was being warned 
 by his friends as to the personal danger he 
 was incurring from the evil men against 
 whom he was opposing himself. In com- 
 ment on such warnings an entry in the 
 young man's journal at that time is char- 
 acteristic. It reads : 
 
 What folly! Can mortal man do aught 
 his Maker does not permit? Cannot God 
 change the purpose of man even though the 
 arm is raised with the deadly weapon clasped 
 ready to strike? Cannot He turn away 
 death from whomsoever He will ? All the 
 evil men in New York cannot harm a hair of 
 my head, were it not the will of God. If it 
 be His will, what right have I or any one to 
 say aught ? I am only a speck, a mite, be- 
 
LEAENING PATIENCE 85 
 
 fore God, yet not a hair of my head can be 
 harmed unless it be His will. Oh, to live, to 
 feel, to be — Thy will be done ! 
 
 In spite of the strong disapproval of his 
 committee, Comstock felt that he could not 
 let another whole year go by without the 
 reinforcement of substantial legislation. So 
 he turned to his unfailing friend, Mr. Morris 
 K. Jesup, and told him his hopes. " Go to 
 Washington and try it," said the banker, 
 " and if you get a bill through I'll guarantee 
 all your expenses." Now young Comstock 
 made the thing more a subject of prayer 
 than ever, and then went to work on plans 
 that showed a statesmanship remarkable in a 
 dry-goods clerk. 
 
 He made a new draft of a bill that he had 
 gotten up, providing such legislation as he 
 believed was needed, and then he sought 
 expert criticism of his work. He had the 
 Connecticut Yankee notion that " the best's 
 as good as any," so, after submitting the bill 
 to Mr. Benjamin Vaughan Abbott, a lawyer 
 and brother of Lyman Abbott, he went to 
 Justice William Strong of the Supreme Court 
 of the United States, to whom he had secured 
 an introduction, and asked him to put his 
 
86 ANTHOITY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 bill in proper legal form I Justice Strong 
 was glad to do so, and in addition gave 
 Comstock a letter to Senator William Win- 
 dom, later Secretary of the Treasury under 
 Garfield and Harrison. 
 
 He went to Washington on February 6, 
 1873. There he turned confidently to a 
 good friend and former newspaper editor 
 whom he had known intimately in Norwalk, 
 Connecticut, when Comstock was living in 
 Winnipauk, — and putting mad dogs out of 
 business. This man, Mr. A. H. Byington, 
 editor of the Norwalk Gazette, had large 
 experience in Washington, and knew most 
 of the members of both houses of Congress. 
 He took the young aspirant ^or Con- 
 gressional recognition at once to the Vice- 
 President's room in the Senate, and there 
 introduced him to the Vice-President, and 
 Senators Buckingham, Pratt, Ames, Ramsey, 
 Cole, and others, before whom he presented 
 facts that he believed they ought to know. 
 The bill itself had already been introduced in 
 the House by Representative Clinton L. 
 Merriam. Senator Buckingham — war gov- 
 ernor of Connecticut — had brought it before 
 the Senate. 
 
LEAENING PATIENCE 87 
 
 It was now found that another bill had 
 been introduced, to secure legislation for the 
 District of Columbia and the territories over 
 which Congress had exclusive legislation. 
 This had been done at the instigation of the 
 secretary of the Ibcal Washington Young 
 Men's Christian Association, the Rev George 
 Hall. Still another bill was under considera- 
 tion that increased the penalty but did not 
 broaden the scope of the law as the offense 
 demanded. And General Benjamin F. Butler 
 had introduced a bill to amend the inter-state 
 commerce law, prohibiting the sending of 
 obscene matter by common carriers from one 
 state to another. The next move was to 
 merge all these bills, including Comstock's, 
 into one. Mr. Abbott volunteered his serv- 
 ices for this. And Comstock received the 
 assurances of all the members involved that 
 his bill should go through. 
 
 Within twenty-four hours the combined 
 bill had been prepared, and was approved 
 by Representative Bingham, Chairman of 
 the Judiciary Committee of the House, and 
 by Senator Stewart of Nevada, a member of 
 the Senate's Judiciary Committee. The new 
 bill prohibited importations of foreign obscene 
 
88 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 matter into this country, as well as sending 
 them anywhere in the United States by mail, 
 or any advertisement of them, and protected 
 also the District of Columbia and similar 
 territory. These points were covered in 
 three sections of the bill. A fourth section 
 provided for the seizure, condemnation, and 
 destruction of these things ; a fifth provided 
 for the punishment of any government official 
 or employee who should assist in carrying 
 on this trafi&c or in disseminating any of the 
 prohibited articles. 
 
 When this new bill of five sections, intro- 
 duced by Representative Merriam, reached 
 committee, it was substituted for all pending 
 bills in that field. Senator Windom invited 
 Comstock to call upon him in the room of 
 the Committee on Appropriations. The 
 senator was particularly kind and encourag- 
 ing, and proposed to attach the bill to the 
 Postal Appropriations bill and thus positively 
 secure action upon it. Then General Butler 
 took the bill to go over it, but promised to 
 return it with immaterial changes very 
 speedily. When he returned the bill, how- 
 ever, he had made serious changes in it, 
 which necessitated its reprinting and return- 
 
LBAENING PATIENCE 89 
 
 ing to the committee for consideration. On 
 February i ith, Mr. Merriam was to have called 
 up the bill for its final passage in the House, 
 under a suspension of the rules which would 
 permit its passage on the same day. But 
 General Garfield, of Ohio, called the regular 
 order of business, and the bill went over. 
 
 Of course fierce opposition, in the mean- 
 time, had materialized against the passage 
 of the bill. Men who were making their 
 living from the trafi&c it was to cripple sent 
 letters to members of Congress, signed by 
 fictitious names, or anonymous, charging 
 Comstock with the gravest offenses. The 
 newspapers denounced the measure as un- 
 constitutional, and as interfering with freedom 
 of speech and of the press. 
 
 After the bill had failed of passage by 
 suspension of rules Comstock took it aga.in 
 to Senator Windom, who had a revised copy 
 introduced and entrusted to the Committee 
 on Post-Ofifices and Post Roads. The bill 
 was ordered printed. Windom arranged to 
 have the bill considered by the committee. 
 Comstock appeared before the committee, 
 and their action was unanimous in favour of 
 the bill. The same day it was placed on the 
 
90 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 Senate calendar. A personal call on Sen- 
 ators Ferry and Buckingham resulted in 
 their promise of hearty cooperation. 
 
 On February 14th it was hoped that the 
 morning session would see the bill consid- 
 ered. Unanimous consent was asked of the 
 Senate to take up the bill, but Senator Ed- 
 munds of Vermont objected. One of the 
 senators later said jocularly to Mr. Comstock 
 that " if the Lord's Prayer should come up 
 before the Senate, Edmunds would have some 
 objection to make." Governor Buckingham 
 moved to have the bill sent back to the com- 
 mittee, for the consideration of proposed 
 amendments. 
 
 The next day Comstock received a copy 
 of the bill as amended by Senator Edmunds 
 in committee. Senator Windom, who had 
 been away, was now back, and promised to 
 bring the bill up again in the Senate on Mon- 
 day, February 17th. The following extracts 
 from Mr. Comstock's journal tell the story of 
 the next few days : 
 
 February lyth. By an oversight the bill 
 was not brought up. 
 
 February i8th. Governor Buckingham 
 called up my bill by unanimous consent, and 
 
LEAENING PATIENCE 91 
 
 it was read by the Clerk. Judge Thurman 
 of Ohio and Senator Casserly of California, 
 not having seen the bill, made an informal 
 objection, and the bill was stayed for the time 
 being. 
 
 February iptk and 20th. Was in the Sen- 
 ate, anxiously awaiting the passage of my bill. 
 Governor Buckingham again sought to bring 
 it up, but an amendment was offered by 
 Senator Casserly, with the result of a further 
 delay until the said amendment could be 
 printed. All these delays were exceedingly 
 wearing and harassing. 
 
 Representative Potter, Senator Sprague, 
 and others, received anonymous letters de- 
 nouncing me as a disreputable character, per- 
 jurer, and criminal. These were turned over 
 to the gentleman who had the bill in charge. 
 
 On February 21st Mr. Comstockhad seven 
 cases, pending in the Federal Courts, before 
 the Grand Jury in New York City, and was 
 obliged, in the midst of his torturing uncer- 
 tainty, to leave Washington and go back to 
 New York. While in New York, his Young 
 Men's Christian Association Committee met 
 and formally approved of what he had done 
 in Washington. Returning to the capital, he 
 found that his bill had passed the Senate. 
 At this juncture it was discovered that a sav- 
 ing clause was needed in order to prevent the 
 
92 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEE 
 
 enactment of this bill from practically quash- 
 ing indictments and prosecutions already in- 
 stituted under then existing laws. Without 
 such a saving clause the new bill, calling for 
 a heavier penalty, practically repealed exist- 
 ing laws and would have turned loose all who 
 had been arrested under them. Representa- 
 tive Merriam, whose enthusiastic support in 
 the House, where the bill had not yet passed, 
 was so important, greatly deprecated the pro- 
 posed amendment, urging that any change 
 whatsoever would almost inevitably prevent 
 the passage of the bill in the few days that 
 were now left to work in. Congress ad- 
 journed on March 4th ; it was now February 
 24th. And if the bill was amended in any way, 
 it would have to go back to the Senate for 
 passage again. Senator Buckingham agreed 
 with Mr. Merriam, and urged Comstock un- 
 der no circumstances to permit any addition 
 to be made to the bill, as it would be im- 
 possible, he said, to have it brought up in the 
 Senate again. The public hostility to Com- 
 stock and repeated " stabbing in the back " 
 had created doubts in the minds of even the 
 friends of the bill. If the House passed the 
 bill as it stood, that would end the matter in 
 
LEAENING PATIENCE 93 
 
 Congress, the bill could go to the President 
 for his signature, and the fight would be 
 over. In spite of these facts and this urg- 
 ing, however, the amendment without which 
 the enactment would have been almost 
 a triumph for the enemy was incorporated, 
 and the bill now awaited its fate in the 
 House. 
 
 Seven precious days remained. During 
 three of these, February 25th, 26th, and 27th, 
 the Credit Mobilier Bills absorbed the time 
 and attention of both houses of Congress. 
 And one of the leading newspapers of New 
 York took the opportunity to publish a sav- 
 age attack upon Comstock, filled with state- 
 ments of a sort abundantly able to ruin the 
 reputation of any man who did not happen 
 to have the unstained record of the young 
 New Englander. 
 
 On Friday, February 28th, the bill lay on 
 Speaker Blaine's desk, while the House mem- 
 ber who was charged with the responsibility 
 of calling it up tried the watching young 
 fighter's patience sorely by quietly reading a 
 newspaper, in evident forgetfulness of his 
 duty. This was the harder to bear because 
 the Speaker had agreed to let the bill go 
 
94 ANTHONY OOMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 through. Comstock, not content with his 
 efforts in Washington, had written to Mr. 
 Jesup and Mr. William E. Dodge urging 
 them to use their influence with Speaker 
 Blaine. They had both responded. 
 
 Saturday evening came, the first of March. 
 Mr. Comstock walked from the Senate Cham- 
 ber to the House of Representatives in com- 
 pany with Mr. Blaine. The Speaker prom- 
 ised to call up the bill. Comstock watched 
 in an agony of hope and doubt. A number 
 of other bills were called and passed. The 
 Speaker held the bill in his hand ; but again 
 the Representative who was supposed to 
 have the matter in charge sat at his desk 
 silent and indifferent. 
 
 Then it was that an awful conflict waged 
 in the soul of the young soldier who had 
 been working his heart out to render this 
 service, as he believed, in the warfare of his 
 Lord. It seemed as if the Devil was deter- 
 mined to claim him now as his own, because 
 of the bitter rebellion that surged up within 
 him at the cruel delay or complete failure. 
 There came lashing through his mind the 
 savage, relentless newspaper attacks, and he 
 saw the sneering exultation of their writers 
 
LEAENING PATIENCE 95 
 
 as they proclaimed his defeat. He felt that 
 it was more than he could endure. 
 
 Midnight came, and that meant Sunday. 
 He heard a still small voice saying some- 
 thing that he had learned from his mother in 
 the Connecticut home years before : " Re- 
 member the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." 
 Expediency argued, " But it is necessary for 
 you to stay here and watch your bill." Duty 
 answered, " Can you expect God to answer 
 your prayers if you don't obey His com- 
 mands ? " He left the Capitol, walked down 
 to Pennsylvania Avenue, then up the avenue 
 to his room ; and as he walked, through the 
 cold March night the stress of his conflict 
 seemed to force the perspiration out of every 
 pore of his body. His brain was on fire. 
 Even if he could forget his personal dis- 
 comfiture, he was facing another full year 
 without a law adequate to check the blight- 
 ing evils that he now knew he must give 
 his life to blotting out. That thought was 
 too much. He was willing to surrender all 
 he had in doing this work for the Lord, but 
 to this crushing blow in the Lord's own 
 service he could not say " Thy will be done." 
 He reached his room, and he tried to pray. 
 
96 ANTH02SY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 He could still pray for his bill, but he would 
 not pray for a willing acceptance of God's 
 will if it were to cross his own. 
 
 He did not sleep much that night. Toss- 
 ing in restless discouragement till the night 
 was over, he arose, made a poor breakfast, 
 then sought out the Young Men's Christian 
 Association rooms. They were closed. To 
 sit through church was out of the question. 
 Back to his room he went, and tried to forget 
 himself by reading a sermon on " Christian 
 Life," in a paper that happened to be at 
 hand. 
 
 Then he broke down, and the surrender 
 came. He dropped to his knees, asked 
 God's forgiveness for his sins, and told the 
 Lord Jesus all his troubles. He prayed first 
 of all, and above all, that he might say, " Thy 
 will, not mine, be done." The entry in his 
 journal for that day reads : 
 
 I prayed that, if my bill might not pass, I 
 might go back to New York submissive to 
 God's will, feeling that it was for the best. I 
 asked for forgiveness and asked that my bill 
 might pass, if possible ; but over and above 
 all, that the will of God be done. 
 
 What peace I What joy ! What delight ! 
 Oh, how can I describe the burden which 
 
LEAENING PATIENCE 97 
 
 rolled off? The summer's day was never 
 more peaceful than my heart was when Jesus 
 said, " Peace, be still," and sent His peace. 
 I felt then it was for the best, and I was con- 
 tent to have it just as God willed. 
 
 He had won a greater victory now than 
 that of forcing a bill through the United 
 States Congress. 
 
 On Sunday afternoon he went to the 
 Young Men's Christian Association rooms 
 to keep an appointment he had made to 
 go from there, after the regular Sunday 
 afternoon meeting, and speak to the pris- 
 oners at the penitentiary. He was to do this 
 with an active young Christian layman 
 named Smith, who was also an ofificial sten- 
 ographer to Congress. At the Association, 
 Comstock found Chaplain Newman, of the 
 Senate, who greeted him cordially and asked, 
 "Well, how is it?" 
 
 " It is in God's hands ; it's all right," 
 answered Comstock. To his amazement. 
 Chaplain Newman said quietly, "Your bill 
 passed the House at two o'clock this 
 morning." 
 
 "What?" was all his astounded hearer 
 could exclaim. 
 
98 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEE 
 
 The chaplain repeated his words, and con- 
 tinued, "Speaker Blaine called it up just 
 before the House adjourned, and it passed 
 with only thirty votes against it." 
 
 " There's a saving clause added to it, and 
 it has to go back to the Senate ; but it's all 
 right," said Comstock, with forced calmness ; 
 and he took his seat on the platform, in 
 readiness for the meeting about to start. 
 
 Then Smith, the congressional stenogra- 
 pher, came over to where he sat and said 
 in an undertone, " Your bill passed last 
 night." 
 
 " Yes ; Dr. Newman has just informed 
 me." 
 
 " I was in the House when it passed," 
 went on Smith, " and I had the clerk send it 
 immediately down to the engrossing clerk 
 and had the amendment engrossed. I then 
 took it up to Speaker Blaine and got him to 
 sign it, and then send it by special messenger 
 over to the Senate. I followed it over, and 
 when the messenger delivered the bill, and 
 the clerk made the announcement, I told 
 Senator Buckingham that it was Comstock'a 
 bill, whereupon he rose and moved the pas- 
 sage of the bill as amended. His motion 
 
LEAENING PATIENCE 99 
 
 was adopted, and the bill now awaits the 
 President's signature." 
 
 President Grant sigfned it the next day. 
 And Comstock had prayed "Thy will be 
 done"! 
 
VIII 
 
 GOING AFTER BIG GAME: THE 
 LOUISIANA STATE LOTTERY 
 
 IT had been on a Saturday, March 3, 
 1872, that the unknown dry-goods clerk 
 made the seven arrests of dealers in 
 vile literature that virtually started him in 
 his new hfe-work. Exactly a year later, to a 
 day, — on Sunday morning, March 3, 1873, — 
 the United States Congress passed the bill 
 that was so vital to the successful continuance 
 of this work. 
 
 Immediately after the patience-testing pas- 
 sage of the bill there was another surprise in 
 store for the young man. For Senators 
 Buckingham, Windom, Ramsey, and Repre- 
 sentative Merriam now united in asking 
 Postmaster-General Jewell to appoint Com- 
 stock a Special Agent of the Post-Ofi&ce 
 Department to enforce the new laws. He 
 replied that he would be glad to make the 
 appointment if Congress would appropriate 
 a salary and " per diem" (expenses) to cover 
 it. The appropriation bill was still pending, 
 100 
 
GOING AFTER BIG GAME 101 
 
 and an amendment was offered, in commit- 
 tee, to cover the needed item. 
 
 At this juncture the sagacity and insight 
 of the Yankee fighter began to show itself 
 again. Of his own accord he went before 
 the committee and stoutly opposed the mak- 
 ing of any appropriation for the new office to 
 which he was being nominated, asking in- 
 stead that he be clothed with the proposed 
 authority without salary. He saw that, if a 
 salary was attached to the office, there would 
 be a constant scramble for it among poli- 
 ticians for their friends. His recommenda- 
 tion was accepted, he was appointed a 
 Special Agent of the Post-Office Department, 
 and he has held the office, by reappointment, 
 from that day to this. And for thirty-three 
 years following his appointment he served 
 the United States Government without receiv- 
 ing from it a dollar in salary. He was given 
 one hundred dollars a month by the special 
 committee of the New York Y. M. C. A., at 
 this time, to compensate him for the time 
 lost from his business commission-earnings. 
 How he came to take a salary from the 
 government in 1907 is told later. The title 
 " Special Agent " was continued up to about 
 
102 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEB 
 
 a dozen years ago, when it was changed to 
 " Inspector." 
 
 Mr, Comstock, to-day, likes to dwell upon 
 what he calls the wonderful goodness of God 
 in those early days of the fight for purity. 
 And it is a story of God's work, not of man's, 
 when we remember that it was an unknown 
 clerk, twenty-eight years old, who had the 
 hardihood to go to the national capital with 
 the idea of getting his own convictions put 
 into legislative action ; that, finding there 
 two other bills pending in the same field, he 
 stuck to it until all were merged in a single 
 bill of five comprehensive sections ; that he 
 prayed his bill through both houses of 
 Congress in the strenuous closing hours of 
 the winter's session ; and that he returned to 
 his home under appointment as a staff officer 
 of a cabinet officer of the United States I 
 There were two men in New York who were 
 almost as happy as Special Agent Comstock, 
 when he got back and told the whole story, 
 and these were Mr. Jesup and Mr. Dodge. 
 And the Young Men's Christian Association 
 Committee, some of whom had counted the 
 effort a hopeless one, now gladly paid the 
 expenses of the Washington campaign. 
 
GOING AFTEB BIG GAME 103 
 
 After the passage of the federal bill, amend- 
 ments to New York state statutes were se- 
 cured which provided not only for the arrest 
 of persons vending objectionable matter, but 
 for the seizure and destruction of the matter 
 itself. Even while these amendments were 
 pending, however, vigorous prosecutions 
 were started under the new law. As a result 
 of this active work, fierce opposition to those 
 who were seeking to enforce the law sprang 
 up, and, in the attacks upon Comstock, refer- 
 ence was constantly made to the fact that he 
 was an agent of the Young Men's Christian 
 Association. Some of its managers began 
 to grow anxious lest the Association should 
 suffer from this connection. The result was, 
 after considerable discussion, hesitancy, and 
 opposition from certain quarters, that the 
 majority of the Young Men's Christian Asso- 
 ciation Committee deemed it wise to incor- 
 porate a separate organization for the 
 continuance of the work ; and thus was born 
 the New York Society for the Suppression of 
 Vice. 
 
 A charter for the Society was granted in 
 May of 1873. In the autumn of that year 
 the business of the old Committee, which 
 
104 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 now went out of existence, was reorganized 
 under the charter. The Connecticut country 
 boy whose dream had been to become a 
 prosperous, self-made city merchant, and who 
 had already made a conspicuous success in 
 the business world, gave up his heart's de- 
 sire, resigned from all business connection, 
 and became Secretary and Chief Special 
 Agent of the Society. An executive com- 
 mittee of seven members, having direct 
 charge of the operations of the Society, met 
 each month and received the secretary's 
 written report. The president, three vice- 
 presidents, treasurer, and counsel, with the 
 executive committee, comprised a board of 
 managers, and met once in three months, 
 receiving a quarterly report submitted by 
 the executive committee. None of the 
 officers but the secretary have ever received 
 any compensation. 
 
 Violations of the law of purity were not 
 the only offenses against public morals which 
 the newly formed Society stood ready to 
 prosecute. Lotteries and schemes of any 
 sort to defraud the public which made use of 
 the mails were infringements of the postal 
 laws, and as such were referred by the Post- 
 
GOING APTEE BIG GAME 106 
 
 Office to its Special Agent. When prosecu- 
 tions were thus instituted against the principal 
 lottery operators, bitter hostility was, of 
 course, awakened. One of the methods of 
 |the opposition, which has never been aban- 
 doned from that day to this, was the attempted 
 idemeanirig, before the public, of the Agent 
 who was now making it his life-business to 
 enforce the laws. It must be remembered 
 that swindling schemes pf all sorts were reap- 
 ing a harvest of thousands upon thousands 
 of dollars from a gullible public, and that their 
 backers had hitherto enjoyed immunity from 
 any systematic interference. The newspapers 
 also received a large revenue for advertising 
 these schemes. What wonder that any man's 
 determined efforts to put these criminals for- 
 ever out of business, and to bring to an end 
 the flow of money into the treasuries of 
 the newspapers that shared so richly in the 
 fruits of criminal and fraudulent operations, 
 was met with a desperate and diabolical 
 earnestness that would stop at nothing in the 
 way of infamy, defamation, even physical 
 violence 1 A notorious English ex-convict 
 was employed by some of the lawbreakers to 
 secure the publication of libelous articles 
 
106 AlfTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 about Special Agent Comstock. All the in- 
 terests involved, and they were many, worked 
 to destroy the standing of the man and the 
 Society. 
 
 There were several well-known lotteries at 
 this time that had wide-open headquarters in 
 New York City. These operated in defiance 
 of the Constitution and laws of the state, as 
 well as of the federal statutes. It was no un- 
 usual thing to find uniformed policemen 
 hobnobbing with the employees, or actually 
 in the offices, of these concerns. More than 
 once " guardians of the peace " were found 
 in such dens when, by those who took the 
 law into their own hands, the places were 
 raided. 
 
 The famous Louisiana Lottery was one of 
 these wide-open institutions, with its New 
 York offices at 212 Broadway, occupying two 
 floors over the Knox hat store. At this ad- 
 dress a line of ticket-buyers could sometimes 
 be seen extending from the ticket-office on 
 the second floor out into the hall, around the 
 hall, up-stairs to the third floor, down-stairs 
 again, and out on to the street, while uni- 
 formed policemen stood by to "preserve 
 order." It was publicly stated in the news- 
 
GOING AFTER BIG GAME 107 
 
 papers that this one ofifice of the Louisiana 
 Lottery was paying the police five thousand 
 dollars a month for protection. 
 
 One day Mayor Cooper sent for Mr. Corn- 
 stock. Why, he wanted to know, could not 
 this place be closed ? And could the Secre- 
 tary of the Society for the Suppression of 
 Vice close it? 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Mayor," was the answer ; " that 
 place can be closed, and I can close it ; but 
 not with your police." 
 
 As a result of this interview, it was ar- 
 ranged that Mr. Comstock should secure evi- 
 dence against the lottery office, prepare com- 
 plaints and warrants, and return to the mayor, 
 who promised to appoint a city marshal to 
 execute the warrants. 
 
 A day or two later Mr. Comstock was on 
 hand at the mayor's office, with a paper 
 ready to be signed by a magistrate. The 
 mayor filled out a commission, and appointed 
 an employee to execute the warrants. With 
 this man Comstock went to the Tombs Court, 
 where, in the secrecy of a private office, a 
 police justice signed the warrants and gave 
 them to the marshal, and the complaint was 
 filed with the clerk of the court. But be- 
 
108 ANTHOITY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 fore Comstock and the marshal could get 
 from the Tombs Court, in Center Street, to 
 the corner of Broadway and Fulton Streets, 
 where number 212 stood, word had been sent 
 to the lottery people ; and when the men with . 
 the warrants arrived, the large safes were 
 locked, everything suspicious was out of 
 sight, and the persons for whose arrest the 
 warrants called had their bondsmen ready to 
 accompany them. Arraigned the next morn- 
 ing before a magistrate, these criminals gave 
 bail for their trial, returned at once to 212 
 Broadway, and opened up the place for a 
 new day's business. 
 
 Comstock, learning before he left the court 
 room that they had done this, at once re- 
 ported to the magistrate that the marshal had 
 not been able to execute the search warrant 
 entire, as the lottery safes had been closed 
 and the desired matter secreted. The mag- 
 istrate directed the two men to go back to 
 212. Notifying no one, they went immedi- 
 ately, and this time caught everything open 
 and in full blast. They seized about 30,000 
 letters and lottery tickets, and a set of ac- 
 count books — which are in Mr. Comstock's 
 possession to-day — that showed that the aver- 
 
GOING AFTBE BIG GAME 109 
 
 age daily income of this one office of the 
 Louisiana Lottery, for a period of twenty 
 days prior to the raid, was $5,176. The al- 
 leged five-thousand-doUar-a-month payment 
 to the police for protection, therefore, was 
 less than one-thirtieth of the income of this 
 office. 
 
 The developments following Comstock's 
 first serious interference with this national 
 and colossal gambling enterprise were inter- 
 esting and significant. Its proprietors were 
 reasonable men, and hoped that Mr. Com- 
 stock was a reasonable man. One of the 
 counsel for the lottery company called at the 
 office of the Society for the Suppression of 
 Vice and made some suggestions. He said 
 that his company would count it a privilege 
 to assist the Society in its work, and as a 
 slight evidence of their good feeling he wished 
 to be allowed to contribute twenty-five thou- 
 sand dollars a year to the Secretary of the 
 Society, the first twenty-five thousand dollars 
 to be deposited within forty-eight hours, in 
 cash, to the Secretary's account in the Nassau 
 Bank, and no one to know who the donor 
 was. Then the Secretary was, if he would 
 give them this privilege, to receive twenty- 
 
110 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 five thousand dollars a year regularly there- 
 after, — the simple condition being that, in the 
 interest of the mutual good feeling, he would 
 not interfere further with the company's 
 business transactions. 
 
 At that time young Comstock had a mort- 
 gage on his home, and a floating indebted- 
 ness of several thousand dollars. Twenty- 
 five thousand dollars looked just as large and 
 just as attractive to him as it does to most 
 men. And there was no question about the 
 ability and the intention of the Lottery Com- 
 pany to do exactly as it offered, — the yearly 
 amount proposed was only five days' income 
 to them. But there was a something that 
 stayed with the Connecticut boy, out of the 
 old home life on the farm, and from a 
 mother's training, and the rigours and dis- 
 cipline of soldierly obedience during Civil 
 War service, that was more real and substan- 
 tial to him than twenty-five thousand dollars. 
 Rising from the chair in which he had sat 
 listening to the lawyer's talk, he said quietly, 
 " As long as I live and have my reason and 
 health, your company shall never have an- 
 other open office in the city of New York." 
 
 They didn't believe him. They only won- 
 
GOING AFTER BIG GAME 111 
 
 dered what he wanted, and they knew that, 
 if they could find out, things could be ar- 
 ranged. Later another Louisiana Company 
 representative called at the Society's office 
 and asked if Mr. Comstock wouldn't enjoy 
 taking a trip around the world, with his wife 
 and daughter, in a leisurely way, say for five 
 years. If travel interested him, his salary for 
 the five years in advance could be paid to 
 him, and any other sum he might care to 
 name for expenses, not in excess, say, of one 
 hundred thousand dollars. 
 
 Mr. Comstock replied that sea voyages 
 didn't agree with him. 
 
 Strange to say, Mr. Comstock's attitude 
 seemed to exasperate the lottery crooks. It 
 was not long before a Superintendent of 
 Police and a committee of associates jour- 
 neyed to Washington to make formal de- 
 mand, through their representatives, that the 
 Special Agent of the Post-Office Depart- 
 ment be dismissed and removed. In these 
 efforts to end his unpleasantiy effective law- 
 enforcing career, the Louisiana men joined 
 with themselves a number of others who, 
 engaged in similar enterprises, had been 
 bothered as they had been. Among these 
 
112 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 were the Kentucky Lottery, with offices at 
 309 Broadway ; the invitingly named Cash 
 Distribution Company, at 599 Broadway ; 
 and the Royal Havana Company, with offices 
 in Wall Street and on the Bowery. All 
 these concerns had been raided in that strenu- 
 ous first year of the new Society's life, 1873. 
 Things had been done on the jump by the 
 twenty-eight-year-old Special Agent. 
 
 He was not dismissed ; and he has not 
 been yet, though that was not the last time 
 that he was " exposed " to a Postmaster-Gen- 
 eral of the United States. The federal and 
 state courts were kept busy prosecuting 
 cases in which the Society was the com- 
 plainant. But the newspapers continued to 
 advertise the lotteries freely, until one day 
 the Grand Jury asked Comstock why the 
 newspapers were not prosecuted, and asked 
 if evidence against them could not be sub- 
 mitted to that body. He replied that he 
 would be glad to secure such evidence, — 
 and in so saying he knew well that the 
 moment he made this move the press of the 
 country would be practically a unit against 
 him and all his efforts. 
 
 He had real, not theoretical or academic, 
 
QOISG APTEE BIG GAME 113 
 
 trust in God. Constantly throughout his 
 perilous life he has comforted and steeled 
 himself with the promise in God's Word : 
 " No weapon formed against thee shall 
 prosper, and every tongue that riseth against 
 thee thou shalt condemn. This is the 
 heritage of the servants of the Lord, and 
 their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord." 
 He proceeded to secure evidence against 
 every newspaper in New York City that 
 advertised lotteries. He presented his evi- 
 dence to the Grand Jury, and an indictment 
 was found in every case. The business in- 
 terests thus attacked represented enormous 
 sums. One paper, it was claimed, carried 
 over five hundred dollars daily of paid lot- 
 tery advertisements, often having more than 
 a full page of such advertising in a single 
 issue. It was not surprising that, when it 
 became known that the newspapers had been 
 indicted on Comstock's complaint, the New 
 
 York Chief of Police remarked, " The 
 
 fool's hung himself." 
 
 A test case was tried. It resulted in con- 
 viction. The paper appealed to the Supreme 
 Court of the state. The conviction was 
 confirmed. Then the newspapers ceased to 
 
114 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEB 
 
 violate the law. It was not Comstock that 
 had hung himself. 
 
 In about the year 1897 Joseph Cook 
 wrote : 
 
 " In 1885 Mr. Comstock drafted an amend- 
 ment to the Postal Laws concerning lot- 
 teries, and since then, down to the enact- 
 ment of the present law in 1890, the con- 
 stitutionality of which the Supreme Court 
 of the United States has recently affirmed, 
 he kept this matter aggressively before Con- 
 gress. President Harrison and Postmaster- 
 General Wanamaker took up the suggested 
 reform with the result that on September 
 19, 1890, an act incorporating all the pro- 
 visions that were in Mr. Comstock's original 
 bill became law. At present, so far as the 
 government knows, not a newspaper in the 
 United States advertises a lottery, and all 
 lottery advertisements and letters are by law 
 excluded from the mails. The new legis- 
 lation, as sustained by the Supreme Court of 
 the United States, has inflicted mortal wounds 
 upon the Louisiana Lottery, and now that 
 Devil Fish of the Gulf is in the agonies of 
 dissolution." 
 
IX 
 
 " KEEPING EVERLASTINGLY AT IT" 
 
 THINGS were not made easy for the 
 hblder of the office of Special Agent 
 of the New York Society for the 
 Suppression of Vice. The conditions of test- 
 ing and blockade that were not occasional but 
 regular accompaniments of his work were 
 such that only a man of the most extra- 
 ordinary endurance and dogged persistence 
 could hold out in this calling. The intensity 
 of some of the vicious attacks that were made 
 against Mr. Comstock's career, his character, 
 and his life, is shown later. Only less trying 
 was the slippery elusiveness of the criminals 
 that he sought to put out of business and 
 punish. One notorious instance of this illus- 
 trates the way in which Mr. Comstock's en- 
 durance was tested. 
 
 On May 7, 1872, a man named Morris > 
 Sickel had been raided at his place of busi- 
 ness in Piatt Street, New York, where he was 
 found to be employing a dozen or more girls 
 115 
 
116 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEE 
 
 and boys, of from twelve to fifteen years of 
 age, to make articles of a vile sort. Sickel 
 had been arrested and convicted and had 
 served a year's imprisonment. In 1874 he 
 reopened his nefarious business in Bridge- 
 port, Connecticut. Comstock worked up a 
 case against him for violation of the postal 
 laws, secured a warrant from the United 
 States Commissioner in New Haven, and 
 went with a United States marshal to Bridge- 
 port to arrest his man. There he found that 
 Sickel was in New York ; but he seized his 
 manufacturing plant and took a large quan- 
 tity of his vile goods. Leaving the marshal 
 to make the arrest, the Special Agent re- 
 turned to New York, There he learned that 
 the marshal had failed to arrest his man, who 
 had made his escape to Montreal. Later, 
 Sickel's movements were traced to Detroit, 
 and then to Chicago. 
 
 Comstock went to Chicago, and, after mak- 
 ing a dozen or more of other arrests, learned 
 that Sickel was still in town. When a war- 
 rant had been secured for him, a deputy 
 marshal was assigned to make the arrest. 
 Ostensibly he made it. But instead of pro- 
 ducing his man, the deputy allowed him to 
 
" KEEPING EVEELASTINGLY AT IT " 117 
 
 go ; later this official was charged with hav- 
 ing received fifteen hundred dollars for the 
 accommodation. The Special Agent returned 
 to New York, empty-handed. But he was 
 not through with the case as easily as that. 
 
 One day there came to Mr. Comstock's 
 notice a letter addressed to Morris Sickel at 
 St. Louis, Missouri, in Sickel's own hand- 
 writing. This probably came about through 
 the dealer's having sent his circulars, with a 
 self-addressed return envelope, to some one 
 who had forwarded the whole thing to the 
 New York Society for investigation. Mr. 
 Comstock now believed that Sickel had a 
 factory for his goods in St. Louis, and went 
 on to look over the ground. There he 
 learned that Sickel's brother-in-law, who 
 knew Comstock, was in charge of the factory, 
 so the Special Agent stayed away from that 
 headquarters. He was fortified, in the way 
 of evidence, with copies of the Connecticut 
 indictment and of the bench warrant for 
 Sickel's arrest (this latter form of warrant 
 being issued by the clerk of the court, as 
 from the judge, after an indictment has been 
 found). Going before the United States 
 Commissioner at St. Louis, Mr. Comstock 
 
118 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 made the proper affidavit, based on the in- 
 dictment and bench warrant, and a warrant 
 was issued in that district for the arrest of 
 Sickel as a fugitive from justice. 
 
 Starting out once more with a deputy 
 marshal, and determined this time to stay by 
 to the end, the Special Agent was confronted 
 with the dilemma of how to find his man 
 without going to the factory where there was 
 danger of being recognized before the arrest 
 could be made. So he resorted to detective 
 methods. 
 
 As a United States Post-Office official, 
 Comstock took a letter carrier into his con- 
 fidence, and gave him official instructions. 
 The factory doors were closed to the public ; 
 no general admittance was allowed. The 
 letter carrier was instructed to inquire at the 
 factory for Mr. Sickel, and leave word that he 
 was to call at the Registry Department of the 
 Post-Office for a registered letter. While the 
 carrier was inside the factory, doing his part, 
 Comstock was waiting outside, at a safe dis- 
 tance. He saw a man come out from the 
 building, evidently a Jew. Giving him time 
 to get a couple of blocks from the place, 
 Comstock walked considerably beyond him. 
 
"KEEPING EVEELASTINGLY AT IT " 119 
 
 then turned and came towards him, looking 
 up and down the street and diligently at the 
 signs, as one who was hunting for an address. 
 Reaching the Jew, he stopped him and asked 
 if he could tell him where Mr. Moses Silleck 
 lived. 
 
 " What is his business ? " asked the Jew. 
 Comstock explained. 
 
 " Oh, that is not the name ; you mean Mr. 
 Morris Sickel," exclaimed the Jew, as he 
 pointed out the place. " But," he went on, 
 "he is not here ; I was just in there, and he 
 is in Memphis, Tennessee " ; and he named 
 a hotel address. 
 
 Thanking his Hebrew informant, Comstock 
 left the man and hurried to the post-office, 
 fearful lest Sickel's brother-in-law might come 
 for the registered letter ; and there he in- 
 structed the registry clerk to decline to pro- 
 duce the letter for any one else than Morris 
 Sickel himself, reminding the clerk of the 
 specific postal regulation that such a letter 
 can be delivered only to the person ad- 
 dressed, or upon his or her order duly veri- 
 fied. Then he telegraphed the postmaster at 
 Memphis, asking whether Sickel was at the 
 hotel designated. 
 
120 AKTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 About the time that the brother-in-law ar- 
 rived at the post-office for the registered let- 
 ter, as Comstock had anticipated, the Mem- 
 phis postmaster's telegram had come, saying 
 that their man was there. The brother-in- 
 law, finding that he could not, even though 
 claiming to be Sickel's partner, secure the 
 letter, dropped the matter by saying to- the 
 registry clerk, " Well, then forward the letter 
 to City Hotel, New Orleans." 
 
 This left Comstock in a pretty quandary. 
 But he took the first train to Memphis, im- 
 mediately got another warrant from the 
 United States Commissioner there, made for 
 the hotel supposed to be Sickel's stopping- 
 place, and there found on the hotel register, 
 in Sickel's handwriting, the name " S. Mor- 
 ris, Philadelphia." From the porter he 
 learned that " Mr. Morris " had left Memphis 
 early that morning on the Iron Mountain 
 Railroad ; for what place, the porter didn't 
 know. 
 
 Keenly disappointed, Comstock tried to 
 see his course through the puzzling situation. 
 Should he add fourteen hundred miles more 
 to his already long and baffling journey? 
 He left the hotel, crossed to the city park, or 
 
"KEEPING EVEELASTINGLY AT IT " 121 
 
 plaza, and, knowing not where to turn, 
 prayed earnestly for guidance. As he walked 
 aimlessly through the little park and reached 
 the other side, almost the first thing that 
 caught his eye was the ticket office of the 
 Iron Mountain Railroad. It looked provi- 
 dential. Something seemed to say to him, 
 " Go to New Orleans." Believing this to be 
 a direct answer to prayer, he entered the 
 station, found that a train connecting with 
 the Iron Mountain road for New Orleans left 
 about seven o'clock that night, and was told 
 that there were first-class accommodations 
 right through. He had just time to return 
 to his hotel, get supper, and make the train. 
 Once started, instead of finding the prom- 
 ised " first-class accommodations " he was 
 obliged to take a car attached to the end of 
 a freight train. It was filled with coloured 
 and white people, many of whom were smok- 
 ing, and the air was nauseating. The night 
 was cold, and so was the car. But the only 
 way that the New England man could en- 
 dure it was to put his arm under the bottom 
 of his raised window, and thus make sure of 
 a little fresh outside air. For six hours he 
 stood this, and then, at nearly one o'clock in 
 
122 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEE 
 
 the morning, he found that they had covered 
 fourteen miles. Here he gladly left his car to 
 make connections for New Orleans. The 
 only place to wait was a country gin-mill, the 
 connecting train was three hours late, and the 
 Special Agent put in his time playing with a 
 tame 'possum. Between four and five in the 
 morning he crawled off to bed in the welcome 
 sleeper, and the second morning after he was 
 landed safely in New Orleans. 
 
 He now added to the collection of Sickel 
 warrants that he had gathered in New 
 Haven, Chicago, St. Louis, and Memphis, by 
 securing his fifth one from the United States 
 Commissioner in the New Orleans district ; 
 he found a deputy marshal to execute it ; and 
 then, going to the post-oflfice, he repeated 
 the registered letter plan that had failed in 
 St. Louis. A carrier took to the City Hotel 
 the notice for Sickel to call at the post-office. 
 
 And before noon of that day Comstock 
 had his man. He took him before the United 
 States Commissioner, arraigned him, pro- 
 duced the certified copies of the Connecticut 
 indictment and bench warrant, and identified 
 the prisoner as the defendant named therein. 
 Sickel was held in default of bail to await the 
 
"KEEPING EVEELASTINGLY AT IT" 123 
 
 order of the judge of that district to return 
 him to the district of Connecticut from which 
 he had fled. Thus did a Yankee boy cele- 
 brate Mardi Gras Day in New Orleans, — for 
 that was the very day on which the wind-up 
 occurred. But the real wind-up was not yet. 
 
 Anthony took a night train for New York, 
 about as homesick a youngster as you would 
 often see. In his office he found telegrams 
 awaiting him from the marshal of the New 
 Orleans district. It appeared that a writ of 
 habeas corpus had been issued in the Loui- 
 siana state court, directing the marshal to 
 bring the defendant before that court, not- 
 withstanding the fact that a state court had 
 no jurisdiction in matters pertaining to the 
 federal courts. The United States marshal 
 succeeded in getting these proceedings dis- 
 missed. 
 
 Then a second attempt was made by the 
 state court to release the prisoner. Mean- 
 time, the United States Circuit Judge for that 
 district was holding court in Texas, and the 
 prisoner could not be removed from New 
 Orleans except upon that judge's order. But 
 the United States marshal was game. He 
 secreted his prisoner, and before the second 
 
124 ANTHONY COMBTOCK, FIGHTEB 
 
 process could issue in the state court he had 
 his man placed on the outgoing steamer 
 Juniata for Philadelphia via Havana, Cuba. 
 Just as the steamer was about to sail, the re- 
 quired order for removal, signed by the 
 United States judge, arrived. So far, so 
 good. 
 
 It was learned afterward that a certain 
 Hebrew society to which Morris Sickel be- 
 longed was determined that he should not be 
 sent back to Connecticut, and it was said 
 that a fund of five thousand dollars had been 
 raised in his behalf to prevent this. These 
 men now made vigorous plans to have their 
 friend taken from the boat at Havana, by 
 force if necessary, and released. They kept 
 the cable between New Orleans and Havana 
 busy, communicating with a Cuban branch 
 of their organization, — $45 in gold being re- 
 ported to have been spent in cable charges 
 for one dispatch. 
 
 The deputy marshal in charge of Sickel 
 learned of this plot. Taking his prisoner to 
 his stateroom, he kept him there while the 
 boat lay for several days in Havana harbour. 
 One day, while still there, the captain and 
 mate went ashore. The deputy saw a crowd 
 
"KEEPING EVBELASTINGLY AT IT" 125 
 
 of men coining down the wharf. He promptly 
 shackled and handcuffed Sickel, took a re- 
 volver in each hand, and quietly waited. 
 
 They didn't come. Sickel was pretty well 
 frightened. Perhaps he managed to let word 
 leak out to his friends on shore that they had 
 better not come. That deputy took his duty 
 too seriously for Sickel's comfort. 
 
 After the Juniata had left Havana for 
 Philadelphia, the marshal at New Orleans 
 sent word to Mr. Comstock that the large 
 sum of money already mentioned had been 
 raised in Sickel's behalf, that his friends were 
 determined upon his release at Philadelphia, 
 and would use force to accomplish it, and 
 that Comstock must now protect the deputy. 
 
 That was enough for the Connecticut Civil 
 War veteran. His fighting blood was up. 
 
 He sent to New Haven and secured an- 
 other certified copy of the original indictment 
 of Sickel, and a new bench warrant. Then 
 he went to Philadelphia and obtained authority 
 from the United States marshal there to exe- 
 cute this warrant in his district. Going to the 
 agent of the steamship line, he got permis- 
 sion to board the vessel down the Delaware. 
 With the Collector of the Port at Philadelphia 
 
126 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 he made arrangements to be taken down the 
 river on a revenue cutter. The Western 
 Union Telegraph Company was given in- 
 structions to notify him the moment the 
 Juniata should be sighted across the break- 
 water. Then he rested from his labours, 
 awaiting developments at the Bingham House, 
 from a Friday till Monday morning. 
 
 Upon word from the Western Union, Com- 
 stock hurried to the wharf, boarded the wait- 
 ing revenue cutter, steamed down the Dela- 
 ware, and reached the Juniata about ten 
 miles from the city. As the revenue cutter 
 reached the larger vessel's side, the deputy 
 and his prisoner were watching, with interest, 
 from the rail ; and as Comstock clambered 
 up the side of the Juniata, Sickel turned to 
 the deputy and said with some intensity, 
 "That's another one of Comstock's tricks." 
 
 As the Juniata swung into her dock at 
 South Delaware Avenue, Philadelphia, Spe- 
 cial Agent Comstock from New York and the 
 United States deputy marshal from New Or- 
 leans, with their prisoner Morris Sickel, of 
 Bridgeport, Montreal, Detroit, Chicago, St. 
 Louis, Memphis, and New Orleans, safely be- 
 tween them, having left the Juniata and 
 
" KEEPING EVEELASTINGLY AT IT " 127 
 
 taken the rest of the trip on the revenue cut- 
 ter, were making an undisturbed landing just 
 across the river at Camden, New Jersey ; and 
 the waiting thugs at the Philadelphia dock 
 had a longer wait than they had expected. 
 
 Sickel was not brought into Philadelphia at 
 all. His captors took him at once to New 
 Haven, where Comstock and the deputy saw 
 him safely jailed about eight o'clock that 
 night. In jail he stayed until his trial, when 
 he was convicted in the federal courts, and 
 sent up for the full extent of the law : one 
 year's imprisonment and five hundred dollars' 
 fine. 
 
 That is the sort of endurance, patience, 
 persistence, and keen resourcefulness that 
 have made Anthony Comstock's life-work the 
 challenge that it is to the traffic in debauch- 
 ery. 
 
X 
 
 WEAPONS THAT DID NOT PROSPER 
 
 WHEN you look squarely into the 
 face of Anthony Comstock you 
 look into a pair of light blue-gray 
 eyes which in turn have many times looked 
 full in the face of physical death and have 
 not turned away. Worse than death they 
 have faced, too ; crippling and mutilation, 
 attacks upon honour and the destroying of 
 reputation ; the human certainty of these re- 
 wards of his life-work has seemed many times 
 to be inescapable. Yet through forty-one 
 years of such attack and strain there has 
 sounded in this man's heart the song of the 
 promises of God, and chief among these has 
 been God's word through Isaiah : No weapon 
 that is formed against thee shall prosper ; and 
 every tongue that shall rise against thee in 
 judgment thou shall condemn. This is the 
 heritage of the servants of Jehovah. 
 
 There are assurances from Jesus Himself 
 that have been his comfort and his guidance. 
 128 
 
WEAPONS THAT DID NOT PEOSPEB 129 
 
 He is sure of a blessing when he reads : 
 " Blessed are ye when men shall reproach 
 you, and persecute you, and say all manner 
 of evil against you falsely, for my sake." 
 When his heart is heavy over the strife and 
 bitterness in which his life, true to his calling, 
 must be lived, he is comforted with his Lord's 
 own word : " Think not that I came to send 
 peace on the earth : I came not to send 
 peace, but a sword." It is worth while to see 
 how God has honoured His Word in the safe- 
 keeping of Anthony Comstock through in- 
 credible danger and heart-breaking trial. 
 Many and cruel are the weapons that have 
 been formed against him. But they have not 
 prospered. 
 
 Sometimes the attacks upon him have been 
 legal, sometimes journalistic, sometimes phys- 
 ical and criminal, — sometimes all three at 
 once. The legal and journalistic were the 
 most subtle and harassing, and elaborate 
 plans for their success seem to have been 
 made in the earlier days. For example, an 
 English ex-convict was employed as press 
 agent by the dealers in non-mailable matter 
 of whom it was alleged that he made it his 
 practice and business to prevent the news- 
 
130 ANTHOIST COMSTOCK, FIGHTEE 
 
 papers from making any favourable comment 
 on Comstock and the Society for the Sup- 
 pression of Vice, and that he saw to it that 
 derogatory articles were published. While 
 this was going on, Mr. Comstock was effect- 
 ively taking advantage of the new laws 
 that meant so much to the success of the 
 Society's work. 
 
 Soon after that historic Sunday, March 2, 
 1873, when Congress had enacted the law 
 for which the " hopeless " fight of faith had 
 been made, a man at the head of a so-called 
 medical institute was arrested, indicted, and 
 convicted by Comstock for selling through 
 the mails an infamous article. Of other men 
 who were advertising criminal drugs and 
 articles, some eighteen or twenty offenders 
 either were in jail awaiting trial or had given 
 bail to answer indictments of the Grand 
 Jury in federal courts. Still others had been 
 arrested in cities of New England and New 
 York State and in Cleveland, Chicago, In- 
 dianapolis, and Des Moines. 
 
 Each arrest seemed to add to the fury of 
 the wide-spread opposition to Comstock. A 
 strategic move was made by the bringing of 
 civil suits against him. In city after city 
 
WEAPONS THAT DID NOT PEOSPER 131 
 
 such suits were commenced, calculated to 
 harass his operations and to intimidate him 
 against further prosecution of the cases he 
 had so vigorously begun. These suits were 
 brought on the ground of alleged illegal 
 arrest and malicious persecution. A Boston 
 man began action against Mr. Comstock for 
 $30,000 ; in New York the suits varied from 
 $15,000 to $30,000; in Indianapolis were 
 two of $20,000 and $25,000 ; in Des Moines 
 an injured innocent sued for $10,000. It 
 was an evident combination of the illicit 
 dealers to frighten the anti-vice man off and 
 embarrass his eflorts in various places at the 
 same time, so that both his time and his 
 energy would be taken up in defending him- 
 self, and there would be no time to prosecute. 
 Of course, special prominence was given to 
 these hostile suits in the newspapers, and it 
 was pointed out that Comstock was inca- 
 pable of properly enforcing the law, and 
 unfit for his position. All this prepared the 
 way for the holding of a remarkable con- 
 vention of " liberals," free-thinkers and free- 
 lovers, in Philadelphia in 1876, at yvhich 
 fierce assaults were made upon Comstock. 
 We do not always recognize as clearly as 
 
132 AKTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 we ought that religious unbelief and im- 
 morality go hand in hand. There is no such 
 thing as permanent purity in human life save 
 through the presence of a recognized and 
 obeyed God and Saviour. This truth was 
 strikingly brought out through Mr. Com- 
 stock's experience, extending through some 
 five years of time (from 1876 to 1881), with 
 these infidels and freethinkers, who were 
 organized under the title of " National 
 Liberal League." This group of persons de- 
 clared their abhorrence of obscenity in all its 
 forms. Yet during this period of five years 
 they laboured by malignant plot and misrep- 
 resentation to repeal the federal laws against 
 obscene matters which had been enacted at 
 the time of Mr. Comstock's memorable ex- 
 perience in Washington, and which the 
 Liberals derisively called the " Comstock 
 Laws." 
 
 Robert G. Ingersoll was first a member of 
 the Executive Committee of this National 
 Liberal League, and later for several years its 
 vice-president. Not only did these persons 
 deliberately and doggedly seek to do away 
 with the obstructions which the United States 
 government was putting in the path o^ 
 
WEAPONS THAT DID NOT PEOSPEE 133 
 
 dealers in obscene literature and pictures, 
 but they also petitioned Congress to abolish 
 all " national or state fast days and festivals," 
 " all forms of religious services sustained by 
 government ; especially the use of the Bible 
 in the public schools " ; they asked for " the 
 dismissal of all chaplains in Army, Navy, 
 Congress, Legislature, prisons, and other 
 public institutions ; and abrogation of all 
 Sabbath laws " ; and they insisted that the 
 Constitution of the United States and of the 
 individual states should be amended in order 
 to conform with their demands. 
 
 Mr. Comstock fought these efforts for the 
 repeal of the United States laws in the inter- 
 ests of public purity ; and so members of the 
 League fought Mr. Comstock. His own 
 integrity of purpose and his good name were 
 of course the object of malicious assault. 
 Yet his good name is still good ; and the at- 
 tack that was rendered impotent by its in- 
 herent sin is practically unknown to the pres- 
 ent generation. 
 
 Not only did these so-called "Liberals" 
 seek to repeal purity laws, but, when certain 
 dealers in obscene matters had been con- 
 victed and sentenced, they passed resolutions 
 
134 ANTHONY COM8TOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 of sympathy for the lawbreakers, peti- 
 tioned the President for their pardon, and 
 even attempted to organize a new political 
 party because the President would not pardon 
 one of the vice-presidents of the League who 
 had been convicted for sending obscene 
 matter through the mails. As Mr. Corn- 
 stock himself has quaintly expressed it : 
 " Infidelity and obscenity were duly wedded 
 at Washington in March, 1878 (and R. G. 
 Ingersoll was named by the Liberals as best 
 man), and no man can henceforth put them 
 asunder." 
 
 The facts in this startling five year episode 
 in our national life have been brought to- 
 gether with great completeness and pains- 
 taking thoroughness by Mr. Comstock, and 
 seem to be indisputable. Concerning it 
 Joseph Cook wrote : " Of the many attempts 
 made to repeal the federal laws against the 
 distribution of infamous matter through the 
 post-office, the most notable was the attempt 
 of the so-called National Liberal League. 
 . . . No one knows as well as Mr. Com- 
 stock the facts in this struggle, in which he 
 took an active and victorious part from the 
 beginning to its end." 
 
WEAPONS THAT DID NOT PEOSPEE 135 
 
 And the Rev. A. C. Dixon, D. D., brought 
 out with startling clearness the facts as to the 
 union of atheism and immorality as he wrote 
 on this same historical episode : 
 
 " It is interesting to trace the method by 
 which modern infidelity obtains its basis of 
 ethics. You will find it in a book by Van 
 Buren Denslow. R. G. Ingersoll wrote an 
 introduction to this book, in which he char- 
 acterizes it as ' pure and shining coin,' and 
 thinks that such books herald the coming of 
 better days. ' The moral law, tell the truth,' 
 says Mr. Denslow, ' is the weapon whereby 
 the strong rule the weak. The opposing 
 maxim, 'Tell a lie,' is the weapon of the 
 weak and the helpless against brute force. 
 Nature endows almost every animal with the 
 faculty of deceit in order to aid it in escaping 
 from the brute force of its superiors. Why 
 then should not man be endowed with the 
 faculty of lying, when it is to his interest to 
 appear wise concerning matters of which he 
 is ignorant ? , . . 
 
 " ' Thou shalt not steal,' continued Mr. 
 Denslow, ' is a moral precept invented by the 
 strong, the matured, the successful, and by 
 them impressed upon the weak, the infantile 
 
136 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, PIGHTEE 
 
 and the failures in life's struggle, as all 
 criminals are. . . . Universal society 
 might be pictured, for the illustration of this 
 feature of the moral code, as consisting of 
 two sets of swine, one of which is in the 
 clover, and the other is out. The swine that 
 are in the clover grunt, " Thou shalt not 
 steal, put up the bars." The swine that are 
 out of the clover grunt, " Did you make the 
 clover ? let down the bars." " Thou shalt not 
 steal" is a maxim impressed by property 
 owners upon non-property owners. . . .' 
 
 " Mr. Denslow gives us the basis of 
 chastity in the following words : ' So the laws 
 forbidding unchastity were framed by those 
 who, in the earlier periods of civilization, 
 could afford to own women for the protection 
 of their property rights in them against the 
 poor who could not. . . . Chastity be- 
 gins, therefore, as an element in the law of 
 the strong for the government of the weak 
 concerning property.' 
 
 "It is to be expected," continues Dr. 
 Dixon, " that men who endorse such an im- 
 moral code should not hesitate to champion 
 the vendors of obscene literature, or do any- 
 thing else by which their self-interest might 
 
WEAPONS THAT DID NOT PEOSPER 137 
 
 be served. The infidelity of to-day is weak, 
 because it asserts that it cannot know God, 
 Agnosticism is really infidelity with a fool's 
 cap on. It has given up the battle and 
 stands before the world as an ignoramus in 
 all matters that pertain to God. It is wicked, 
 as proved by this ethical code of its advocates. 
 In its best form it is moral deformity covered 
 with mental finery. It is a poisonous vine, 
 with gaudy flowers, whose odour is death. 
 It is a vampire bat which sucks the life blood 
 from its victim, while it fans him with the 
 wings of melodious words. It is Epicurean- 
 ism after it has been rotting for 2,000 
 yeajs. . . . 
 
 " The world needs to know the dark con- 
 spiracies which these men formed for the pur- 
 pose of repealing most wholesome laws, 
 thereby opening the way for flooding our 
 schools and homes with moral filth." 
 
 The civil suits against the young Agent of 
 the Society for the Suppression of Vice all 
 failed except one, in which judgment was 
 rendered against him for six cents. A coun- 
 ter suit was brought against the plaintiff and 
 a like judgment was secured in Comstock's 
 favour. It was a case of quits. Abusive 
 
138 ANTHONY OOMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 and threatening anonymous letters were an 
 accompaniment of those days, and even 
 worse messengers of evil. One envelope 
 addressed to Mr. Comstock lacked sufficient 
 postage, and a clerk went to the post-office 
 to pay the needed postage due. He had 
 suspiciously smelled of the package as he 
 returned, then laid it on Mr. Comstock's 
 desk. The latter opened it, and found an 
 infected porous plaster, which, as he handled 
 it, gave him', as he describes it, a peculiar 
 boring sensation in the pores of his hand 
 and face. At once he had his skin and his 
 office disinfected. He escaped serious 
 trouble ; the assistant was attacked by a 
 blood-poisoning and was ill for a year. 
 
 At his home Mr. Comstock one day re- 
 ceived by mail a collection of smallpox scabs, 
 labelled as such, with a hearty message from 
 the sender expressing the hope that they 
 would do their full work. Mr. Comstock 
 and his wife were at once vaccinated, and 
 escaped. He had had smallpox as a boy. 
 
 Still another time, as Mr. Comstock was 
 standing in the store of the American Tract 
 Society at 150 Nassau Street, New York, a 
 messenger came in and handed him a small 
 
WEAPONS THAT DID NOT PEOSPBE 139 
 
 pasteboard box. He received it innocently, 
 and opened it, only later learning its con- 
 tents. It was what is pleasantly known as 
 an infernal machine. A sixteen-ounce bottle 
 of rifle powder lay in the bottom of the box, 
 beside it a bottle of sulphuric acid, and be- 
 tween and around them plenty of closely- 
 packed broken glass. This was all well com- 
 pacted together, and over it lay a partition 
 of wood, glued down. On top of the wood 
 was a lever, eight or nine inches long, revolv- 
 ing on a screw through its centre. On one 
 end of the lever was a piece of emery, on 
 the other end an elastic band, fastened to a 
 screw turned into the wooden partition. At 
 the end of the box, where the emery-end of 
 the lever came, was a block of wood punc- 
 tured with holes in which were thrust half a 
 dozen match ends, and in the centre of these, 
 through a hole in the block, was a " quick 
 match," or fuse, communicating with the 
 powder beneath. Such a fuse, when con- 
 fined, burns with lightning-like rapidity. 
 The igniting of any one of the match ends 
 would ignite the fuse, the entire machine 
 would blow up, and Anthony Comstock 
 would be filled with broken glass, while the 
 
140 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 sulphuric acid would complete the job. The 
 box was so set, of course, that the opening 
 of the lid would release the lever, which 
 would send the emery sharply across the 
 match ends. 
 
 That was the plan. The little box was one 
 of the weapons that was intended to prosper. 
 God had other plans. The inventors of the 
 machine had, in their eagerness to make a 
 sure thing of it, drawn the elastic band so 
 taut that while the messenger was carrying 
 the box to Mr. Comstock the lever had been 
 slowly drawn under a bit of wood ; and when 
 the lid was removed the strength of the 
 elastic was exhausted, and there wasn't 
 enough force left to ignite a match. As 
 Mr. Comstock opened the box there was a 
 click ; everybody jumped ; and that was all. 
 
 " The wrath of man," says Mr. Comstock, 
 "shall praise thee: the remainder of wrath 
 shalt thou restrain." 
 
 While the free-thinkers were deciding to 
 repeal the Comstock law, still other haters of 
 this man who was putting them to confusion 
 kept trying to repeal his life ; yet both the 
 law and the life were in God's keeping, and 
 were not to be repealed until He said so. We 
 
WEAPONS THAT DID NOT PEOSPEE 141 
 
 don't always remember that at the time, how- 
 ever. It took a persistent faith and a sturdy 
 courage to carry the young New Englander 
 through those dark days. 
 
 The first time Mr. Comstock ever carried a 
 revolver was when the criminal saloon-keeper 
 Chapman, whose Brooklyn dive Comstock 
 closed up, was threatening his life. He did 
 it then on the advice of the Chief of Police 
 and the District Attorney; and he has car- 
 ried one ever since. In the enforcement of 
 the law, and dealing with desperate criminals 
 as he constantly does, he believes it is his 
 duty to trust in God and keep his powder 
 dry. He acts on the conviction that we 
 ought to put ourselves in the way of answer- 
 ing our own prayers if we can. 
 
 The case against Chapman's dive was 
 pressed, the license was revoked, and the 
 place was closed up. Chapman's gang of 
 cock-fighters let it be known that they were 
 going to burn Comstock' s house and run him 
 out of the place. His neighbours did not 
 dare to be seen walking with him on the 
 street. But Chapman, not Comstock, was 
 the one to leave. 
 
 There was a big Irish ex-prize-fighter, 
 
142 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 standing six feet three, named Sullivan, who 
 kept an obscene-book store in Nassau Street. 
 Mr. Comstock had him arrested. Out on 
 bail, he lay in wait one day as Comstock 
 came from Judge Benedict's Federal Court in 
 Chambers Street, near the City Hall, and was 
 crossing the park on the way to his office. 
 Mr. Comstock' s hands were full of exhibits, 
 and Sullivan struck out at him from the 
 shoulder, viciously. The young New Eng- 
 lander dodged, dropped the exhibits, and his 
 fist somehow landed just between the eyes 
 of the ex-prize-fighter, whose head dropped 
 helplessly back. Before he could recover, 
 Comstock sprang at him, caught him by the 
 throat, forced him backwards over one of the 
 chains that keep people off the grass, throttled 
 him with one hand while with the other he 
 kept the crowd off, and waited for the arrival 
 of a hastening policeman. Then Sullivan was 
 put into safe-keeping on the Island for as- 
 sault, and later was convicted on the original 
 charge. 
 
 In more than one instance Mr. Comstock's 
 alertness of mind and promptness of action 
 have served both to protect him from injury 
 of person or reputation, and to turn the tables 
 
WEAPONS THAT DID NOT PEOSPEE 143 
 
 on his enemies. He once trailed a " green 
 goods " fellow to New Jersey, and took the 
 man into custody. After the criminal had 
 been secured he was very anxious to get Mr. 
 Comstock to shift the nippers from the man's 
 right hand to his left hand. Mr. Comstock 
 had declined to do so, however, and he found 
 later that there was a razor in the man's 
 pocket which would have been very useful 
 could he have gotten a free hand at it. 
 Again, when Comstock was escorting a man 
 under arrest on a railroad train, in Pennsyl- 
 vania, and the man offered him $i,6oo then 
 and there for his freedom, the anti-vice sec- 
 retary simply called a brakeman and had him 
 count the money, as a valuable witness to 
 what had just occurred ! The man was sub- 
 sequently convicted and sentenced to two 
 years' imprisonment for bribery, and two 
 years for the original offense. This was 
 somewhat like the time when Mr. Comstock 
 learned that two men, one of whom was un- 
 der indictment, were coming to his house for 
 an interview with him. When they were to- 
 gether these men also tried to see what the 
 influence of a bribe would accomplish. But 
 Mr. Comstock had two other men on hand, 
 
144 ANTHONY COMSTOOK, PIGHTEE 
 
 concealed, and just called them in at the 
 right moment to have everything quite or- 
 deriy and shipshape in recording what had 
 occurred. 
 
 On another occasion a man whom Com- 
 stock had caught committing an infamous 
 felony, and who was under arrest, came up 
 behind his prosecutor on a stairway in the 
 court-house and spit in his face ; as Corn- 
 stock turned, the criminal broke his cane over 
 Comstock's head. And then he promptly 
 dropped the cane and himself dropped unex- 
 pectedly into a corner, while Mr. Comstock 
 stood over him until an officer could take 
 charge and lock him up. He was sent up 
 later for two years, and Mr. Comstock be- 
 lieves it was he who, after serving his time, 
 sent the infernal machine. 
 
 This criminal was one of the ringleaders in 
 a conspiracy to put their enemy permanently 
 out of the way. Mr. Comstock found an 
 anonymous letter in his pew in church saying 
 that he was to be killed, and about the same 
 time came another letter confirming this, 
 with the further information that a certain 
 man who " hung out " in Oxley's saloon, in 
 Sixth Avenue, New York, was plotting the 
 
WEAPONS THAT DID NOT PEOSPEB 145 
 
 thing. Mr. Comstock later discovered that 
 the letter had been sent to him by the police 
 officer whom he had had dismissed from the 
 force because of " tipping off " dealer Simp- 
 son, one of the early arrests. The ex-police- 
 man was now in the employ of this criminal 
 gang, and he said he would do anything 
 
 against Comstock, but "he'd be if 
 
 he'd stand for murder." 
 
 After his warning and information, Mr. 
 Comstock sent a man to Oxley's saloon to 
 trace the thing out. This man talked ex- 
 citedly and threateningly against Comstock in 
 the assassin's presence, and managed to get 
 acquainted. He then talked about putting 
 up a job to get Comstock impeached as a 
 witness in court. The thug's suspicions were 
 disarmed, and he took the decoy into his 
 confidence, explaining that there was no use 
 in trying to impeach their man in court, for 
 he had too many friends, but that they were 
 planning to sand-bag him to death as he came 
 out of church on a Sunday night. The sand- 
 bagging, done with an eel-skin filled with 
 sand, would leave no external mark, but 
 would kill by producing congestion of the 
 brain. An inquest would find death by apo- 
 
146 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 plexy, and no murder charge would be 
 made. 
 
 Those were days when the young Brooklyn 
 husband and father never knew, as he bade 
 good-bye to his wife and little girl in the 
 morning, whether he would ever see them 
 again. It was a time of awful strain and 
 suspense. But the comforting assurance of 
 God's promise concerning the weapons raised 
 against him was mighty ; and he was stayed 
 in his faith and courage. He was careful, 
 after the full report on the murder plot, not 
 to let any stranger walk near him to or from 
 church. But the plotters finally discovered 
 that the " decoy " was Mr. Comstock's man, 
 and the plot never materialized. 
 
 Back in 1868, when young Comstock, then 
 a clerk in a New York dry-goods house, had 
 caused the arrest of a man named Conroy 
 for selling obscene books to the other clerks 
 in that house, he had made a bitter enemy, 
 but he had not quenched the desire of the 
 man for that sort of trafific. In 1874 Conroy 
 was found to be using the mails for his old 
 business, operating in sixteen different post- 
 offices under eighteen aliases. He would 
 send out his circulars from one district, re- 
 
WEAPONS THAT DID NOT PEOSPBR 147 
 
 ceive his reply-mail in another, and fill the 
 orders from a third, thus safeguarding him- 
 self pretty well. But Mr. Comstock secured a 
 warrant from the United States Commissioner 
 for Conroy under the alias N. F. Kirke, at 
 Newark, N. J., for an offense committed there, 
 and the warrant was placed in Comstock' s 
 hands for execution. He captured Conroy 
 late one Saturday night as he came to the 
 Newark post-ofiEice for his mail, and took him 
 before the Commissioner. Conroy was ar- 
 raigned and committed to jail for a further 
 hearing. There being no United States 
 deputy marshal at hand, Mr. Comstock was 
 deputed by the Commissioner to take his 
 man to the Newark jail. This was done in a 
 closed carriage. 
 
 On the way the prisoner pleaded in the 
 most pitiable and abject way for his release. 
 When the jail was reached, the two men pre- 
 pared to alight, and Comstock was just 
 reaching for the door of the carriage when 
 Conroy seized his hand and struck him in the 
 head with the blade of a pocket-knife, cutting 
 through his hat and making a slight scalp 
 wound. As Comstock still sought to get the 
 door open, tiie man lunged desperately again 
 
148 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 with his knife, and this time with better effect, 
 as he tore Comstock's face open and slashed 
 through four facial arteries. The wounded 
 man then sprang out and his prisoner fol- 
 lowed, only to be covered instantly by the 
 revolver that plucky Anthony had whipped 
 from his pocket with one hand as he tried to 
 compress the wound and stop the flow of 
 blood with the other. In this condition he 
 marched his prisoner into the jail, turned him 
 over to the warden, asked for the address of 
 a reliable surgeon, and drove there on the 
 jump. 
 
 " Good-evening, doctor ; I've got a job for 
 you," was his quiet greeting. 
 
 " Well, I should think you had," answered 
 the surgeon. 
 
 The wound was hastily dressed and closed 
 with sticking plaster, and Mr. Comstock, ac- 
 companied by a post-office clerk who fortu- 
 nately was with him, drove to the depot and 
 was soon on a train to New York. Taking 
 carriage again to Brooklyn, he stopped at the 
 house of his loved pastor, the Rev. William 
 Ives Buddington, in order that he might ac- 
 company him to his home and break the 
 news to Mrs. Comstock. Mr. Buddington 
 
WEAPONS THAT DID NOT PEOSPEE 149 
 
 was away; but Mrs. Buddington took his 
 place and preceded Mr. Comstock to his 
 home. There she told the anxious wife that 
 there had been an accident, but that there 
 was no occasion to worry. Shortly afterward 
 Mr. Comstock arrived, to find awaiting him 
 a very brave little woman who, with a very 
 white face, took his arm and helped him up- 
 stairs. 
 
 The physician and pastor were soon at his 
 bedside, the severed arteries were picked up 
 and tied, the wound once more dressed, and 
 about midnight they left Anthony Comstock, 
 fighter, as comfortably off as a man could be 
 under the circumstances. Two weeks later 
 he was in Philadelphia attending a United 
 States court and prosecuting several cases. 
 He carries a long, deep scar to this day on 
 that left cheek. 
 
 The weapons raised against him have not 
 prospered. God is good ; His word stands 
 inviolate 
 
XI 
 
 BEFRIENDING THE CRIMINAL 
 
 THE best and hardest fighters in any 
 right cause seem to be those in 
 whom the loving and tender side of 
 their nature is most prominently developed. 
 Anthony Comstock is a striking example 
 of this principle. He is a "home body," 
 through and through, loving his home and 
 his dear ones with a deep tenderness. His 
 love for children is a passion in his life ; it is 
 they, indeed, for whom he has laid down his 
 life in his crusade of eternal vigilance against 
 the crimes whose objective is to ruin child- 
 hood. And he has learned, in the school of 
 sorrow, the pathway to love and tenderness. 
 His first-born and only child, a daughter, was 
 born in the summer of 187 1. The following 
 year he was in the thick of his early experi- 
 ences of desperate conflict with the doers of 
 evil. In June of 1872 the baby daughter 
 was taken ill. One morning, June 28th, Mr. 
 150 
 
BEFEIENDING THE CEIMINAL 151 
 
 Comstock left his home for court, while a 
 trained nurse shared with the mother the 
 care of the child. Mr. Comstock was con- 
 ducting the prosecution, and was on the 
 witness stand all day, under a bitter and 
 cudgelling cross-examination. At night he 
 returned to his home, to find the little girl 
 dead. The entry in his diary for that day 
 reads : " The Lord's will be done. Oh, for 
 grace to say it and live it 1 " 
 
 That was on a Friday. The court ad- 
 journed until Monday, when Mr. Comstock 
 went on to the stand again, while in the 
 meantime he and the heart-broken mother 
 had buried their child. 
 
 So his love for children is not "academic " 
 or in the abstract ; it has a basis that nothing 
 can ever take from him. A friend of the 
 writer's, Mr. Frederick Hall of Dundee, Illi- 
 nois, whose sketches of the child life of the 
 Bible have put readers under heavy obliga- 
 tion, recently had an interesting experience 
 with Mr. Comstock on this side of his nature. 
 He writes about it as follows : 
 
 I called at his office and introduced myself 
 to his stenographer as an acquaintance of 
 yours. It was twenty minutes before he came 
 
152 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEB 
 
 in, and then he was just from a legal battle, 
 and with his mind full of two other pressing 
 cases. Twice he interrupted our brief con- 
 versation to speak to an assistant about 
 them, and I could not but know that I had 
 chosen an inopportune time to break in upon 
 him. Yet he was courteous, determinedly 
 so, and made me stay when I quite insisted 
 upon leaving. 
 
 The impression he made upon me was of a 
 man of dominating, dictatorial, fighting spirit, 
 but resolutely subduing his harshnesses, 
 because he recognized his limitations and 
 fought himself as fiercely as he fought any 
 other adversary. A man, moreover, to whom 
 religion was a very real thing. A man who 
 would have fought well in Cromwell's Iron- 
 sides, singing hymns as he marched to battle. 
 
 But now mark how my impression of him 
 was enlarged : 
 
 I chanced to show him the pictures of my 
 little girls (moved doubtless by the same 
 paternal pride which prompted me to exhibit 
 them to you) and instantly, with bewildering 
 suddenness, at sight of their little faces all 
 the storm and stress of which he' was the 
 centre seemed to fall away. For a moment 
 he studied the pictures delightedly ; then 
 impulsively drew out his note-book, handed 
 me a little snapshot of himself, told me the 
 circumstances under which it had been taken, 
 and added : " When you get home, give that 
 to your little girls, and tell them it is ' Uncle 
 Tony.' " 
 
BEFEIE]^DING THE CEIMINAL 153 
 
 At home I wrote him a brief note, which 
 Grace and Muriel signed, telling him that 
 two little girls in Illinois thanked their " Uncle 
 Tony" for the picture he had sent. With 
 that I supposed the incident closed ; but in 
 about ten days there came to them a letter 
 (two closely typewritten pages) and a half- 
 dozen coloured post-cards, which this har- 
 assed and busy man had taken the time to 
 send them. By way of acknowledgment 
 Muriel sent him at Christmas time a little 
 pin ball, of her own making, and a letter. A 
 few days later there came to them another 
 letter and a large and excellent photograph 
 which hangs now, framed, in " the play cor- 
 ner." They know it only as " Uncle Tony," 
 and that he is a friend and protector to all 
 little children ; but when they are older I 
 shall tell them more about him and teach 
 them to associate with that picture the lines 
 of Bayard Taylor ; 
 
 " The bravest are the tenderest, 
 The loving are the daring." 
 
 Just think, I was in his presence less than 
 twenty minutes 1 
 
 The natural friendliness that exists between 
 Mr. Comstock and children once served him 
 in good stead in locating a criminal in 
 Canada. 
 
 In the later eighties, a complaint was re- 
 
154 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 ceived from Michigan that a person in a 
 town in Canada was sending obscene pic- 
 tures to Michigan and neighbouring locali- 
 ties. Mr. Comstock made an investigation 
 from a Michigan post-office, — doing this in 
 view of his knowledge of the practice of such 
 criminal traffickers. For example, if a boys' 
 or girls' seminary is being invaded with ob- 
 jectionable printed matter sent directly by 
 the one who has this matter for sale, in 
 order to be successful in catching the crim- 
 inal such correspondence as may be used to 
 secure evidence must come from the same 
 post-office as that of the seminary, or in its 
 near vicinity. Suspicion would at once be 
 aroused if inquiries for the printed matter 
 came from a remote quarter. 
 
 After securing complete evidence in the 
 Michigan case, Mr. Comstock corresponded 
 with the Commissioner of Police at Ottawa, 
 Canada, and arranged for a meeting with 
 himself and a lieutenant of police at Toronto. 
 Together the three men then went on to the 
 smaller town to make the arrest. 
 
 Of course the criminal was not using his 
 own name in conducting his mail order busi- 
 ness. Mr. Comstock tried to secure infor- 
 
BEPEIEKDINQ THE CEIMINAL 155 
 
 mation about him at the post-office, and 
 failed ; he was not known there. 
 
 Dropping into a stationery store, Comstock 
 found a bright boy acting as clerk, and began 
 looking over his stock of cancelled stamps 
 which he had for sale. Stamp collecting is 
 a hobby of Mr. Comstock's. 
 
 He bought some stamps from the boy, and 
 then told him he was from the United States, 
 a stranger, and had been corresponding with 
 a man living in that town whose name and 
 address were not known at the post-office ; 
 did the boy know him, and could he tell 
 Mr. Comstock of his whereabouts. 
 
 The boy, who was a gentlemanly young 
 fellow, said he did know the man, and offered 
 to show the stranger where he lived. To- 
 gether they went to a hotel, and the boy 
 introduced his new American friend to the 
 dealer in vice, who had his office at his hotel 
 room. He had formerly been a mill worker ; 
 now he was making photographs of an atro- 
 cious character. 
 
 After the boy had left them, Mr. Comstock 
 introduced himself to the stranger by show- 
 ing him some correspondence that they had 
 had together concerning the man's stock in 
 
156 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 trade. The dealer willingly showed his caller 
 more of his stock, and said that he had new 
 specimens that he would be glad to show. 
 The American made some selections from 
 among them, and then asked the dealer if he 
 would object to walking with him to another 
 hotel where Comstock had left his satchel. 
 The Police Commissioner and lieutenant were 
 waiting there, and quietly arrested the dealer 
 with his illicit goods in hand. 
 
 Of course the criminal, together with some 
 others, criticized the boy who had helped in 
 the arrest of a fellow townsman. It so hap- 
 pened, however, that the boy had been quite 
 unaware of Mr. Comstock's mission, and had 
 simply offered to do a courteous act for a 
 stranger. Even had he been fully aware of 
 Mr. Comstock's purpose, he might have been 
 quite beyond criticism had he helped in put- 
 ting a stop to the criminal trade of one whom 
 he knew. 
 
 After reaching home Mr. Comstock did a 
 characteristic thing in sending his young 
 Canadian friend some stamps from his own 
 collection. In 1908, about twenty years later, 
 Comstock received a letter of greetings and 
 remembrance from the Canadian boy, then a 
 
BEFEIENDING THE CEIMINAL 157 
 
 married man with a family of children, and 
 occupying an official position of honour and 
 responsibility in his native town. He was 
 sending Mr. Comstock a set of the Quebec 
 Commemoration stamps, which went into the 
 Secretary's valuable collection, and are prized 
 highly. But the remembrance of that boy 
 is what Mr. Comstock prizes most. It was 
 typical of the brighter things that occasion- 
 ally come into the strenuous life of this vice 
 fighter. 
 
 Mr. Comstock's love is not limited to chil- 
 dren nor to his friends. It flows out freely 
 and unrestrictedly to his enemies and the 
 very persons whom he must prosecute. And 
 the nature of his work makes many enemies. 
 Since 1872 he has brought to trial 2,713 
 cases, and of these about one and a half per 
 cent, have been acquitted : the remaining 
 ninety-eight and a half per cent, were con- 
 victed. That means that many a malefactor 
 has breathed threatenings and determined 
 revenge against this man ; and, as has been 
 shown, some of these have not been idle 
 threats. Yet this has not embittered him; 
 he lives in such complete dependence upon 
 God that the love which God is has domi- 
 
158 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 nant place in his life, and determines his 
 attitude towards all alike. 
 
 One of his rock-bottom principles is that 
 every one with whom he deals shall get the 
 full benefit of all his legal rights. The first 
 thing he does after arresting a man is to tell 
 him that anything he now says may be used 
 against him, and that he need say nothing if 
 he does not wish to ; that he has the privilege 
 of retaining counsel ; and that his prosecutor, 
 Comstock, will see that his every legal right 
 is defended. And this explosive, aggressive, 
 intolerant, tender-hearted fighter keeps his 
 word, so much so that lawyers and courts 
 and even many criminals know that it is so 
 and respect him for it. " I tell you, Charles," 
 he said to the writer one day, pounding the 
 table with his massive fist as he spoke, " I 
 wouldn't any more be guilty of depriving a 
 man of his legal rights than I'd put my hand 
 in his pocket and take his pocketbook." 
 What a different place our courts of justice 
 would be if all lawyers held to this simple 
 principle of honour I 
 
 During the first four years after 1872 a 
 large number of very notorious characters 
 were convicted by Comstock, and in many 
 
BEFEIENDING THE CEIMINAL 159 
 
 instances they were sentenced to the full ex- 
 tent of the law. Plots to put this new " troub- 
 ler of Israel " out of the way were real and 
 dangerous. Among the criminals thus im- 
 prisoned was a mal-practitioner who also sent 
 infamous stuff through the mails, and who, 
 on Comstock's prosecution, went to King's 
 County penitentiary for two years, and served 
 his time. Warnings were brought to Mr. 
 Comstock's ofifice repeatedly that as soon as 
 this man came out he was going to " do 
 Comstock up." More than once the Agent 
 of the Anti-Vice Society was obliged to go to 
 the City Hall police headquarters for special 
 officers to accompany him in order to safe- 
 guard him against just such men as they lay 
 in wait for him near the entrance of his own 
 office building. 
 
 One morning, shortly after the release of 
 the mal-practitioner, whose name was White- 
 head, Mr. Comstock read in the paper that 
 he had been arrested on a new charge and 
 was committed, pending bail and trial, to the 
 Raymond Street Jail in Brooklyn. And a 
 little later that very morning, in Brooklyn, 
 Mr. Comstock saw the man coming towards 
 him on Fulton Street. He had furnished bail 
 
160 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEB 
 
 and was at liberty. The two men caught 
 sight of each other about the same instant. 
 
 " I'm in for it now," thought Anthony to 
 himself, as he quietly walked forward ; then 
 " Good-morning," he said courteously to his 
 enemy as they were passing each other. 
 
 " Can I speak to you a minute ? " de- 
 manded Whitehead. His face was livid ; he 
 seemed labouring under intense nervous ex- 
 citement. 
 
 " Certainly," answered Comstock ; and he 
 slid his hand into his forward trousers pocket, 
 resting it on the revolver which was there. 
 To his surprise Whitehead spoke out ab- 
 ruptly : 
 
 " Comstock, I'm in trouble, and you're the 
 only man that can get me out of it." 
 
 "You know I can't take your word and 
 go into court on the strength of that," Mr. 
 Comstock responded ; " but if you will give 
 me the facts and it is possible for me to verify 
 them, you shall have the benefit of it." 
 
 Whitehead then continued : " I got to 
 thinking about you last night in jail. You 
 sent me up ; but you caught me square. I've 
 said hard things about you ; and I want you 
 to forgive me, and help me out of my trouble." 
 
BEPEIBNDING THE CEIMINAL 161 
 
 Then he told his story. It was a long one, 
 and involved details that need not be gone 
 into here. But what interested Mr. Com- 
 stock was the fact that, in discussing the 
 complaint now made against himself, White- 
 head made statements that corroborated the 
 complaint in every detail except one ; on that 
 one the question of his real guilt turned, and 
 he denied it absolutely. The sweeping ad- 
 mission of nine-tenths of the prosecution thus 
 voluntarily made by the man under suspicion 
 was such that Mr. Comstock, if he had been 
 tricky, could have gone to the District At- 
 torney then and there and laid the matter be- 
 fore him ; and there would have been no es- 
 cape for Whitehead. But Comstock's enemy 
 had appealed to him for help ; and Mr. Com- 
 stock believes that there ought to be a great 
 difference between the professional criminal 
 and the professing Christian. He assured 
 the man of all the assistance he could give 
 him, and they parted. 
 
 The person bringing the present complaint 
 against Whitehead was a woman, then de- 
 tained in the House of Detention in New 
 York. Mr. Comstock went to an address in 
 Brooklyn where she had temporarily roomed. 
 
162 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 He ascertained from her landlady that this 
 woman had been in her rooms on a certain 
 night when, if her complaint was true, she 
 would have had to be in New York ; and 
 that a man, evidently an accomplice, had 
 called at the Brooklyn address that evening. 
 Then he went to the House of Detention and 
 interviewed the woman herself. At first she 
 told the same story that she had sworn to be- 
 fore the court. Mr. Comstock, having as- 
 certained that she was a Roman Catholic, 
 asked her if she would dare to go to her fa- 
 ther confessor and perjure her soul by repeat- 
 ing her statement at the confessional. He 
 also asked her about the man who had called 
 at the Brooklyn address the night that she 
 claimed to be in New York. 
 
 By this time the woman, doubtless fearing 
 that her questioner knew more than he really 
 did, broke down, admitted that the whole ac- 
 cusation against Whitehead was false, and 
 told facts that showed just how it had been 
 worked out. 
 
 It had been the result of a deep-laid plot 
 by a man who had been convicted of a crime 
 and sentenced to fourteen years' imprison- 
 ment, and who suspected Whitehead of being 
 
BEPEIENDING THE CEIMINAL 163 
 
 responsible for his exposure and arrest. This 
 man, in prison, had put a former partner of 
 his (a friend of the Broolclyn woman's) up to 
 the job of incriminating Whitehead. 
 
 Mr. Comstock now had the facts, and 
 brought them to the attention of the Brook- 
 lyn District Attorney. He laid them before 
 the grand jury, and the guilty man was in- 
 dicted. The matter was kept secret, a bench 
 warrant was issued for the arrest, and was 
 given to Comstock to serve. The man was 
 located in Rochester, was traced to Wyom- 
 ing, New York, where he was operating a 
 medical office, and there was arrested by Mr. 
 Comstock, made a confession, and accom- 
 panied his captor back to Brooklyn. 
 
 They had to travel at night, on a sleeper ; 
 and Mr. Comstock put his man comfortably 
 to bed, slipped a pair of handcuffs on his 
 ankles, and said he would see him in the 
 morning. " I guess you will," agreed the 
 man. 
 
 The prisoner pleaded guilty to the indict- 
 ment and was sentenced to imprisonment. 
 And Anthony Comstock's sworn enemy. 
 Whitehead, went free, because of this tireless 
 labour in his behalf by his former prosecutor. 
 
164 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTBE 
 
 It is this sort of rigid insistence upon 
 justice to criminals and honest men alike 
 that, during almost forty years of public prac- 
 tice, has won for Mr. Comstock the unstinted 
 respect and admiration of the men who know 
 how rare the quality is. No matter how 
 bitter the opposing counsel may be, nor how 
 hostile the defendant, Mr. Comstock has 
 faithfully striven never to allow in himself 
 any feeling of resentment, — especially towards 
 the man under his arrest. He aims to treat 
 such a man as fairly as though he were acting 
 as his counsel instead of his prosecutor, so far 
 as securing to him his legal rights is concerned. 
 
 A Bowery dealer in pictures and frames 
 once fell into Mr. Comstock's hands because 
 he was selling certain pictures of foreign 
 manufacture that were objectionable. He 
 was held for trial. The man's daughter, an 
 eighteen-year-old girl, came to Mr. Com- 
 stock's office in great distress, and said that 
 a lawyer wanted two hundred and fifty dol- 
 lars before he would take up her father's case 
 in court. Mr. Comstock had learned, sub- 
 sequent to the man's arrest, that he had not 
 been long in the United States, and that, hav- 
 ing seen similar pictures freely exposed for 
 
BEFEIENDING THE CRIMINAL 165 
 
 sale in his own country, he had sold them 
 here in ignorance of the law, and of course 
 he now promised never to handle them again. 
 The minimum penalty for his offense was a 
 fifty dollar fine or ten days ; the maximum, 
 one year and five hundred dollars. 
 
 To the distressed daughter Mr. Comstock 
 said : " Your father will probably not be will- 
 ing to take my advice ; but if he does, I will 
 see that all his legal rights are presented be- 
 fore the court. He does not require a 
 lawyer : that is money thrown away. The 
 thing for him to do is simply to go into 
 court, plead guilty to having had these things 
 to sell, and I will present the facts in the case 
 to the court." 
 
 Fortunately, the foreigner took this good 
 but unusual advice from the prosecution. 
 Mr. Comstock called the court's attention to 
 the facts constituting the crime with which 
 the man was charged ; then he called atten- 
 tion to the fact that the man was a foreigner, 
 had been here only a short time, claimed 
 ignorance of the law, and supposed he had 
 the same right to sell the pictures that he had 
 in his own country. The court imposed a 
 fine of seventy-five dollars. 
 
166 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEE 
 
 If this man's case had been taken by the 
 lawyer who wanted it, and the counsel had 
 attempted to earn his fee by taking up the 
 time of the court in fighting the case, the 
 defendant would in all probability have been 
 heavily fined and imprisoned. 
 
 While it is not Mr. Comstock's place to 
 withhold any fact that goes to establish the 
 guilt of the accused, and while he does not 
 appear in any sense on behalf of the defend- 
 ant or as his counsel, yet he does seek to 
 present to the court everything that it is 
 proper for the court to know in favour of the 
 defendant. He believes, as he has every 
 reason to, that it is his holding to this prin- 
 ciple that has in great measure allayed the 
 savage opposition which for so many years 
 he had to meet with in his work of prosecut- 
 ing criminals. 
 
 He aims never to act until he has absolute 
 knowledge of the guilt of the accused and 
 can prove it by legal evidence — often so dif- 
 ferent from moral evidence. 
 
 Having established a man's guilt, which 
 it is his duty to do, he then insists that all the 
 facts must go to the court, whether the 
 defendant is convicted after trial or pleads 
 
BEFEIENDING THE CEIMINAL 167 
 
 guilty. He is equally insistent that all the 
 facts in the defendant's favour are presented 
 to the court whether or not the defendant 
 has counsel, and whether or not he throws 
 himself on the mercy of the court. Yet 
 even then he often sees defendants sacrificed 
 by their own counsel. Many an unscrupu- 
 lous lawyer demands the heaviest fee he can 
 hope to get, then goes into court, and, in 
 order to deceive his client or to satisfy him 
 that he is earning his fee, makes a show of 
 abusing the witnesses and misrepresents the 
 facts to the court. The client's interests are 
 sacrificed, time is wasted, and a severer 
 penalty is incurred than if the truth had 
 been told or the client had pleaded guilty. 
 
 A recent case in Philadelphia illustrates 
 this. A picture dealer had sold offensive 
 pictures to a representative of the Society, 
 and Mr. Comstock had found quantities of 
 the pictures in his possession at the time of 
 making the arrest. After conferring with 
 the guilty man's counsel, Mr. Comstock sug- 
 gested that he plead guilty, in which case 
 the prosecutor would be content with a fine. 
 The counsel at first agreed to this. But 
 a minister of the defendant's church who was 
 
168 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEE 
 
 in touch with the man strenuously objected, 
 on the ground that to plead guilty would 
 bring reproach on the defendant's name. 
 " Any more so," asked Mr. Comstock, " than 
 to deny it and then be convicted by twelve 
 men?" But trial was insisted upon; the 
 jury did not leave their seats to render their 
 verdict of " Guilty " ; and the man went to 
 prison for two months instead of being 
 fined. 
 
 Two men in New York were charged in 
 the federal courts with violating the postal 
 laws ; they were indicted by the grand jury, 
 and their cases were set for trial. The coun- 
 sel in each case conferred with Mr, Com- 
 stock ; in each case they were shown that 
 the evidence for conviction was absolute, 
 and they were advised to plead guilty and 
 then show whatever mitigating circumstances 
 could be advanced. The counsel for one of 
 the two men took Mr. Comstock's advice, 
 pleaded guilty, and his client was fined five 
 hundred dollars. The other fought the case 
 before a jury : his man went to prison for a 
 year and paid the five hundred dollars fine as 
 well. The charge in both cases was identic- 
 ally the same. 
 
BEFEIENDIlfG THE CEIMINAL 169 
 
 The representatives of law and order do 
 not always work with the Secretary of the 
 Society for the Suppression of Vice in his 
 efforts to safeguard the public. He once 
 arrested a man in New York City, brought 
 him before a magistrate, presented the neces- 
 sary evidence, and the magistrate held the 
 man for trial. Upon trial the man was con- 
 victed, but sentence was suspended by the 
 court in order to give him an opportunity 
 to find the person who sold him the objec- 
 tionable pictures that had led to his arrest. 
 
 The morning following the suspension of 
 sentence the convicted man came to Mr. 
 Comstock's office and told him he would 
 show him the person he was after. It was 
 arranged between them that a hundred pic- 
 tures should be purchased from the " higher 
 up" dealer, in Comstock's presence. This 
 was done. The wholesaler was then arrested, 
 and was brought before the same magistrate 
 who had held the first man for trial. 
 
 After fresh evidence had been presented, 
 and the facts clearly established, the mag- 
 istrate discharged the wholesaler I Not only 
 so, but in doing this the magistrate passed 
 the pictures around to the reporters and 
 
170 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 others to look at, and declared that there 
 was " nothing wrong with them." And this 
 in face of the fact that the Special Sessions 
 Court had convicted the other man, con- 
 demning the pictures as unlawful. 
 
 Mr. Comstock was, of course, for the time 
 being helpless. Later he made charges 
 against this magistrate, and the man was 
 dismissed from the bench. 
 
 Many of the best lawyers have now come 
 to understand that when Mr. Comstock says 
 a thing is so, it is so ; and that when he rec- 
 ommends a certain course of action for the 
 man that he is prosecuting, he does it be- 
 cause he has nothing but that one's interest 
 at heart. In the early days this was not un- 
 derstood, and there would be fierce legal 
 battles whenever he got into court, and at- 
 tempts to belittle this man who was sacrificing 
 his life and reputation for others. But those 
 days have largely passed. Out of the old 
 storm of opposition Mr. Comstock's God-em- 
 powered adherence to the principles of jus- 
 tice, honour, and love has forced even his 
 enemies to respect him, and has won a wide 
 admiration from bench and bar. Neither 
 lawyers nor physicians, as a rule, will accept 
 
BEFRIENDING THE CRIMINAL 171 
 
 any fees from him when he has need of their 
 services, because of their recognition of his 
 unique place as a public benefactor. 
 
 There was an ex-pugilist who had taken 
 up the practice of law and was at the zenith 
 of his success at the time that young Com- 
 stock began his work. He was a man of 
 high standing, and it was often said of him 
 that his word was as good as his bond. He 
 and Comstock had a number of encounters 
 in the courts, and, as Anthony said to him in 
 later years, " You used to rub my ears pretty 
 hard when we first met." This lawyer was 
 very faithful to his clients' interests, and 
 would invariably make a strong fight for 
 them. But as the years went on and he 
 learned Comstock's ways and character, he 
 got into the habit of coming to the prosecutor, 
 and saying, "I appear for so-and-so, whom 
 you've arrested. Have you got a case against 
 him ? " 
 
 " Yes," Comstock would answer, " and 
 I'll show you what the facts are." 
 
 Frequently the reply would be : " All I want 
 to know is that you tell me you've got a 
 case ; if you have, I know there's no use fight- 
 ing ; there's nothing left for me but to waive 
 
172 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 examination before the magistrate, go into 
 court and plead guilty, and make the best 
 terms I can for my client." 
 
 Of course, one result of thus putting Mr. 
 Comstock on his honour was that, if there 
 was any technical point in favour of the de- 
 fendant, he was in honour bound to tell the 
 lawyer ; and he did. To-day there are many 
 lawyers who treat the " puritanical " prosecu- 
 tor's cases in much the same manner as did 
 the ex-pugilist ; they have learned that he 
 will not lie to them or trick them. To a 
 lawyer who is thus going to plead guilty for 
 his client Comstock will often say : " Now I 
 want you to know the exact facts ; for if you 
 make any misstatement in court I shall have 
 to get up and correct it, and that will preju- 
 dice your client." So scrupulously does he 
 administer justice, 
 
 Mr. Comstock recently had a touching ex- 
 perience in the course of his routine work. 
 The Post-Ofifice Department had referred a 
 matter to him which necessitated his arrest- 
 ing a woman who had sent some infamous 
 matter through the mails. With the woman 
 at the time of her arrest was her twelve-year- 
 old little daughter. After making the arrest. 
 
BEFEIBNDING THE CEIMINAL 173 
 
 Mr. Comstock told the mother of her legal 
 rights; and she responded by telling him 
 something of the character and history of the 
 man who had made the complaint against 
 her. These facts made a very decided change 
 in the aspect of the case. Mr. Comstock as- 
 sured the woman that he would see that jus- 
 tice and only justice was done, and was about 
 to leave the house when the little girl came 
 up to him, rested her head confidingly on his 
 breast, and cried as though her heart would 
 break. "Bertha," said the man who loves 
 and is living for children, " please trust me 
 in this matter, and do not worry any more 
 about Mamma." Smiling at him through 
 her tears, the child reached up and kissed 
 him, saying as she did so, " I will trust you." 
 
 He told the mother later that no stronger 
 argument could be made for her than that 
 little girl had already made ; and also that, 
 if the facts were as reported to him, the man 
 who made the complaint would get very little 
 satisfaction in the court of justice when the 
 matter came up for final settlement. 
 
 The case later came before the federal 
 court, the facts were faithfully presented, and 
 the woman pleaded guilty. A fine of one 
 
174 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEB 
 
 dollar was imposed. Shortly after, Mr. Corn- 
 stock received a letter from her, in which she 
 expressed her shame and sorrow for so far 
 forgetting herself as to have repeated loath- 
 some matters told to her ; and she thanked 
 her "prosecutor" out of a full heart for the 
 "square deal" that had been given her by 
 the man her little girl had seen fit to trust. 
 
 " I tell you," said Mr. Comstock as he 
 wrote of this incident, "it is a comfort and 
 delight to mete out even-handed justice, 
 even though one is dealing with a violator of 
 the law. There are such things as accidental 
 criminals as well as professionals, and happy 
 is the man who can make the distinction." 
 
XII 
 
 " PERSECUTING " THE ART STUDENTS' 
 LEAGUE 
 
 MR. COMSTOCK has sometimes 
 been accused of pestering and per- 
 secuting innocent persons in his 
 persistent campaign against vice. One of 
 the most widely advertised instances of this 
 sort in recent years was the case of the Art 
 Students' League in New York City. It is 
 worth getting at the facts to see whether the 
 charge of persecution holds. 
 
 Mr. Comstock received a copy of a 
 pamphlet that was being sent out to adver- 
 tise the work of the Art Students' League, 
 its purpose being to induce young men and 
 women to join the League upon payment of 
 the annual dues. This pamphlet contained 
 drawings, made by amateurs, of nude figures, 
 particularly offensive. The pamphlets were 
 being sent out indiscriminately and by the 
 thousands, apparently to people of all sorts 
 whether known to be lovers of art or not. 
 
 It was a plain violation of the postal laws, 
 and Mr. Comstock sent one of his assistants 
 175 
 
176 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 to the office of the League, — for two pur- 
 poses : to secure copies of the pamphlet, and 
 to try to locate some responsible man offi- 
 cially connected with the League. It was 
 necessary to secure evidence in the form of the 
 pamphlet directly from the office of the League, 
 that a search warrant might be secured, with 
 authority to seize the objectionable matter. 
 
 Failing to locate any man who could be 
 held responsible, a young woman who was 
 distributing the pamphlets, and even giving 
 them away free of charge to any one who 
 happened to call for them, was placed under 
 arrest, the search warrant was executed, and 
 the objectionable matter was seized, 
 
 A preliminary hearing was held before a 
 city magistrate. At this hearing a number 
 of men, so-called members of the League, 
 were present. In open court Mr. Comstock 
 called for any who were responsible for the 
 employment of the young woman, and for the 
 distribution of the pamphlets, to come for- 
 ward and take the place of the defendant at 
 the bar, thus properly assuming the respon- 
 sibility for the acts of their employee. No 
 one appeared. Comstock then turned di- 
 rectly to the alleged members of the League 
 
THE AET STUDENTS' LEAGUE 177 
 
 who were present, and asked them — " brave 
 men hiding behind this young woman's 
 skirts," he said later — to come to the front 
 and take her place, Not a man responded. 
 Mr. Comstock received private information, 
 however, that they were " going to lick him 
 when he got out of court." But he found 
 these men, he says, no braver outside the 
 court room than they were inside. 
 
 Newspaper attacks, however, were resorted 
 to, and a vigorous effort was made to belittle 
 the Secretary of the Society for the Suppres- 
 sion of Vice. It was evidently hoped that 
 by ridicule the proper administration of the 
 law and the condemnation of the objection- 
 able pamphlets could be prevented. There 
 was no relenting on the part of the prosecu- 
 tion, however, and a little later the managers 
 of the League authorized the destruction of 
 the printed matter that had been seized, with- 
 out even awaiting the trial of the young 
 woman who had been arrested. 
 
 In such cases as this the law requires the 
 District Attorney, upon the conviction of the 
 defendant in whose possession unlawful mat- 
 ters have been found, to destroy all such 
 matters as have been seized. The only ob- 
 
178 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEB 
 
 ject of the Suppression of Vice Society in 
 this instance was to prevent the further dis- 
 semination of the objectionable pamphlet. 
 As soon as they were destroyed by order of 
 the District Attorney, therefore, Comstock 
 wrote that official and asked that further pro- 
 ceedings against the young woman be dis- 
 missed, that no odium of conviction might be 
 attached to her. This was done. 
 
 It is evident that the arrest of the young 
 woman clerk was proper as being the only 
 course open to the Society in the administra- 
 tion of the law against a public menace. 
 That she should have been the scapegoat of 
 the Society was regrettable. But could Mr. 
 Comstock's action be classed as "persecu- 
 tion " ? 
 
 In December of that year, however, an 
 effort was made to have Comstock removed 
 from his office of Post-Oflfice Inspector. 
 When he learned of this attempt, Mr. Com- 
 stock went on to Washington in person to 
 see Mr. Cortelyou, then Postmaster-General. 
 Mr. Cortelyou was sitting at his official desk 
 when Mr. Comstock's name was brought in 
 by an attendant. Instead of sending for his 
 caller, the Postmaster-General arose from his 
 
THE AET STUDENTS' LEAGUE 179 
 
 desk, walked out to the reception-room, and 
 took Mr. Comstock heartily by the hand. 
 Walking back together to the private office 
 they talked the matter over, and Mr. Cortel- 
 you said : 
 
 "Mr. Comstock, I have never had a 
 thought of not reappointing you. But you're 
 a veteran, and I have a right to appoint you 
 under the Civil Service rule. I am going so 
 to appoint you, and now I am going to give 
 you a salary whether you want one or not." 
 Mr. Comstock had, it will be recalled, served 
 since March 5, 1873, as an officer of the Fed- 
 eral Government without pay, this having 
 been done at his own request. It is a ques- 
 tion whether any other man living has any 
 such record. At Mr. Cortelyou's insistence 
 he now consented to receive a salary from the 
 government, the first that he had ever taken. 
 And the newspapers published the statement 
 that the Postmaster-General had refused to 
 reappoint Mr. Comstock ! 
 
 The vindicated lover of purity has said 
 quaintly, in comment on this experience : 
 
 "You fellows who are sowing seed don't 
 know what the rays of the sun are on the 
 back of the weeder " 
 
XIII 
 
 CAREFULNESS, AND A CONSCIENCE 
 
 PERHAPS no one would ordinarily 
 think of Mr. Comstock as being of a 
 scholarly temperament. Yet he meets 
 to an unusual degree the qualifications sug- 
 gested in a remarkable definition of that tem- 
 perament that is given in Appleton's Ency- 
 clopaedia of American Biography : " That 
 rare combination of profound insight, sus- 
 tained attention, microscopic accuracy, iron 
 tenacity, and disinterested pursuit of truth, 
 which characterizes the great scientific dis- 
 coverer or the great historian." Neither 
 scientist nor historian, Mr. Comstock has 
 made history, and is still making it, by the 
 habitual application of these qualities. And 
 the incalculable gain of them comes out con- 
 stantly, and in unexpected ways. 
 
 For example, he has on file to-day, jacketed 
 
 and classified, the evidence in every one of 
 
 the cases he ever arrested. The evidence is 
 
 full and detailed ; and Mr. Comstock says 
 
 180 
 
CAEEPULNESS, AND A CONSCIENCE 181 
 
 dryly, as he refers to them and thinks of the 
 many attempts that have been made to dis- 
 credit him pubhcly, " Come on with your 
 civil suits against me ! " Men used to try to 
 charge him with maldng false arrests. They 
 don't do it now ; the attempts were discour- 
 aging. 
 
 A bit of old evidence, coupled with Com- 
 stock's good memory, is sometimes a boon 
 to a needy sufferer. Some years ago a man 
 w^ho had grown weary of the privilege of 
 supporting his wife decided to repudiate her 
 and shift the burden. Her counsel brought 
 suit against him for non-support. The hus- 
 band denied her wifehood, or even any 
 knowledge of her. But it was learned that 
 Comstock had once arrested the man, and he 
 was subpoenaed to appear before the referee. 
 Before going into court Mr. Comstock ex- 
 amined the records that he had made at the 
 time of arrest, as filed in his office, and he 
 took them with him. 
 
 As they waited for the court to open he 
 saw his former prisoner standing near by, 
 and spoke to him, calling him by name. 
 " You don't know me," said the man ; " you 
 never saw me before." 
 
182 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 " I do know you," said Mr. Comstock. 
 
 " On date [about five years before] I 
 
 arrested you down in Wall Street, and you 
 came to my office to beg me not to prosecute 
 you. You brought with you and introduced 
 to me your bride, who is this woman here in 
 court ; and you wanted me to let up on you 
 for your wife's sake, as you said you had just 
 been married." 
 
 Then Mr. Comstock gave the facts under 
 oath, on the witness stand, and the wife won 
 her case. 
 
 At another time the detailed accuracy and 
 scrupulous honesty of records and practice 
 showed forth strongly when the case of a 
 United States marshal was involved. Fol- 
 lowing the conviction of Morris Sickel in the 
 United States Court in New Haven, Connect- 
 icut, Comstock had been summoned as a 
 witness to attend the federal court in that 
 district. Engagements in New York courts 
 just then prevented his attendance. Some 
 days afterward he received a witness-fee roll 
 to be signed, as a witness before the Con- 
 necticut court which he had not attended. 
 His suspicions being aroused, he went to 
 Washington and examined the marshal's re- 
 
CAREFULNESS, AND A CONSCIENCE 183 
 
 turns. Here he found that many of the pay- 
 rolls for witness-fees which, on other occa- 
 sions, Comstock had signed, had been altered 
 after they had been signed, the amount of 
 money called for being increased beyond the 
 actual amount that Comstock, as a witness, 
 had received. The practice had been, in a 
 number of cases, first to fill out the amount 
 of witness-fee in pencil ; after the witness had 
 signed for his fee, the number of miles 
 travelled would be increased, or the number 
 of days in attendance upon court, then the 
 additional money thus called for would be 
 added to the claim, the forged document sent 
 to Washington, and the government would 
 pay the claim. The marshal pocketed the 
 excess. 
 
 Now it had been Mr. Comstock's practice 
 for years to keep an accurate and detailed 
 account of all moneys received by him, from 
 whatever source. In order to safeguard and 
 preserve his own strict integrity as a witness, 
 and to prevent counsel for the defendants us- 
 ing the fact that Comstock was drawing a 
 witness-fee as an opportunity to impeach his 
 motives and prejudice him before a jury, as 
 was constantly attempted by the opposition. 
 
184 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEE 
 
 he has made it his invariable practice to turn 
 over to the Society for the Suppression of 
 Vice all the fees that he receives. They have 
 amounted, during his service, to more than 
 $22,000. These fees he turns in to the 
 treasury of the Society at the end of each 
 month, in a monthly statement rendered to 
 the treasurer. And not only witness-fees, but 
 every cent from other sources, whether it be 
 from the use of the office telephone by an 
 outsider, or the sale of old metal or paper 
 stock that has been destroyed, is carefully 
 recorded, item by item, and paid over to the 
 treasurer. The "microscopic accuracy and 
 iron tenacity " hold here as in the hunting 
 down of crime. 
 
 So Anthony Comstock had merely to turn 
 from the United States marshal's pay-rolls to 
 his own daily cash account, as kept by him 
 during all those years, to know the exact 
 amount of money that he as witness had re- 
 ceived while serving in the Connecticut 
 federal court. He found that nearly every 
 item which he had received from the marshal 
 had been tampered with, and increased to an 
 amount beyond that which he had received. 
 
 When he preferred charges against the 
 
CAKEFULNESS, AND A CONSCIENCE 185 
 
 marshal, he found that the man was backed 
 by strong poUtical influence. The night be- 
 fore the hearing, Mr. Comstock was sum- 
 moned to the house of the District Attorney 
 at Stamford, Connecticut, and an effort was 
 made to induce him to partake freely of wine, 
 which the teetotaler declined. The following 
 day, the District Attorney appeared, presu- 
 mably as the representative of the United 
 States Government, but actually, as the exam- 
 ination developed, in the r61e of counsel for 
 the accused marshal. The local papers 
 pitched into Comstock with the habitual 
 zeal, and a strong effort was made to turn 
 public sentiment against him by flagrant 
 misrepresentations. The marshal was indeed 
 a political power in the state. 
 
 The court made a report favourable to the 
 marshal. After the newspapers had had 
 their say, Mr. Comstock went to Washington 
 and called on the Secretary of the Treasury. 
 
 " Have you seen the report of Judge 
 
 in this matter?" he was asked. No, Mr. 
 Comstock had not seen it, but he said he 
 would like to. The Secretary sent a mes- 
 senger for it, and Mr. Comstock read it 
 through. 
 
186 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 "What have you to say?" asked the 
 Secretary of the Treasury. 
 
 " Nothing at present," was the answer. 
 " What I have to say I will say in writing, 
 under my oath," added Mr. Comstock. 
 
 He went back to New York and prepared 
 a statement of facts, giving the list of witness- 
 fees that he had received. He pointed out 
 that the amounts that he had received were 
 entered in the sheets in pencil, and that these 
 pencil entries as first made could still be seen 
 on the sheets ; that the amounts drawn by the 
 marshal were overlaid in ink, but that the 
 pencil amounts corroborated Comstock's 
 personal accounts. He also stated that he 
 had called the judge's attention to these 
 facts. 
 
 This report of Mr. Comstock's was re- 
 ceived in Washington ori a Friday or Satur- 
 day. On Monday a successor to the United 
 States marshal was nominated to the Senate 
 by President Grant, and the politically in- 
 fluential marshal stepped down and out. 
 There are times when it does not take the 
 United States Government long to act. 
 Homer Byington, who for many years was 
 editor of the Norwalk (Conn.) Gazette, and 
 
CAEEFULNESS, AND A CONSCIENCE 187 
 
 who was at the time the Washington corre- 
 spondent of the New York Tribune and other 
 papers, remarlsed that he would rather have 
 the Devil get after him than young Com- 
 stock. Certain it is that " young Comstock " 
 has been used of the Lord to make fruitless 
 a great deal of the Devil's energy. 
 
 In little matters Mr. Comstock's quiet care- 
 fulness has sometimes been of unexpected 
 usefulness to others. At the time of the 
 World's Fair in Chicago he was in a sleeping 
 car, and, after the people were up in the 
 morning, he heard a man saying excitedly : 
 "This nigger stole my wife's watch. She 
 left it in her sacque, on the pillow ; the porter 
 came and made up the bunk, and the watch 
 is gone. He's got it I " 
 
 " May I see the sacque ? " asked Mr. Com- 
 stock. 
 
 It was handed to him ; he smoothed it out 
 over his knee, felt of it carefully, and then 
 said reassuringly, " Why, the watch is here." 
 It had been concealed in the lining of the 
 sacque. " That's one of the cases where I am 
 sorry I got the property back," said Mr. 
 Comstock afterward with a grimace of dis- 
 gust as he told of this incident, " for the man 
 
188 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEE 
 
 hadn't the decency to apologize to the 
 porter." 
 
 North America is not large enough to 
 limit Anthony Comstock's labours. His 
 work, in its scrupulous accuracy and relent- 
 less tenacity, reaches across the ocean into 
 foreign lands. As a United States Post-Office 
 Inspector he is charged with the enforcement 
 of Postal and Interstate Commerce laws 
 against the transmission of obscene matters. 
 The laws in the two branches are almost 
 identical, the one referring to mail transmis- 
 sion, the other, to that by common carriers 
 between states. He makes it his business to 
 watch carefully the advertisements in every 
 paper that he sees. Whenever he finds a 
 foreign advertisement dealing in books and 
 pictures, he sends for circulars or price-lists. 
 If the advertisement is under a fictitious 
 name, — as the criminal ones invariably are, 
 — Mr. Comstock pursues the same tactics 
 that are employed in discoveripg criminals 
 operating through the mails in this country. 
 He sends an order, in compliance with their 
 printed advertisement or circulars, and is able 
 to produce the kind of matter which they 
 send in reply to correspondence. This 
 
CAEEFULNESS, AND A CONSCIENCE 189 
 
 enables the foreign government to trace the 
 correspondence to the guilty person and 
 identify him, whether the name used was 
 fictitious or not. 
 
 Mr. Comstock's next step is to report the 
 matter to the Postmaster-General of the 
 United States and recommend that the mat- 
 ter be referred to the Secretary of State, and 
 that he in turn be requested to instruct our 
 United States minister — at, the foreign city of 
 the person complained of — to call the atten- 
 tion of the foreign government to the opera- 
 tions of this person, especially where he is 
 violating our interstate and postal laws. 
 Mr.Comstock also recommends that the mat- 
 ter be sent to the Secretary of the Treasury, 
 with the request that the Collectors of the 
 Ports be instructed to give their special at- 
 tention to any matters coming into the coun- 
 try from the person named, or from wherever 
 his name and address appear. Still further, 
 he asks for an order directing the Postmas- 
 ters of all Ports of Entry or otherwise who 
 may find sealed packages or letters bearing 
 the return card (" if not delivered, etc., return 
 to ") of the foreign dealer to send all such 
 matters to the Customs officials of the Port, 
 
190 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 notifying the person addressed to call there 
 and open the package in the presence of the 
 Customs ofificial, and, if it contains non- 
 mailable matter, to see that it goes to the 
 Dead Letter Office. 
 
 In addition to all these steps, the Postmas- 
 ter of the Post-Office at which the periodical 
 that contains the advertisement of the dealer is 
 mailed is notified not to forward the periodical 
 if the advertisement appears ; and the pub- 
 lisher of the periodical is notified that the ad- 
 vertisement is non-mailable and that his 
 paper will not be carried until the advertis- 
 ing is discontinued. And Mr. Comstock gets 
 a fraud order against the publisher prohibit- 
 ing the sending of any money order or regis- 
 tered letter to him on the ground that he is 
 violating the law by using a fictitious address 
 for illegal purposes. 
 
 Such are the detailed steps, care, and la- 
 bour involved in protecting American char- 
 acter against the poison of a single European 
 dealer No easy-going or slipshod methods 
 would avail. In one case a Paris dealer ad- 
 vertised in some of our Western newspapers 
 " art pictures" and " classical literature," of a 
 vile sort. Mr. Comstock's attention was 
 
CAREFULNESS, AND A CONSCIENCE 191 
 
 called to it. He investigated, made his re- 
 ports, and the matter was placed in the hands 
 of the United States minister at Paris. 
 Shortly afterward Mr. Comstock's attention 
 was called to the advertising of similar mat- 
 ter from Barcelona, Spain. He investigated, 
 and found that the material had a familiar 
 look. The handwriting disclosed the fact 
 that it was the Paris dealer, who had trans- 
 ferred his business to Spain. He was duly 
 reported, and driven out of Barcelona. 
 When, after a considerable interval, Mr. 
 Comstock had occasion to investigate a new 
 name in Paris, he found the same man for 
 the third time, who was working from another 
 Paris address. The matter sent, and the 
 handwriting, established his identity. He 
 was at once followed up, driven out, and was 
 again traced to Poszony, Austria. 
 
 A man who easily tired out would not 
 work well as Secretary of the New York So- 
 ciety for the Suppression of Vice. 
 
 The getting of mail-order evidence in this 
 country is an interesting and painstaking 
 operation. It must be done both with scrupu- 
 lot/s honour and with rigid attention to the 
 obligations of the law. A case prosecuted by 
 
192 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 Mr. Comstock was once carried by the de- 
 fendant, by appeal after conviction, to the 
 Supreme Court of the United States. The 
 Supreme Court settled the question of the 
 law in the matter, and formally approved of 
 the methods that Mr. Comstock has always 
 employed for detecting crimes in the Post- 
 Office Department. 
 
 Many people have the mistaken idea that 
 crimes against the Post-Office Department 
 are detected by the authorities' opening of 
 sealed letters when there is reason to suspect 
 that the law is being violated. Such a thing 
 is never done, and would not be tolerated for 
 a moment. There is no tampering in any 
 way with sealed matter sent under first-class 
 postage, while in transit in the mails. 
 
 To illustrate how rigidly the inviolability 
 of the seal is respected, imagine such an ex- 
 treme case as the following. Suppose Mr. 
 Comstock were standing in the lobby of a 
 post-office and saw a man wrap up and seal 
 and affix stamps to a package of the most 
 obscene books or pictures. Indeed, suppose 
 he should send a dozen different packages of 
 this sort to a dozen different boys, and the 
 contents of each was plainly seen as it was 
 
CAEEFULNESS, AND A CONSCIENCE 193 
 
 wrapped, addressed, stamped, and mailed. 
 The man, having deposited his packages, 
 goes out. There is no power in the govern- 
 ment to intercept those packages, open them, 
 or tamper with them in any way. There are 
 just two things that can be legally done. 
 
 A search warrant may be issued, by the 
 Federal Court, to seize those packages and 
 take them from the post-office ; but of this 
 action Mr. Comstock has, in almost forty 
 years' service, never known a single instance. 
 The only other legal method is the usual 
 one. An inspector, such as Mr. Comstock is, 
 may have the objectionable package prop- 
 erly postmarked, then enclosed, under cover 
 of an official envelope, and addressed to the 
 post-office of delivery, with instructions to 
 the postmaster there to make prompt de- 
 livery of the package to the person addressed 
 and ask this recipient to allow the post- 
 master to return the package unopened to the 
 Post-Office Inspector (Comstock) to be used 
 as evidence in a court of justice. It is 
 customary, in such cases, to send an order 
 with the Inspector's letter to the postmaster, 
 addressed to the Inspector, to be signed by 
 the addressee, directing the postmaster to 
 
194 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 return the package to the Inspector, and 
 authorizing the latter to " receive, open, and 
 use same in the interests of justice." If the 
 recipient should decline to return the package 
 until after it was opened, then he would 
 have to be subpoenaed as a witness to iden- 
 tify the objectionable matter, putting the 
 government to considerable expense. If he 
 should decline wholly to return the package, 
 either unopened or opened, a subpoena may 
 be issued for him to produce the wrapping 
 and its contents. But Inspector Comstock 
 has never had a case in all his experience 
 where the recipient refused to do as asked, 
 for the urgency of the matter is made so 
 plain in the Inspector's first communication. 
 Of course the case imagined, of the In- 
 spector's witnessing the mailing of objection- 
 able matter, was wholly hypothetical, and 
 would probably never occur. But the send- 
 ing of an Inspector's order to the recipient 
 of non-mailable matter is of frequent occur- 
 rence. The occasion for it occurs in a variety 
 of ways, as when a person complains of 
 a criminal dealer, and Mr. Comstock asks 
 the complainant to send for some of his 
 goods in order to get evidence. An order 
 
CAEEFULNESS, AND A CONSCIENCE 195 
 
 requesting the sending of the unopened 
 package to the Inspector will then go to 
 the complainant. When certain " green- 
 * goods " men, at one time, were mailing their 
 stuff to lists of 10,000 people at a time, the 
 order plan was used with one or two re- 
 cipients. 
 
 Thus is safegfuarded the sanctity of the 
 seal of all matters entrusted to our gov- 
 ernment. Mr. Comstock has not known, 
 in his lifetime experience, of a single in- 
 stance of a government representative break- 
 ing a seal of suspected non-mailable matter. 
 
XIV 
 
 HUMOURS OF THE WORK 
 
 THOUGH much of Anthony Corn- 
 stock's work is of a stern and repel- 
 lent and often tragic character, 
 bringing him, as it does, into the depths of 
 human infamy, the wreckage of lives, and the 
 savage opposition of defeated crime, never- 
 theless it is occasionally lightened by touches 
 of humour that he looks back upon with a 
 smile. 
 
 Fortunately for him, his name and life 
 purpose are more widely known than his 
 face. This fact enables him to work the 
 more effectively, and it sometimes occasions 
 unexpected situations. 
 
 Riding one day years ago with an assist- 
 ant on a Fourth Avenue horse-car through 
 Center Street, in New York City, Mr. Corn- 
 stock saw a street peddler reach under his 
 push-cart, take out a book, look furtively in 
 every direction, and then offer it to a young 
 fellow who had stopped to look at the ped- 
 dler's wares. " We'll get off here, George," 
 196 
 
HUMOUES OF THE WORK 197 
 
 said Mr. Comstock, and they walked back 
 to the push-cart and looked over the stuff. 
 
 " Boss, buy a suppressed book ? " volun- 
 teered the peddler to the newcomers. 
 
 " I guess you haven't any." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I have ; if old Comstock knew I 
 had this book he'd give me ten years." 
 
 " It must be an expurgated edition." 
 
 " I'll show you." And the peddler proved 
 that he was speaking the truth. 
 
 " I'll take this," said Mr. Comstock, thrust- 
 ing the book into his pocket. " But why do 
 you charge double the regular price? " 
 
 " I have to, it's such a risk. If Comstock 
 caught me selling such a book he'd send me 
 up to the Island." 
 
 The Secretary of the Society for the Sup- 
 pression of Vice paid no money for his copy 
 of the book. It was not necessary to do so 
 in order to complete the legal evidence, for 
 the man had met the conditions of the Penal 
 Code, in that he had "had for sale, and 
 offered for sale," the criminal goods. 
 
 "George," said he instead, "push this 
 cart over to the Tombs Court." 
 
 At the Tombs they left the cart and its 
 contents with the sergeant of the Court 
 
198 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 Squad, took the prisoner up-stairs before 
 the court, made a formal complaint, and 
 had him committed to the Tombs for trial. 
 Returning to the sergeant's room they heard 
 a man exclaiming, as they entered, "I de- 
 mand my property." 
 
 "What property?" asked Mr. Comstock. 
 " Are you the owner of this push-cart and its 
 contents ? " 
 
 " Yes, I am," was the reply, " and the man 
 who had the cart was working on a com- 
 mission for me." 
 
 " Come up-stairs with me," invited Mr. 
 Comstock ; and up-stairs the process of 
 commitment was repeated. Both men were 
 finally convicted, sentenced and imprisoned. 
 
 The vice-suppressor had investigated a 
 dealer who was exploiting obscene things 
 from Amsterdam, Holland, and put a stop 
 to his business. Before Comstock received 
 word, however, of the official action of our 
 minister abroad he had received a letter from 
 the criminal dealer himself, sent to the ad- 
 dress that Comstock had used in securing 
 the necessary mail evidence against the man 
 (Mr. Comstock's own name, of course, not 
 
HUMOUES OF THE WOEK 199 
 
 having appeared in the matter), and inform- 
 ing Mr. Comstock very confidentially that the 
 government had gotten after him (the dealer) 
 for selling these things, and that he had 
 therefore transferred his business to Buda- 
 pest, Hungary, where he would now be very 
 glad to supply his correspondent with any- 
 thing further in the same line that might 
 be desired. Grateful for the dealer's coop- 
 eration in the work of the suppression of vice, 
 Mr. Comstock immediately made a fresh re- 
 port in the matter, the authorities in Hungary 
 got after the man from Amsterdam, and a 
 second time he was put out of business. 
 
 In company with a deputy marshal in 
 Cleveland, Ohio, Mr. Comstock was look- 
 ing up a man who was illegally operating 
 through the mails. 
 
 They found the office, and Mr. Comstock, 
 leaving the deputy marshal outside in the 
 hallway, stepped in and introduced himself 
 to the dealer by showing the correspondence 
 he had had with him through the mail. The 
 man, of course, did not know to whom he 
 was talking, except that his visitor was evi- 
 dently a customer, with whom he had already 
 
200 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, PIGHTEE 
 
 had negotiations. His acknowledgment of 
 the correspondence as his own also served as 
 legal evidence to identify him as the sender 
 of the unlawful matter. 
 
 He talked freely with Mr. Comstock, and 
 told him frankly that there was big money 
 in this business, but that one had to be on 
 the lookout against a special agent named 
 Comstock. " He came mighty near nabbing 
 me over in Detroit," he ran on, " but I got a 
 tip from one of the clerks in the Post-Office, 
 and got away into Canada. There's just one 
 man too smart for Comstock, — but you've 
 got to be mighty careful." Mr. Comstock 
 pushed open the hall door and called in the 
 deputy marshal. "Here's the man you've 
 got your warrant for," he said to the deputy. 
 A conviction followed. 
 
 What this extra careful criminal had said 
 about the Detroit experience was quite true. 
 Mr. Comstock had had a warrant for him in 
 that place, and the man had slipped away. 
 He was one man too smart for Comstock — 
 in Detroit. 
 
 A complaint once came to the Suppression 
 of Vice Society against a barber who had a 
 
HUMOUES OF THE WOEK 201 
 
 shop near Girard College, Philadelphia. He 
 was selling obscene pictures, and was supposed 
 to be corrupting the boys of the college. 
 
 Having business in Philadelphia, Mr. Com- 
 stock went out to the neighbourhood of the 
 college early one morning, about breakfast 
 time, armed with some tooth-picks which he 
 used freely as though having just come from 
 a near-by boarding-house. He got a clean 
 shave, said nothing about any pictures, took 
 from his pocket-book the noticeably good- 
 sized roll of bills with which he had provided 
 himself, and handed the barber a five-dollar 
 note in payment for the shave. The barber 
 was quick to size up a good customer, and 
 wanted to know if his new patron would not 
 like to buy some pictures. " It depends on 
 what they are," was the reply ; " I never buy 
 a pig in a bag." 
 
 The barber brought out his stock in trade ; 
 his customer purchased his evidence and 
 went away. 
 
 The pictures were of such a character that 
 Mr. Comstock was anxious to locate the 
 photographer who had made them. He de- 
 layed making any arrest until he had had an 
 opportunity of visiting the barber's place 
 
202 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 two or three times, during different visits to 
 Philadelphia, always making a point of get- 
 ting a shave or a shine when there. During 
 one of these visits Mr. Comstock told the 
 barber that he would like to be introduced to 
 the photographer of the pictures, so that he 
 could make arrangements with him for large 
 lots. (Mr. Comstock was quite sincere ; he 
 secured these large lots from the photographer 
 a little later.) 
 
 Going to the photographer's place on 
 Chestnut Street, Mr. Comstock secured the 
 necessary evidence of his illegal traffic, and 
 then took out warrants for the arrest of both 
 men. He returned to the barber shop first, 
 accompanied by a police officer in plain 
 clothes whom he introduced to the barber, 
 saying he would like to have his friend see 
 the pictures. The barber was very sorry, 
 but explained that he had had a social time 
 at his own house the night before, having 
 the pictures there with him, and had not yet 
 brought them back to his shop. So the arrest 
 was made without further formality. 
 
 As the three men rode down-town to- 
 gether in a street-car, Mr. Comstock sat op- 
 posite the officer and his prisoner. 
 
HUMOUES OP THE WOEK 203 
 
 " Who is that old fellow ? " asked the barber 
 of the plain clothes man. 
 
 " Don't you know him ? " was the reply. 
 " That's Comstock, of New York." 
 
 "What! That duffer Comstock? I've 
 been shaving him for weeks. Wouldn't I 
 have cut his throat if I'd known it 1 " 
 
 Another barber enlivened the monotony of 
 Mr. Comstock's work at Poughkeepsie, New 
 York. This man was an assistant in a barber 
 shop, and he was secretly selling about six- 
 teen varieties of vile pictures. Having been 
 shaved there, Comstock was shown the pic- 
 tures, procured the evidence, and then asked 
 the man if he would introduce him to the fel- 
 low who made the pictures. " Sure," was 
 the answer, " there's to be a ball at to- 
 night ; and if you'll come around I'll see that 
 you meet him." 
 
 Mr. Comstock attended the ball, had a talk 
 with the photographer, and secured evidence 
 against him. While talking with the pho- 
 tographer and the barber, a former acquaint- 
 ance of the New York man happened by and 
 called out pleasantly, " Hello, Comstock, how 
 are you ? " 
 
204 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 The barber was so frightened that he 
 started down the stairs on the jump, and al- 
 most slid the whole flight. That ball was 
 spoiled for him. The next morning Mr. 
 Comstock with a police officer called at the 
 barber's shop, leaving the officer outside. 
 The proprietor was on hand, and Mr. Com- 
 stock chose him for his morning shave. 
 Before getting into his chair Comstock burst 
 out laughing. 
 
 " I've got a big joke to tell you," he ex- 
 claimed. " I was around at the ball last 
 night, and this fellow here," pointing to the 
 assistant, who was still nervous, " was talking 
 with me, when a fellow came along and 
 called me ' Comstock.' This young fellow 
 thought I was Comstock of New York, and 
 he got so scared that he 'most slid down a 
 whole flight of stairs." 
 
 " Yes, sir," broke in the assistant barber ; 
 " I ran home and burned up all my pictures. 
 But the boss here's got a fine lot of them up- 
 stairs." 
 
 " May I see them ? " asked the man who 
 still lacked his shave. 
 
 The boss barber willingly got out his 
 stock ; Mr. Comstock called in the waiting 
 
HUMOUES OF THE WOEK 205 
 
 police officer ; both barbers were arrested ; 
 and the trio, including the photographer, 
 were convicted. 
 
 A very complete case had been made out 
 against the seller of a lottery policy. Mr. 
 Comstock had the policy that had been writ- 
 ten and sold, and he had the manifold copy- 
 book in which the seller had recorded the 
 bet. There was practically no defense ; but 
 the defendant's counsel was doing the best 
 he could for his client. 
 
 Having put one of Mr. Comstock's wit- 
 nesses on the stand the defense proceeded to 
 cross-question him. The lawyer was what is 
 sometimes called a " physical lawyer," who 
 tries by brute force to intimidate the witness. 
 In this instance he had gotten hold of certain 
 information that promised to work disas- 
 trously against Comstock. The lawyer be- 
 gan, " May it please the court, I have but 
 two or three questions to ask of this witness. 
 I shall not occupy much of the time of the 
 court. Now, Mr. Witness, will you please keep 
 your voice up, sir, so that the furthest juryman 
 can hear, and will you inform the jury where 
 you resided before you came to New York." 
 
206 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 " In Omaha, Nebraska." 
 
 Repeating his assurance that he would not 
 detain the court long, the lawyer continued, 
 " Will you now inform the gentlemen of the 
 jury if it is not a fact that a part of the time 
 you were in Omaha you were in the peniten- 
 tiary." 
 
 " Yes, sir," replied the witness soberly. 
 
 " How long were you in the penitentiary ? " 
 
 "Three years." 
 
 The lawyer's satisfaction was very evident. 
 He told the court he had but one more ques- 
 tion to ask of the witness. " Will you please 
 inform the court and the gentlemen of the 
 jury what you were there for ? " And the 
 witness quietly replied, 
 
 " Chief Warden." 
 
 It was too much for the court, the jury, and 
 the spectators. After a moment, the Re- 
 corder leaned over his desk and in a quiet 
 tone asked the counsel for the defense if he 
 desired to address the jury. The lawyer 
 swallowed hard, and said he had nothing 
 further to say ; he would " submit the matter 
 on your honour's charge." The defendant 
 was found guilty. 
 
XV 
 
 THE SUMMIT BURGLARIES 
 
 WHILE Mr. Comstock does not pro- 
 fess to be a detective, he has had 
 to absorb some fundamental prin- 
 ciples of successful detective work in his long 
 drawn out conflict with professional crimi- 
 nals. He was once pressed into detective 
 service in an unexpected way. 
 
 Mr. Comstock's home is in Summit, New 
 Jersey ; he commutes between there and his 
 New York office. There had been fifteen or 
 twenty burglaries in Summit within a few 
 weeks' time. The place was getting terror- 
 ized. One day the president of the Town 
 Council came to Comstock's home, and asked 
 him if he wouldn't help the authorities to put 
 an end to the plundering of citizens that was 
 going on ; would he capture the burglars for 
 them? 
 
 " I'm not a thief catcher," laughed Mr. 
 
 Comstock. 
 
 207 
 
208 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEB 
 
 "But you've had a large experience in 
 dealing with crime, and you understand what 
 is necessary in preparing legal evidence. We 
 need your help." 
 
 As a matter of friendliness and community 
 service Mr. Comstock was perfectly ready to 
 do what he could, upon one or two condi- 
 tions. He must be given official authority 
 to act in whatever way might prove neces- 
 sary, and his connection with the matter 
 must be kept a secret. He might also have 
 to run the risk of a civil suit in what he did ; 
 and he must be protected in this. " The city 
 will stand back of you ; go ahead and use 
 your own judgment," was the reply of the 
 Town Council's president. 
 
 A day or two later a vestryman of the 
 Episcopal Church at Summit called at Mr. 
 Comstock's New York office, and said that 
 the church had been burglarized. Asked 
 whether there was any one on whom sus- 
 picion fell, or whether any clues of any sort 
 had been discovered, the vestryman had noth- 
 ing to offer. But he thought that it would be 
 well for Mr. Comstock to come to the church 
 that night and look over the premises. 
 
 At the church Comstock found an unusual 
 
THE SUMMIT BUEGLAEIES 209 
 
 sort of marks where the breaking-in had been 
 done, — marks just the reverse made by 
 an ordinary "jimmy." The indentations 
 were on the door, rather than on the door 
 casing where a jimmy blade goes in. Inside 
 the church it was found that the " Poor-Box " 
 had been bored open, and rifled of its money. 
 The boring had been done by a five-eighths 
 inch bit that was evidently worn out, as the 
 under lip of the bit did not cut the wood, but 
 made only a faint indentation. It was 
 noticed also that matches had been struck 
 and thrown away, a common practice of 
 thieves for lighting purposes. The amateur 
 detective picked up some of these matches, 
 put them in an envelope, and stuck it in his 
 pocket, though he was laughed at for so 
 doing. Then he went home without the 
 slightest hint from any one as to who the 
 guilty individuals might be. 
 
 Within a few days the same vestryman 
 called on Mr. Comstock again and said that 
 the rectory had been broken into. The 
 rector and his wife were away from home in 
 the South, and the house had been closed for 
 some time. Again there was no suspicion or 
 clue pointing to any one; again Mr. Com- 
 
210 ANTHO]ST COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 stock promised to call and investigate. The 
 sexton had the keys of the rectory. 
 
 After supper that evening the two men and 
 the sexton started their examinations. At the 
 window and door which had been broken in 
 the same peculiar jimmy marks were found. 
 In chiffonier and bureau drawers were holes 
 made by the same worn-out five-eighths inch 
 bit. And strewn around on the floor were 
 the same kind of burnt matches as had 
 lighted up the church. What had been 
 taken was a more difficult problem to those 
 who were strangers to the contents of the 
 house. But here dust marks were the clue. 
 For example, it was evident that a clock and 
 ornament were gone from the parlour 
 mantel. Absences of articles from the side- 
 board in the dining-room, and from bureaus, 
 wash-stands, and mantels in the sleeping 
 rooms were similarly inferred. The side- 
 board drawers had been forced open, and 
 silver and possibly table linen had been taken. 
 Mr. Comstock found a solitary teaspoon which 
 he slipped into his pocket. 
 
 He gave strict orders that no one be per- 
 mitted to enter the house without his permis- 
 sion, that the doors and windows be kept 
 
THE SUMMIT BUEGLAEIES 211 
 
 locked, and that no one should even know 
 that he had been there. As they were dis- 
 cussing this, the door-bell rang. A neigh- 
 bour who had formerly lived next door to 
 Mr. Comstock, but whose house was now on 
 a street adjoining the rectory, — ^just around 
 the corner, so that the yards of the two 
 houses came together, — was interested to 
 know what progress they were making. 
 And he wanted to report that the servant 
 girl in their home had just come to him, 
 rather white in the face, and had said, " Com- 
 stock's in there." 
 
 It occurred to Mr. Comstock that it was 
 not likely that the girl could have known 
 that he was there unless, seeing a light in the 
 rectory, she had come through the fence be- 
 tween the two yards, peered through the 
 shutter slats and recognized him. He took 
 his neighbour aside, — a Mr. Howe, — and 
 asked him to go quietly home and not to say 
 that he had seen Mr. Comstock, but to talk 
 with the girl. Then he promised to come up 
 from the city the following day at noon-time, 
 and see what Mr. Howe had learned. He 
 urged against doing anything to arouse the 
 girl's suspicion. 
 
212 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 A well-known New York architect, Mr. J. 
 Cleveland Cady, was another friend and 
 neighbour of Mr. Comstock's at Summit, 
 and the next day it seemed better to meet 
 Mr. Howe at Mr, Cady's house. Almost the 
 first word Mr. Howe had to give was : " Lily's 
 going to leave. She's had a letter from her 
 husband, telling her he's going West as the 
 advance agent of an opera troupe, and she's 
 going with him." 
 
 It looked as though Lily, the Howes' serv- 
 ant, was frightened ; and Mr. Comstock 
 made up his mind that she was lying about 
 the letter. He went to the Summit post-ofifice 
 and ascertained, as Post-Office Inspector, 
 that she had not received any letter. He was 
 also quite sure that Lily's husband would not 
 be found in the neighbourhood of Summit 
 again unless her fears were substantially 
 allayed. 
 
 " I'm coming around to-night to see your 
 children," Mr. Comstock told neighbour 
 Howe ; and that evening after dinner he was 
 ushered into the Howes' home, firm in belief 
 that the girl would be listening at the kitchen 
 door for all that he might say. As the Howe 
 children and Mr. Comstock were old friends 
 
THE SUMMIT BUEGLAEIES 213 
 
 he had a jolly time with them for a while, 
 and then the conversation drifted around to 
 the burglary, and Mr. Comstock, speaking 
 quite clearly, told of a recent experience of 
 his own. 
 
 The Sunday previous a felonious assault 
 had been made on a young woman on the 
 streets of Summit. Believing that the crim- 
 inal was one of a gang of tramps who had 
 been camping near Chatham, in the vicinity 
 of Summit, Mr. Comstock, prompt to act in 
 any such emergency, had called for volun- 
 teers from a crowd loafing around the rail- 
 road station to accompany him to that camp 
 of tramps, and see what they could do to 
 round up the man who was wanted. These 
 volunteers were to have met Mr. Comstock 
 at a place agreed upon. Before the time of 
 meeting, however, he had received informa- 
 tion that the man he was after was in hiding 
 in a little house opposite the Roman Catholic 
 Church. Going there, Comstock secured 
 the evidence necessary to corroborate his in- 
 formation, and arrested his man, who later 
 got ten years for his crime. 
 
 But the volunteers who were to have 
 helped Mr. Comstock, getting tired of wait- 
 
214 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 ing for him, went into a saloon, filled up with 
 liquor, and broke open a railroad switch, for 
 which the railroad detectives got on their trail, 
 and four of them fled the town. One of these 
 four Mr. Comstock knew well enough to de- 
 scribe accurately. He was a livery hack 
 driver. The other three Comstock did not 
 know and could not describe. One, how- 
 ever, was known to be an ex-convict, who 
 had slept nights in the barn of a Mr, Bonnell 
 whose horse and carriage had been stolen. 
 
 As Mr. Comstock was ostensibly telling the 
 Howe family about his experience, while in 
 reality he was talking to a pair of ears con- 
 cealed behind the kitchen door, he told about 
 the four men who had fled the town, ask- 
 ing Mr. Howe if he had ever seen men of a 
 certain description, which he proceeded to 
 give. He described Johnny Hunter, the 
 hack driver, and then he gave a fictitious de- 
 scription of three other men. He enlarged upon 
 the fact that as these were poor men, and had 
 had to flee the town, they would have to get 
 money to go with ; and as Johnny Hunter 
 was a hack driver, he naturally knew that 
 the rector and his wife were away, and that 
 the house was closed : and as the ex-convict 
 
THE SUMMIT BTJEGLAEIES 215 
 
 had been sleeping in Bonnell's barn, it was 
 an easy matter for that ex-convict to breakinto 
 the barn and get the horse and carriage, to 
 carry away the plunder that was stolen from 
 the rectory. Thus the story went for the bene- 
 fit of the listening ears behind the kitchen 
 door. It was hoped that it would allay her 
 fears. 
 
 As Mr. Comstock rose to go, he asked, 
 " Did any of you hear any noise the night 
 that the rectory was robbed ? " 
 
 " No," answered Mr. Howe ; " but our girl 
 saw a light in the rectory, and she told us 
 later that she thought it was the servants go- 
 ing to bed." 
 
 The girl probably knew that there were no 
 servants in the closed house ; and Mr. Corn- 
 stock asked if he might see her for a moment 
 and have a word with her, as perhaps she 
 could give him some points to work on. Mr. 
 Howe started to see if she was in, and Mr. 
 Comstock imagined that he heard somebody 
 getting away from the other side of that 
 door. 
 
 In a moment Lily came in, flushed and ex- 
 cited. Stepping directly in front of where 
 Mr. Comstock was sitting, she looked straight 
 
216 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 at him and wanted to know if she could ask 
 him a question. " Certainly," he replied. 
 
 " Do you think that the same people who 
 stole Bonnell's horse and carriage robbed the 
 rectory ? " 
 
 " I do," answered Mr. Comstock. 
 
 Then the look of anxiety left the girl's face, 
 and in a confiding manner she went on, " I 
 can give you a point. My husband came up 
 on a ten o'clock train from New York that 
 very night, and I went down to the station to 
 meet him. As we were passing the rectory 
 I saw four men standing talking." 
 
 " Could you see them well enough to de- 
 scribe them ? " asked Mr. Comstock. 
 
 " Oh, yes ; they were standing right under 
 the lamp-post." 
 
 Then the girl gave a glib description of 
 the four men whom Mr. Comstock had just 
 been describing to the Howe family ; Johnny 
 Hunter, and his three imaginary companions. 
 
 While Mr. Comstock was unhitching his 
 horse in front of Mr. Howe's house that even- 
 ing, about to drive home, he asked his host 
 to keep watch for Lily's husband, whose 
 name was Reston, and let Comstock know as 
 soon as the man might get to town. He was 
 
THE SUMMIT BUEGLAEIBS 217 
 
 confident that the girl would communicate 
 with her husband now, and that he would 
 soon return. Again he urged upon Mr. 
 Howe the importance of doing nothing to 
 arouse the girl's suspicion. 
 
 This was on a Friday night. Sunday 
 morning at breakfast time the Comstock 
 door-bell rang, and Mr. Howe reported that 
 Reston was on hand. He had come up on a 
 newspaper train, and had been talking with 
 his wife in the Howes' back yard at six 
 o'clock that morning. He had now gone 
 over to Cisco's house, — a place about a mile 
 out from the town in a little dell at the junc- 
 tion of two roads, and near another house 
 occupied by Cisco's son-in-law. 
 
 Mr. Comstock sent for his coachman, told 
 him to dress as a tramp, get a rig from the 
 livery stable, drive to Chatham, and come 
 around on the turnpike so as to approach 
 Cisco's house from the west, — the opposite 
 side from the direction of Summit. Mr. Com- 
 stock then called in his friend Mr. Cady, and 
 the two of them walked cross lots, through 
 the woods. By the time the tramp in the 
 livery rig neared Cisco's house, Comstock 
 and Cady were stretched out behind a stone 
 
218 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEE 
 
 wall from which they could see both houses, 
 — the father's and son-in-law's, who was 
 named Swayne. The two houses were about 
 a quarter of a mile apart, and the men behind 
 the stone wall were at a safe distance from 
 both. 
 
 The coachman visited Swayne's house, 
 and then, when he could join Mr, Comstock 
 without suspicion, he reported to him that he 
 had found a man there, though he did not 
 know who it was. 
 
 Comstock left Mr. Cady and his coachman, 
 and made a call on the Swayne house him- 
 self. 
 
 " Is Mr. Reston here ? " he asked pleasantly 
 of the woman who answered his knock. 
 
 " No, we don't have anything to do with 
 him," was the curt reply. 
 
 The caller assured the woman that no 
 offense was meant. He went on to say that 
 he had seen Mr. Reston's wife the night be- 
 fore last, and that she had told of passing 
 four men in front of the rectory, and now Mr. 
 Comstock wanted to see Reston to talk with 
 him about it, as that was the night the rec- 
 tory had been robbed. Evidently mollified, 
 the woman answered, " If that's what you 
 
THE SUMMIT BUEGLAEIES 219 
 
 want, you'll find him over to Joel's house 
 (meaning Joel Cisco) on the turnpike." 
 
 As he approached Joel Cisco's home, Mr. 
 Comstock saw a man with his hat and coat 
 off, walking nervously up and down before 
 the house. Turning in suddenly from the 
 pike, Comstock walked straight up to him, 
 and asked if Mr. Cisco was at home. 
 
 " No ; he's gone to Short Hills." 
 
 " Is this Mr. Reston ? " 
 
 Thrown off his guard the man answered 
 that it was. Comstock slapped him on the 
 shoulder and said, " You're my prisoner ; 
 where's your hat and coat ? " 
 
 It so happened that Mr. Cady had recently 
 had his chicken roost robbed several times of 
 handsome Buff Cochin fowls. As Mr. Com- 
 stock and his prisoner went together into 
 Cisco's house, Comstock noticed on passing 
 through the kitchen that the family had just 
 dined, and the generous sized bones on the 
 plate seemed to fit Buff Cochins. There were 
 also a handsome ebony handled steel, with 
 pearl handled silver knifes and forks, on the 
 kitchen table. 
 
 Passing through the kitchen to a front bed- 
 room in the small two-story house, Mr. Com- 
 
220 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEK 
 
 stock noticed that the top drawer of a 
 combination bureau and wash-stand was fitted 
 with a Yale lock. As Reston was getting his 
 hat and coat Mrs. Cisco came in. 
 
 " What's the matter ? " she exclaimed. 
 
 "I'm arrested for burglary," Reston an- 
 swered. 
 
 The woman appeared very much horrified. 
 When Mr. Comstock asked her to unlock the 
 top drawer of the bureau, she did so without 
 hesitation. Almost the first thing the amateur 
 detective's eye rested on was a five-eighths 
 inch bit, almost worn out. Taking this, Mr. 
 Comstock went through the drawer, and 
 found only plated silverware, and things that 
 would be classed as " chuck." 
 
 As the two men left the house together, 
 Comstock turned, about to take his prisoner's 
 right hand firmly in his own left by a method 
 which would have secured him, when, quick 
 as a flash, the man dropped to the ground, 
 rolled over, was on his feet again, and started 
 over a rail fence across the fields to a swamp, 
 his would-be captor in hot pursuit after him. 
 
 As they ran Mr. Comstock called to the man 
 to halt ; this served to speed up the sprint 
 nicely. Then Comstock shouted, " If you 
 
THE SUMMIT BUEGLAEIES 221 
 
 don't stop, I'll shoot." The fugitive looked 
 axound, and kept on running. 
 
 In his varied experience in making more 
 than thirty-six hundred arrests, Mr. Comstock 
 has never, except on that Sunday, fired in the 
 direction of a man. He fired two shots that 
 day, taking care not to hit. The second shot 
 was fired just as the man plunged into the 
 swamp. Anthony plunged in after him, Sun- 
 day trousers and all, and succeeded in mak- 
 ing close connections. 
 
 The two men walked together back to the 
 corner where Swayne's cottage was. Here 
 they met Joel Cisco coming from the direction 
 of Short Hills in a brand new G. A. R. suit. 
 Cisco let them pass without comment, but 
 they were halted by Swayne, a burly fellow 
 who demanded of Comstock what he was 
 doing with that man, disgracing all his peo- 
 ple. 
 
 " He's under arrest," said Mr. Comstock, 
 " and is taking a walk with me over to the 
 village." 
 
 " How do you know he's going? " 
 
 " I know he is, as he is in my custody," 
 was the answer, and Comstock conspicuously 
 shifted his revolver from his hip to his coat 
 
222 ANTHONY C0M9T0CK, PIGHTEE 
 
 pocket. At that moment Mr. Cady and the 
 coachman appeared, and Swayne subsided. 
 
 Cady and the coachman drove towards the 
 village, and Comstock and his prisoner 
 walked behind. After they had gone about 
 half-way, Reston put his hand over his heart 
 and began to pant. 
 
 "What's the matter?" asked Mr. Com- 
 stock. 
 
 " Heart failure," was the answer. 
 
 " You had better sit down here, then," 
 pointing to a rock beside the road. It looked 
 as though the man was speaking the truth. 
 As they sat there together Mr. Comstock 
 improved his opportunity by taking a mem- 
 orandum book and pencil from his pocket, 
 saying to Reston, " Mr. Butterworth is a 
 friend of mine, and I am very desirous of 
 securing a list of what you've taken." 
 
 " I didn't break in ; Jack Angus broke in." 
 
 " Well, you helped carry the stufi out, and 
 you know what you took." 
 
 Supposing that his questioner knew he had 
 been in the rectory, Reston gave a list of 
 items filling nearly two pages of the note- 
 book. It was found that the men had taken 
 Bonnell's horse and carriage, and had carried 
 
THE SUMMIT BUEGLAEIES 223 
 
 away the plunder in it. The stolen goods 
 had been sold to a Goldstein in New York. 
 The horse and carriage had been sold in 
 Stamford, Connecticut, for twenty-five dollars. 
 
 After seeing Reston safely in prison, Mr. 
 Comstock called at Mr. Howe's house again 
 to confer with Reston's wife. 
 
 " Lily, I've come to see if you can tell me 
 anything more about these burglars." 
 
 " No, sir," was the prompt answer, " I told 
 you everything I knew the other night." 
 
 " Oh, no, you didn't ; for Ed's arrested, 
 and he's confessed." 
 
 " Eddy Reston arrested 1 " cried his wife. 
 "Where is he?" 
 
 " In the lockup." 
 
 " I'll go and see him." 
 
 " No, you won't." 
 
 Mr. Comstock then showed the woman a 
 list of the things that had been taken. This 
 seemed to stagger her, and she began to 
 cry, or pretended to. 
 
 " Eddy didn't break in there," she pro- 
 tested. " Jack Angus broke in, and then he 
 come over and swore at Eddy, who was sit- 
 ting beside me on our back step, and made 
 Eddy go over to the rectory and help him." 
 
224 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEB 
 
 But Mr. Comstock found that Lily had 
 furnished the men with matches from Mr. 
 Howe's house, by a comparison with the 
 evidence that he had been laughed at for 
 slipping into his pocket. He also found 
 stolen plunder under the Howes' back porch. 
 And when Mrs. Reston found how much Mr. 
 Comstock knew, she told him in full detail 
 of various burglaries. The result was that 
 Mr. Comstock recovered the proceeds of a 
 dozen or fifteen marauding expeditions, and 
 in some cases was able to take the stolen 
 goods back to their owners before the owners 
 even knew that they had been robbed. Joel 
 Cisco's new G. A. R. suit proved to be part 
 of the proceeds of a burglary of a few Sun- 
 days earlier, when the house of a Baptist 
 minister in another New Jersey town had 
 been entered. 
 
 It had been an eventful Sunday, but it was 
 not quite over. After his interview with Lily, 
 Mr. Comstock took Reston himself from the 
 jail, warned him that he would shoot and 
 stop him if he tried to run, as his charge of 
 felony warranted, and then got the man to 
 show him where the stolen goods were con- 
 cealed. When he is dealing with a man 
 
THE SUMMIT BUEGLAEIES 225 
 
 who has committed crime Mr. Comstock has 
 a convincing way with him, as a good many 
 have had occasion to know. 
 
 That evening Mr. Comstock saw the police 
 authorities and left orders with them to place 
 under arrest every tramp or suspicious look- 
 ing person who might be found in Summit 
 the next day during his absence. The fol- 
 lowing morning, he took the first train to 
 New York, went to police headquarters, and / 
 secured the detail of a special policeman, 
 went with him to Goldstein's place, and de- 
 manded the stuff that had been brought to 
 him by two men in a horse and buggy on 
 a given date. The pawnbroker denied all 
 knowledge of the matter. 
 
 "Well, I'll take these teaspoons in your 
 show-case," said Mr. Comstock and he helped 
 himself to the duplicates of the rectory silver. 
 
 After they had made Goldstein give up all 
 that he had of the stolen goods in his own 
 place, he took them to a pawnshop in Ninety- 
 fifth Street where they recovered the balance 
 of the silverware, and some other articles ; 
 then they went together to a son-in-law's 
 place, and gathered in the French clock and 
 parlour ornaments. 
 
226 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTER 
 
 Goldstein was locked up ; and at noon the 
 same day Comstock and Bonnell went to- 
 gether to Stamford. At the proper livery 
 stable they pointed out Bonnell' s horse and 
 buggy, informed the proprietor that these 
 were stolen goods and that Bonnell was their 
 owner ; and then Mr. Comstock, leaving Bon- 
 nell to take care of his property, took the 
 train for New York and reached Summit 
 about six o'clock. 
 
 As he dismounted from the cars he was 
 told, " We've got a tramp down at the lockup 
 for you." At the station house Mr. Comstock 
 took a look at his man through a hole in the 
 door before his man saw him. As Comstock 
 suddenly greeted him, the man threw his 
 hands up across his chest, defensively. " This 
 is no tramp," thought Mr. Comstock to him- 
 self. " He knows the inside of state's prison." 
 
 " What's your name ? " he asked. 
 
 " George Wright," came the answer. 
 
 " They call you Jack, don't they ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Jack Angus?" 
 
 " Well, what of it if they do ? " 
 
 " Nothing, only I want you for burglary." 
 
 " Young fellow, you'll have to prove that." 
 
THE SUMMIT BURGLAEIES 227 
 
 "That's easy," replied Mr. Comstock. 
 " I've got the stuff you took over to Gold- 
 stein's from the rectory ; I've got the horse 
 and buggy you took up to Stamford and sold 
 for twenty-five dollars ; and I've got your pal 
 next door," 
 
 Without further discussion, Mr. Comstock 
 took his tramp out, handcuffed him to an 
 officer, then went for Reston and brought 
 both men before a magistrate, where they 
 were committed to the Elizabeth jail in de- 
 fault of bail to await examination. 
 
 One afternoon after the arrests had been 
 made, Mr. Comstock visited Joel Cisco's 
 home again. The father and mother were 
 out just then, but the mother came in while 
 Mr. Comstock was talking with the children. 
 Mr. Comstock told her that he wanted the 
 pearl-handled cutlery that he had seen on the 
 table the Sunday morning of his previous 
 visit. As he said this he noticed that one of 
 the little girls looked towards the front win- 
 dow, while the mother, intending to be un- 
 seen in her action, telegraphed some words 
 across to the girl by shaking her thumb at 
 her, and the child looked away from the win- 
 dow. Mr. Comstock changed the subject of 
 
228 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEB 
 
 the conversation, but a little later he spoke of 
 the cutlery once more. Again the child 
 looked towards the window, and again the 
 mother made the signal with her thumb, and 
 the child changed the direction of her look. 
 
 After this had been repeated once or twice 
 with the same result, Mr. Comstock asked 
 one of the boys if he had a hammer. It was 
 brought ; and without a word the visitor went 
 towards the front window, put the claw of 
 the hammer into a knot-hole in the floor, 
 ripped up a piece of the flooring, and asked 
 one of the boys to get him the knives and 
 forks. They were at once fished out. 
 
 Now the police department at Summit did 
 not feel very happy over Mr. Comstock's 
 clean up of the burglaries which they had 
 failed to stop.. A police official took the two 
 men under the committal to the Elizabeth 
 jail, but before their examination Mr. Com- 
 stock learned that a regrettable plan had 
 been arranged. The plan was simply that 
 when the police should be bringing the men 
 back for their examination, they were to be 
 allowed to go into a road house for a drink, 
 and there make their escape. 
 
 Mr. Comstock reported what he had learned 
 
THE SUMMIT BUEGLAEIES 229 
 
 to the District Attorney at Elizabeth. The 
 District Attorney at once sent Comstock be- 
 fore the Grand Jury, four indictments were 
 filed against each man, and bench warrants 
 were lodged against them with the warden. 
 These indictments superseded the earlier com- 
 plaints, and took the men entirely out of the 
 jurisdiction of the magistrate. When the 
 police official came down for his men, he 
 found that he couldn't get them. 
 
 Reston pleaded guilty on the four indict- 
 ments, and was sentenced to eight years. 
 
 Angus got ten years on each indictment. 
 
 Reston's wife Lily was indicted as an ac- 
 complice, and pleaded guilty. She was 
 about to become a mother, and sentence was 
 suspended. . 
 
 Joel Cisco got two years as a receiver of 
 stolen goods. 
 
 Mr. Comstock had kept faith with the presi- 
 dent of the Summit Town Council, and Sum- 
 mit took a long and grateful breath of relief. 
 
XVI 
 
 AFTER FORTY YEARS 
 
 WHEN the chapters of this life story 
 of Mr. Comstock were first coming 
 before the public, he raised the 
 question with the biographer as to the title 
 that had been chosen for the work, " Anthony 
 Comstock, Fighter." " How would it strike 
 you," he wrote, " to make my title read, 
 ' Fighter for the Right,' or, ' Fighter for the 
 Children,' or, ' Fighter for Public Morals ' ? 
 Just 'Fighter' leaves me in bad company. 
 There are so many prize-fighters, drunken 
 fighters, strike fighters, that I would like to 
 be classified as outside of the ring. How 
 does this strike you ? " 
 
 This was a reasonable suggestion ; but the 
 following reply was made as expressing the 
 thought of both the publisher and the biog- 
 rapher : " We appreciate what you say, and 
 yet we both believe that the use of your name 
 alongside the word ' fighter ' brings the 
 word ' fighter ' into good company. You 
 are too widely known as a man strong and 
 230 
 
AFTEE FOETY YBAES 231 
 
 unswerving for the right to be hurt in any 
 way or brought into bad company by having 
 the word 'fighter' alongside your name. 
 We want to have the word ' fighter ' exalted 
 into a position that is made possible by link- 
 ing your name with it, just as I believe the 
 apostle Paul was a fighter, and many another 
 stalwart man of your type and Paul's. Yours 
 is a glorious, victorious fight, and you have 
 honoured and are daily honouring the title. 
 Other men might need to have that title 
 qualified as you suggest, but you do not need 
 this." 
 
 For Mr. Comstock has fought during these 
 forty years as in the sight of God, and in the 
 power of God. He has found guidance and 
 strength in three points that his mother gave 
 him long before he had any thought of being 
 commissioned in this lifelong conflict with 
 the powers of evil. This was her counsel : 
 
 " Before every effort, prayer. 
 
 " Over all prayer, ' Thy will be done.' ^ 
 
 " After prayer, put yourself in the way of 
 receiving the answer : be up and doing." 
 
 Only as he has rested down as a little child 
 upon the promised protection and strength 
 of the heavenly Father, and then has risen 
 
232 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, PIGHTEB 
 
 up veritably in the strength of the Lord to 
 let the Father's will be done through him, at 
 any cost to him, has he been enabled to con- 
 tinue, without fainting, the long drawn out 
 campaign. 
 
 How unquenchably burns his spirit of de- 
 termined persistence even in these later years 
 is shown from the following extract from a 
 letter written in 1908 : 
 
 " You may be interested to know that on 
 Tuesday, at half-past nine, I was at work 
 here in the ofifice [New York]. In the after- 
 noon, at three o'clock, I was in Providence, 
 Rhode Island, before the Federal Grand Jury, 
 where I had a party indicted. I took supper 
 in Boston, and arose about three o'clock on 
 Wednesday morning in St. Johnsbury, Ver- 
 mont. I went to a hotel and had about two 
 and one-half hours' sleep, when I got up, and 
 went put to hunt up a United States Com- 
 missioner, who very kindly got up out of bed 
 to sign my warrants, which I had already 
 prepared for his signature. I had about ten 
 minutes for breakfast, and then took the 6 : 45 
 train for East Hardwick, Vermont, where I 
 arrived in a snow-storm. I hired a carriage 
 and drove about a mile into the country. 
 
AFTBE FOETY YEAES 233 
 
 stopped at a farmhouse, and asked a boy 
 who came out of the wood-shed if Leon was 
 home. He said, 'Yes, he's in there.' I 
 jumped out of the carriage and went into the 
 wood-shed, and found the party I was after 
 actually employed in his developing-room, in 
 one corner of the wood-shed. Fortunately 
 for me, he had the door unlocked and open. 
 He came out as I entered and we walked 
 back, and I was fortunate enough to seize 
 the negatives from which he was making his 
 infamous pictures, and also his stock in trade. 
 
 " We gave him a chance to wash up and 
 dress, then drove about two miles and a half 
 across country, flagged a train at a flag sta- 
 tion, and were back in St. Johnsbury about 
 noon, where I had this man committed by 
 the Commissioner on two charges, in default 
 of $i,ooo bail on each charge. I placed him 
 in jail by order of the Commissioner; took the 
 2 : 20 train back to Boston, where I had my 
 supper ; and awoke the next morning about 
 six o'clock in New York. I had my break- 
 fast and went to the ofifice. 
 
 "This morning I came here about nine 
 o'clock, and had to go immediately to court, 
 where I had another party held to await trial 
 
234 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEE 
 
 in our local courts here. This makes ninety- 
 nine arrests for this year." 
 
 Yet this spirit of dogged and relentless 
 determination, unsparing of self, which has 
 freed our land from so much vice and peril, 
 lives in the same heart with a spirit of loving 
 kindliness to the needy, whether friend or 
 stranger. Just a week before writing of that 
 strenuous day in New England, Mr. Com- 
 stock took another out-of-town trip in order 
 to secure for an aged lady an assignment of 
 a mortgage on some property of hers from 
 the hands of a person whom she very much 
 dreaded. 
 
 All the time under fire because of the 
 enmity of those whom he must oppose and 
 defeat, Mr. Comstock's personal record has 
 been subjected to a searching scrutiny, and 
 has met the test. It is interesting to read 
 the estimate of him which was given in a 
 popular article a few years ago in a monthly 
 magazine known as The Bohemian. The 
 writer, who called Mr. Comstock "the man 
 who does our weeding," said : 
 
 " It is doubtful if there are many men in 
 the world whose integrity has withstood 
 closer scrutiny. For considerably more than 
 
AFTER FOETY TBAES 235 
 
 a quarter of a century the brains, the wealth, 
 and the energies of all the criminal classes 
 have been enlisted against him. They have 
 tried to lead him into temptation, but he has 
 resisted the most seductive traps that they 
 have been able to set for him. The Louisiana 
 Lottery people dangled the bribe of 'inde- 
 pendence for life ' before his eyes, practically 
 allowing him to name the conditions under 
 which he would agree to let them alone, 
 but he dismissed them with a wave of the 
 hand. . . . They put detectives on his 
 track, hoping that they might discover that 
 he had at some time been guilty of some 
 act of which he might now be ashamed, 
 and great sums of money were offered to 
 the man who should supply them with infor- 
 mation that could be used as a club to drive 
 Anthony Comstock into a corner. To earn 
 this reward, many of the sharpest investi- 
 gators in the land searched the record of his 
 life from the very day he left the cradle in his 
 mother's arms, but not one of these smart 
 Paul Prys was able to put his finger upon a 
 single deed of moral iniquity. Where most 
 of us ordinary individuals would have been 
 driven to the • tall grass,' Anthony Comstock 
 
236 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEE 
 
 accepted these most searching investigations 
 as a matter of course, actually aiding rather 
 than attempting to retard them. As the 
 result it is reasonably safe to assert that there 
 is at least one man in the United States who 
 has no skeleton concealed in his closet, and 
 that man is the Secretary of the New York 
 Society for the Suppression of Vice." 
 
 A few years later, when a full forty years 
 of service in fighting vice had been rounded 
 out, the officers of his Society paid Mr. Com- 
 stock a notable tribute by presenting him 
 with the following "Appreciation": 
 
 An Appreciation presented to Anthony Corn- 
 stock by Officers of the New York Society 
 for the Suppression of Vice on the comple- 
 tion of Forty Years of Service : 
 We, the officers of the New York Society 
 for the Suppression of Vice, deem the fortieth 
 anniversary of your entrance on your life-work 
 a fitting time to recall your great services and 
 to express our high appreciation of them. 
 
 The success of your work demanded the 
 rare combination of qualities which you 
 brought to it — the highest courage, both 
 moral and physical ; absolute incorruptibility ; 
 the keen discrimination and skill of a detect- 
 ive ; the capabilities of a lawyer ; and withal 
 stern loyalty to duty, without public recogni- 
 tion, and regardless of popular misjudgment, 
 
AFTEE FOETY YBAES 237 
 
 and at the same time a Christian tenderness 
 and tact which could win back those whose 
 feet have taken the first wrong step. 
 
 We believe that you were as truly raised 
 up and as especially qualified for your work 
 as were Lincoln and Grant for theirs. They 
 led loyal millions in defense of the nation 
 during four years of conflict. For ten times 
 four years you have struggled well-nigh 
 single handed against lewd fellows of the 
 baser sort in defense of the children and 
 youth of the land. 
 
 Their enemies and yours have sought your 
 life by open violence and secret craft. They 
 attempted intimidation, bribery and slander ; 
 and, when all these had failed, they tried the 
 one remaining weapon — ridicule, which is 
 the final confession of impotent malice. But 
 the word has been verified to you : " No 
 weapon that is formed against thee shall 
 prosper ; and every tongue that shall rise 
 against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn." 
 
 Through all these years you have had the 
 entire confidence of good men who have 
 known your character and your work ; and 
 you have had the loyal support of such dis- 
 tinguished citizens as 
 
 Samuel Colgate, William E. Dodge, Sr., 
 William E. Dodge, Jr., Morris K. Jesup, 
 Dorman B. Eaton, R. R. McBurney, Wel- 
 come G. Hitchcock, Charles E. Whitehead, 
 Kilian Van Rensselaer, Henry R. Jones, 
 James B. Colgate, William Ives Buddington, 
 D. D., James W. Elwell, William F. Lee, 
 
238 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEE 
 
 J. M. Cornell, William Johnson, Cephas 
 Brainerd, Elbridge T. Gerry, James A. Brad- 
 ley and Samuel Thome. 
 
 We hope that you will find endless satis- 
 faction in the measureless good you have 
 done. You have a right to rejoice and be 
 exceedingly glad, for you have been "per- 
 secuted for righteousness' sake." 
 
 We love you for the enemies you have 
 made ; we admire you for the sterling qualities 
 you have shown ; and in the name of the 
 silent multitude of parents and youth who 
 will never know their indebtedness to you. 
 
 We thank you for the heroic services you 
 have rendered to our country and to hu- 
 manity. 
 
 Anthony Comstock 
 
 March j, 1812 — March j, ipi2. 
 
 Fred E. Tasker Wm. H. King 
 
 James M. Buckley Theo. L. Beck 
 
 JosiAH Strong Wm. H. Parsons 
 
 Henry R. Jones John C. Martin 
 
 Augustus F. Libby Wm. C. Beecher 
 
 Mr. Samuel Colgate was president of the 
 Society for twenty-one years, and, like some 
 others, he stood by Mr. Comstock through 
 every vicissitude up to the time of his death. 
 Mr. Jesup and Mr. Dodge were vice-presi- 
 dents for more than thirty years. None 
 could have been more loyal and loving than 
 Mr. Comstock's Brooklyn pastor. Rev. Wm, 
 
AFTEE FOETY TEAES 239 
 
 Ives Buddington. These and many other 
 names are precious memories out of his rich 
 past, while he rejoices in the fellowship and 
 sympathy of his living co-workers. 
 
 A tangible evidence of the result of Mr. 
 Comstock's work is seen in these facts. Since 
 he commenced he has destroyed something 
 over fifty tons of vile books ; 28,425 pounds of 
 stereotype plates for printing such books ; 
 3,984,063 obscene pictures ; 16,900 negatives 
 for printing such pictures ^3,646 persons have 
 been arrested, and of these 2,682 have been 
 convicted or pleaded guilty, and 2,180 have 
 been sentenced. If the matters which have 
 been seized were to be transported this would 
 require sixteen freight cars, fifteen loaded with 
 ten tons each, and the other nearly full. If 
 the persons arrested were to be transported, 
 (^ixty-one passenger coaches would be needed, 
 ' each with a seating capacity of sixty persons, 
 sixty cars filled, and the other nearly full. 
 
 But facts and figures of this sort tell only 
 the smallest and most unimportant part of 
 the real achievements and results of this life- 
 work. Who can say how many of the 42,- 
 000,000 boys and girls in this country have 
 been protected and saved from unspeakable 
 
240 ANTHONY COMSTOCK, FIGHTEE 
 
 degradation because Mr. Comstock has lived ? 
 When the chamber of imagery, when 
 memory's storehouse, has once been given 
 some vile scene or story there has virtually 
 been placed, as Mr. Comstock says, " A noose 
 around the neck, with the end in the Devil's 
 hand." In countless lives, Anthony Com- 
 stock has prevented the Devil from getting 
 that particular noose around the neck of 
 hoped-for victims. How sorely is this work 
 needed I " For death is come up into our 
 windows, it is entered into our palaces ; to 
 cut off the children from without, and the 
 young men from the streets" (Jer. ix. 21). 
 
 But the day is coming when the fight will 
 be over. It will have yielded its full fruit ; 
 and those who have entered into the Way of 
 Life shall dwell in a city that " hath no need 
 of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine upon 
 it: for . . . the lamp thereof is the 
 Lamb. . . . And they shall bring the 
 glory and the honour of the nations into it ; 
 and there shall in no wise enter into it any- 
 thing unclean, or he that maketh an abomina- 
 tion and a lie : but only they that are written 
 in the Lamb's book of life." 
 
 Printed in the United States of America