Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/76

 these circumstances I became the object of venomous attacks by the local paper, the "Tarrytown News"; in one of its editorials the "News" declared that my home in Englewood, New Jersey, had been raided by the police on account of "free-love" practices; and this statement was reprinted by other papers. I was pretty cross at the time, because of a series of outrages which I had witnessed, so I caused the arrest of the editors of the "Tarrytown News" for criminal libel. By a curious coincidence I found myself involved once more with a village horse-doctor—not the horse-doctor of Englewood, New Jersey, but the horse-doctor of Tarrytown, New York. Readers of "King Coal" will find him portrayed as the justice of the peace with whom the hero has an interview.

This judicial horse-doctor issued warrants, and appointed the day of the trial, and a number of my Helicon Hall friends agreed to come. But one was ill and another was called away, and my lawyer arranged with the lawyers of the other side for a week's postponement. Such agreements between lawyers are always considered matters of honor with the profession, but in this case, when we appeared before the judicial horse-doctor to have the postponement arranged, the lawyers of the other side repudiated their agreement. So we found ourselves in a trap—ordered to proceed to trial without a single witness. Of course we refused to proceed, and the defendants were discharged.

However, I still had the right of civil action, and of this right I prepared to avail myself. The attorneys for the "News"—as they afterwards told me themselves—made a thorough search of my life, and found nothing to help them. So they were willing to publish a retraction and an apology. There was no doubt that I could have made the "News" pay a very pretty price; but I had not brought the suit for money, and I agreed to let them off. The retraction was published on the front page of the "News," but of course it was not published anywhere else, and there are probably not a dozen people today who know about it. Mark Twain, I believe, is author of the saying that a lie can run all the way round the earth while the truth is putting on its shoes.

I find that wherever people still remember Helicon Hall, it is some of these old newspaper falsehoods they remember, and never our earnest effort to show the economies of domestic