FEINBERG/WHITMAN Box 13 Folder 8 GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE Linton, William James Feb 1875 - Oct. 1888 DCN 195 1875 Feb. 24 Whitman TO W. J. Linton ; from Camden A.L. draft (1p. 23 1/2 x 13 1/2 cm.) Asking Linton "to have printed very nicely for me 1000 impressions of the cut, my head, to go in book . . . I don't like them too weak in color." On verso note : "to W. J. Linton Feb 24, 1875." With this: Original Linton engraving on wood block (12 1/2 x 8 1/2 x 2 cm.) {195}[*see notes Apr 4 1888*] NEW HAVEN MAY 19 CT. Walt Whitman 431 Stevens St Cor: 7 Evert St Camden NJ. [*WJ Linton*][*see notes Aug 27 1888*] Camden, Feb. 24 '75. My Dear Linton; I want [to] you to have printed very nicely for me 1000 impressions of the cut, my head, to go in book. Herewith I send the size of sheet. If convenient I should like to see a proof, fac simile, first. I am still holding out here - don't get well yet - & don't go under yet. Love to you - Write immediately on receiving this. this size sheet - print [to] dark in color as [is thought] you think [proper] they will stand, (I don't like them too weak in color).to W. J. Linton Feb 24 '75New Haven Conn. Box 1188 May 19, 1875 My dear Whitman, Why have I not written to you? Why has not Spring come? I have waited for that, waiting a little also till I could get through some writing which would have made me uncompanionable. Now - I go to New York on Saturday June 5 to the Century meeting and remain in NY. till Tuesday or Wednesday after - Cannot you meet me, so as to return home with me. Apple blossoms truly will be out by then, and some summer warmth to enable you to enjoy your hammock (did I tell you, I have one?) on the piazza -I want you here and to set you to right. Can you come then (not for a night or two but to stay indefinitely) or will you rather come later? Do which may best suit you; but come; and let me know as near as you can when I may look for you. Affectionately yours W J Linton I want a copy of your Mystic Trumpeter In England[*see notes Aug 26 1888*] Box 1188 New Haven Conn. Aug: 21, 1875 My dear Whitman: First—how are you getting on? Second (like a woman's postscript) have I told you at any time that I have been & am preparing a vol: of Amer: poetry, up to your Centennial, for English publication? I would like, if I may, to use as frontispiece your head, which will not hurt your fame on the other side; & 3000 miles off will not, I think, interfere with the appearance of the same head here with those new things which I want to use. May I use it? Say honestly yes or no, as you feel. I do not want to do what you might not like, whether no matter of interest or feeling. But I Can have nothing I should like so well. I wish you were here now - but the storms seem over. We have had such a spell of bad weather as I have never before been treated to by U.S. Yours always, WJ Linton [lately] these last three mos. thinks much of my head trouble. [this] [person, comes] is from the [I] Sun, I am almost always easier [to] as Day departs You are entirely welcome to use the eng: as you desire, I am about as usual — not any worse. Feel or fancy I feel, [I] relief [at the decline of the] already as summer, wanes - [strong heat of the sun] — one of the doctorsDec 11 '76 My Dear Linton I have been for some weeks down in the county - half moping like - yet feeling rather better these days, upon the whole - Your note of some weeks since ought to have been answered before. I have been waiting for the chance to get from the bindery, or from my stack, (as I unwrap the books) a copy of "Two Rivulets" with the dark brown label you want - I have it in mind, & shall get it so! & send it you -- Meantime, let this remorseful note be my apology - - My address here is still the same - Walt Whitman Camden New Jersey[*from Linton July 1 '85*] NEW HAVEN JUL 1 4 PM 85 CONN*] Walt Whitman Camden N.J. [*see notes Oct 6 1888*]NEW YORK JUL 1 9PM 85 TRANSIT CAMDEN,N.J. JUL 2 [?]M 1885 REC'D.New Haven Conn: July 1, 1888 PO Box 489 My dear Whitman: I see by the papers that you may be going to England. If you go you must see Wm Bell Scott, the painter and poet, the first (only, Dante Rosostti were earlier) of your English admirers. He will be glad to welcome you. And so glad to give you a note of introduction when I know you are going. We are old friends and regular correspondents, and I had much delightful time with him in England and Scotland during 1883 and '84. being then across this water. You will tell me too if I can be of other use to you. I maybe visiting the dear old land - again next year, probably having to look after the bringing out of a book - on Wood Engraving. As I am writing I think of something to send you, which ought to have come to you before This a bit of home production; setting up, printing, binding and all - You'll not value it less for that. Need I say that I am glad to see a good report of your health and that, however drifted off - as seems too generally one human fate - I am always pleased to think of you. Let me hear from you and believe are always heartily Yours W J LintonCHISWICK ID 42 OC 2 88 US. of America Walt Whitman 328 Mickle St. Camden New Jersey [*See notes Oct 13 1888*]NEW YORK A PAID OCT D 13 88 ALL CAMDEN,N. J. OCT 13 10AM REC'D.4 Trafalgar Square London WC. Oct; 3, 1888. Dear Friends. Your card to New Haven followed me on here, where I have been for some months, looking after the production of a work on Wood-engraving. The enclosed letter seems to have anticipated your request. My answer to it had croped the letter enclosing yours. In sending that I wrote also home, telling them to look for and forward the block to Stedman. I presume it before now has gone to him. Will you write to him for what use you yourself need of it. I am glad to see your hand again & anyway to hear of youI hope you keep in fair health & in as much prosperity as may be necessary for the poet. For myself, after some five years work on a book concerning my own special art, I am now waiting the return, which may give me a sufficiency, or may not. At 76, or close upon it, one need not be very anxious. I keep in good health. Give me a few words of yourself. The above address will find me for some months to come. Always heartily yours W J LintonWITH WILLIAM JAMES LINTON [*189 - 5 6 -*] POET, ENGRAVER, PRINTER, AND BRITISH REPUBLICAN. His Life and His Works—His Home, the Address or Which the New-Haven People Do Not Know—His Appledore Private Press—Reminiscences of Mazzini and Opinions on Literary and Art Subjects of the Present Time Given by Him Unreservedly. The guard, a tall veteran in blue uniform, at the railway station at New-Haven has often seen a marvelously-charming figure. There is no other face like this. The skin is of lilies and roses; the mouth is thoughtful; the eyes are limpid, humid, brilliant, and the abundant hair and beard are long and immaculately white. The guard knew not the name of Linton. Linton is one of the eminent men of the century. He was a republican militant in England when it was perilous not to be a royalist. He is the poet to whom Lander addressed the verse, "Lauder of Milton, worthy of his laud!" He is the artist upon the shoulder of whom the mantle of Bewick has fallen. The books that he has written are treasures of book-lovers, trebly famous because they are often inaccessible to other collectors than the little number of the elect about whom Massillon preached fervent sermons. Some of these books, as the volumes of the "English Republic," while Linton began to edit, and, in fact, to write almost entirely in 1851, were long ago absorbed in England's libraries; but the purely artistic works, written, printed, and engraved by the author for William James Linton. love of art, have the imprint of his Appledore press, a private press as famous as the one which Agrippa d'Aubigne hid in the caverns of monasteries, and the Appledore press is at New-Haven. The old men in the new stores where large signs announce that textbooks are for sale for cash only, the young women in the old book shops, the people in the art galleries, the attendants at the office of the journal named after the Trojan statue of Pallas, at New-Haven, knew not the fame of Linton. His name is not in the City Directory. "I wonder," said the writer of this sketch, "if at Yale, where two years ago a master's degree was awarded to him, the name of Linton is well known and there is a record of the place where he lives." At Yale they knew Linton's name and fame and address; perhaps Yale concentrates all the intellectual rays of New-Haven; perhaps this is one of its points of difference with Harvard. In Cambridge the passer-by would not refer you to the college for the address of Oliver Wendell Homes. The roads of New-Haven are paved with good intentions, principally. After the rain the road to Appledore is in mud, but it is quite straight to the Bishop's gate of East Rock. There it curves slightly and becomes the New-Haven turnpike. Both sides of it are studded with pretty cottages, but one who knows that in one of them Linton lives needs not to inquire. Appledore is graceful, elegant, original without bring eccentric, simple without being plain. The fence is low and latticed. The roof has a magnificent slope of narrow, regular shingles. The square pillars of the veranda are hollow, latticed, and vines creep on them. There are Mr. Linton's Residence. red flowers at the windows. Tall trees are in the front. The view is enchanting. The high, slanted forest of flowers and leaves violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red, in the background, is a part of East Rock Park, but the limitation of fantasy which, it may be supposed, precise knowledge of the landscape which was planned by Donald Mitchell effects, is only nominal. The forest is transparent. It is like a veil which accentuates the beauty that it covers. It is a sumptuous curtain, but a symbol of the infinite. The window of Linton's printing room opens on this spectacle, in this little room were printed "Wind Falls." a memoir of the author's Chartist friend, James Watson; translations of poems of Victor Hugo and Beranger; "Golden Apples of Hesperus," a collection of poems from Dunbar to Rossetti; "In Dispraise of Woman," thirty-two different versions in English of the epigram by Catullus, "Nalil se dieit muiler mea nubere malie"; "Love-Lore," lyrical poems of the printer; "Famine; A Masque," and three copies, forming the first edition, of "The Masters of Wood Engraving." There were only fifty copies printed of "Love-Lore," only twenty-five copies printed of "In Dispraise of Woman," but there was a special element in the motive from printing three copies only of "The Masters of Wood Engraving." The others were labors of love, and they were presented by the author to his friends. "The Masters of Wood Engraving" was a labor of love, but of fairy fastidiousness also, the author desiring to give to the Chiswick Press an example of his work as it should appear in the luxurious publication of Whittingham. There are many other productions of the Appledore Press, and their value is intense because they have each separately excellent qualities, and because, collectively, they prove that an artist may be a wood engraver, a printer, a poet, a politician in a elevate sense, and an able critic of art and literature in our time as in the time of the Italian Renaissance. With a collection of the books printed at the Appledore Press it would be easy to refute the arguments of those who have derived systems of criticising from theories of specializing. But the individuality of Linton, it is true, is exceptional. The drawing room is an artistic pell mell of books and pictures. There is a superb painting in water colors by F. H. Wehnert. It represents a little girl and a white bear in an armchair, the former reading from a book, the latter listening with an amused air. There is a pretty little picture of Edinburgh Castle in water colors by W. L. Lelteh. There are paintings by Homer Martin and W. J. Hennessy, prints by Honbracken, two drawings by Thomas Gibson, one representing in masterly sketches "A School in the Time of Alfred," the other depicting on parchment, with types of Hegarth, the incidental adventures in "Cash Payment"; engravings after Turner, engravings of Linton, a photograph of Vedder's "Marayas," portraits of great men, pictures of Japan, he death mask of Oliver Cromwell, and stuffs in colors delightfully effaced, and ancient boxes with locks and clasps learnedly ornamented. The bookcase is in three compartments without doors. It would not be Linton's if its moldings were not exquisite. It contains few books of Linton, even few books marked with the Appledore imprint. There are books of poems, historical works, the works of intimate friends, as Giuseppe Mazziol, in English, in French, and in Italian; they are not classified or effectively displayed. They are not details in a [?] decoration. One of them is a duodecimo, badly printed on coarse paper. Its value in money is very great. It is, in the view of book collectors, an extremely scarce copy of the first edition, printed by Renduel in 1834, of an enthusiastic, immortal work. It is, in the view of Mr. Linton, who has not the least idea of its value in money, even more than this. It is "Paroles d'un Croyant," one of the first books which placed him in contact with the religious, political, and social problems of his time. Its author was Lamennais, whom he knew. "It is not at Appledore that one may find the works of Linton," his visitor said. "But this is the book by which I shall be remembered, if I am to be remembered," Mr. Linton replied. He pointed to a copy of his "European Republicans —Recollections of Mazzini and His Friends." He was one of the little band of admirable men who sacrificed everything save honor, under Mazzini's leadership, in an effort to make Europe republican. "You admire the American system of government," said the visitor, with the touching confidence of youthfulness. "System!" Mr Linton exclaimed. "A republic implies order and reverence. This is an anarchical democracy. See the Senate." Mr. Linton was twenty-five years old when, in 1837, he met Mazzini in London. He is eighty-one, and talks of Mazzini with the enthusiasm of his earliest writings. In 1844, when letters of political exiles were opened at the English Post Office, it was Linton who called public attention to the fact and protested before the House of Commons. He and Mazzini were in constant companionship for several years. He says: "He was rather below the average height, slight, but beautifully formed, until in later years so attenuated that he was almost a skeleton: of dignified bearing, with a grand head, handsome in his youth before his black hair turned white, in his age noble and severe, his features finely cut, generally calm, but brightening with a smile as loving as a woman's, with eyes like coals of fire as if the unwavering flame of his soul looked ever through them; such was his outward presentment. When he met you his hand had an English grip; his welcome was an expressive heartiness, a southern warmth withal that drew you close. His magnetism was intense and never-failing. He took hold of every one. No one could turn from him with indifference. Gentle and gracious to all, cheerful with his intimates, not without humor and the appreciation of humor, and sometimes a touch of good-natured satire; in his speech impressive, vehement only when speaking of some great wrong, or at times mock-vehement at some argument which too rudely opposed his cherished ideas; a good talker, tenderly courteous toward women, fond of children, kind and compassionate, simple and self-denying in all his habits, firm in his friendships, companionable—none more so in the days when I had most frequent intercourse with him; in every act and word and look a man whom man or woman once meeting could not but love and reverence forever." Mr. Linton knew Ruffini; they were friends at the university, and until the latter's imprisonment and exile separated them they lived as brothers. He found Lamennais in 1848 in Paris, "In a plain, scantily-furnished room, which served him for editorial office and sleeping room, a small, frail, worn, most earnest man, giving his days and nights to the service of the young republic." He knew Stanislas, Worcell, whom contemporary history has forgotten, and the devotion of Postel, Ryléieff, Herren, Konarski, Darasz, Stolzman, and others. Years that have elapsed have made only more vivid Linton's impression of the glory which is held in reserve by Time for the heroes of Mazzini's epoch, but it never occurs to him—if it occurred to him he would speak of it—that his poems will ever lend a charm to the records of that epoch. Yet they are, in their Elizabethan lyrism, a fine expression of the exquisitely elevated thoughts which men like the Bandieras marched to martyrdom. "Who is your favorite poet?" the visitor dared to ask. "Richard Henry Stoddard, the greatest living poet," Mr. Linton replied. Then he talked of the poets; of Bryant, whose "Thanatopsis" had not profoundly impressed him; of the simplicity of Whittier, which he contrasted with the affected simplicity of Wordsworth; of Poe, whose medley of rhymes and assonances were "worthy of his tales," He said: "The first duty of a poet is to be wholesome, and Poe's poetry is not wholesome." He said of Walt Whitman: "Whitman was a poet who could not write poetry." He defined this by saying that he could not separate form from poetry. He agreed with Mr. Stoddard in the opinion that the poetic drama was a work of the past, for the reason that there were no players to read blank verse. He spoke of Emile Zola and of the apparent inconsistency in the cordiality of his reception in London, while a man is in prison there for having translated some of his works. He said: "There is no inconsistency in this. Zola is a great writer, and his aim was elevated. I question his good taste, but I appreciate his purpose. I have great respect for him. But the man who translated his most indelicated books into English had no other aim than to make money. 'La Débacle' is a magnificent work. It disgusts one with war, and that is a praiseworthy accomplishment." The conversation naturally returned to wood engraving at every mention of an eminent man, because every phase of Mr. Linton's life has left a trace in the art wherein he excels. His earliest work was for Martin and Westall's "Pictorial Illustrations of the Bible." In 833, When he wrote and engraved his enchanting little book on "The Ferns of the English Lake Country," he was living at Brantwood, by Coniston Water, in a house which he sold to Ruskin, and which is now Ruskin's home. Mr. Samuel P. Avery, in whose private library are devoutly collected all the works of Linton in their best editions and in the best states of engravings, might tell a fact like the one about Brantwood in connection with almost every book of Linton. Mr. Linton is a severe critic of the new style of engraving. He says: "I quarrel with it for its want of art. The engravers, being only line engravers, do not appear to know or to care anything about lines. They neglect the study of line, and show an utter indifference to line values." He looks at wood engravings of the new style and comments: "Clever and pleasing pictures, well designed, effective, and nearly as good as photographs. Pure photographs, if to be had, would well replace them, however, and we should then escape the infliction of linear ugliness and be no longer annoyed with the presence of engraving." Mr. Linton is a severe critic, but kindness itself. Mr. A. H. Bulien, who appreciated him, has written. "Three regicides, Goffe, Whailey, and Dixwell, were sheltered at New-Haven, and the last two were buried there. What more appropriate residence could be found for so sturdy a republican as Mr. Linton?" The allusion is not uncomplimentary, but Mr. Linton's visitor could not think of him in connection with a word ending with "cide," even if it indicated only a "regicide," and he asked: "How came you by Appledore?" "It was the property of a friend, an artist, and I bought it because it is half way between Boston and New York," Mr. Linton replied. Appledore has been the home of a great man for a quarter of a century, almost, but the people of New-Haven are not all aware of the fact.owner of the property protested that he would not have the laws of the State or of society violated on his property. So Thomp- son was kicked out without ceremony by Mr. Farr, his landlord, who preferred a de- cent a orderly tenant to one who wished the utmost liberty to do as he pleased, and was willing to pay for that liberty. Thompson moved a little further to the south, and there, so goes the legend, he had erected in six days the first of the rat- tle-trap dens that have sprung up, mush- roomlike, along the banks of the pretty river, a blot on the landscape, and the scenes of all sorts of crime and debauch- ery. He it was who converted the town into a place very like the West End of Chief John Y. McKane's domain on Coney Island. To-day Coney Island's West End is a model of propriety and decency com- pared with Gloucester City. No species of sin, vice, or even crime us too odious to be tabooed, and the police of Philadelphia as- sert that to this spot may be traced most of the "mysterious disappearances". that appear on the police record books. A favorite "sport" with some of the more pretentious men who race their horses at the merry-go-round Gloucester track as a result of this lawlessness, is the drugging of young men at some of the more noto- rious resorts. One does of what is known among them as "the knocker-out" is enough to reduce the victim to a state of stupidity and semi-unconsciousness. Then there is a resort to bestiality such as would have put the ancient Pompeiian to the blush. Revels of this sort are rife among the followers of "Billy" Thompson, though it must be said he has never been charged with being implicated in this sort of moral degradation. There are dead lines that he has fixed for himself and his family, across which none of them is allowed to step. Examples thus set them have been fol- lowed by the low-browed, bullet-headed, and desperate mob of young thugs from all parts of the adjacent country, attracted by the legend, "The criminals of three States may find protection here," which is dis- played in effect, if not in fact, at the gate- houses of Gloucester Ferry. They use the "knocker-out" when their play at the track or at the gaming tables has been un- successful. Their victims are robbed of everything usable, and are fortunate if they escape with their lives. Many bodies of men set down in the list fo mys- terious disappearances have undoubtedly been sent on their eternal journey at some of the foul resorts of the town. Drugged into insensibility, the victim has been dumped int the Delaware at the right turn of the tide and allowed to float out to sea and to a resting place to which he could never be traced. A gambler who knew all about the ins and outs of the place said to a New-York Times reporter just before he started for Gloucester: "Don't take a drink, even with men you happen to know. You can't tell who is desperate down there. They'll spot you as a stranger, and all the crooks carry bottles of "knocker-out" for use when they get hard up, and can find a stranger. It "goes" in the restaurants as well as the barrooms. Keep your eyes open and your wits about you, but don't get "fresh" and think you know it all. I'm giving you straight goods. Men who know a heap more than you about a sporting life have gone down there, and they have never been heard of since. I know that, even if I could not prove it in a courtroom. Of all the "fly" and at times desperate men I have ever known, there are a worse lot at Gloucester than any place I ever struck, and I've dealt faro bank in some pretty tough min- ing camps." THE DUKE OF GLOUCESTER'S CASTLE Home of the Ruler of Jersey's Gehenna and Tales Told of It. In the light of recent events in New-Jersey there was never a ferryboat better named than the one that takes one to Gloucester. Fearleass was plastered all over it. The ferry ticket read, "W.J. Thompson, Treas- urer". Thompson selected the name for the boast, as representing his chief character- istic. Two other boats of the same line are called Dauntless, supposed to be named for another of the attributes of the owner of the town and the ferry, and a third is christened Peerless, which is what Thomp- son says his dominion is. Twenty minutes' sail brings one to the portals of New-Jersey's darkest disgrace, the most cancerous growth on all her terri- tory. Here every vice is licensed and all that is worst in man and woman is catered to by a horde of men who have lost all that was born in them of decency and of honor and chastity, of all the attributes that make man higher than the beast. A daylight sail down the river brings out in plain view a mansion on the shores of the river where lives the "boss" of the town. Set back in the centre of a perfectly-kept lawn, which, in Summer, is radiant with costly flowers and bristling with shrubs of the rarest, is "Thompson's Castle," as it is locally known. Appropriate this title seems, too. No robber baron was more thoroughly intrenched in his castle than is Thompson in this showy place he has made his home. The Delaware sweeps the lan, where a boathouse, stored with craft for his chil- dren, modestly shows itself. But there is no modesty about the castle. It is arro- gant and self-assertive, as is its owner, and its bold coloring of yellow and red gives it a sort of air of defiance, such as Thomp- son himself assumes when lovers of law and order plead with him to put a stop to the pressed as to the reason for his thefts: "I stole the goods so that I could get more money to play at the races and the gambling dens in Gloucester. The money for the stolen goods, all I could earn, and $60,000 of my wife's money, have all gone to pay for "Billy" Thompsons's castle on the Delaware!" Those familiar with that incident could not help thinking of it as the walls of Thompson Castle loomed up so assertively, and could hardly help christening it anew as "McCune's Folly." Strange tales the walls of that castle could tell if they would of things that have been done there; of visits paid by men who would rather the world should not know that the walls have ever harbored them. A Governor of the State is said to have dined there and to have confessed himself an hon- ored guest. Candidates for the United States Senate have atretched their legs beneath the mahoguny in that house and begged for political favors there. State officers, members of the judiciary of the State, county and town officers, and even holders, of Federal offices, have had their political fate sealed within the walls of that castle that poor McCune's money paid for. Men now high in office have there bowed the knee to the " Duke of Gloucester," as Thompson rather delights in being called, and craved his aid to carry out their plans for political preferment. It is in this castle that Thompson holds court to settle the disputes among the gambles of the town, or to deal out the sort of justice that they alone fear in this their stronghold. He is an absolute among them as is the Mayor of Chinatown among his subjects of Mott, Pell, and Doyers streets in New York City. A young man in a place of responsibility in Philadelphia became infatuated with the gambling games at Gloucester. He played until the gamblers had swallowed all his money and $1000 of a trust fund of which he was custodian. That loss meant ruin. He told his story to his wife. She demanded that he go to Thompson, tell him the tale, and said if he did not she would make the town ring with the story of her wrongs. To "McCune's Folly" on a Sunday even- ing went this ruined youth. It is claimed by those who knew that Thompson, who had heard his story, made an appoint- ment for him to meet "soldier" Dan Mo- Gilnch and "Joe" Mackin, proprietors of two of the dene where the youth had lost his money. Before the three he again told the story of his shame. Mackin acknow- ledged having seen the man in hi dive. Thompson hesitated a moment. Then, turning to Mackin, he is said to have ex- claimed, " Joe, give the young man $500," The money was handed over, Then to the ruined youth Thompson said: "Take that; It is the best I can do. Get out of here; get the rest of the money as best you can and promise me you will never set foot in Gloucester again as long as you live." The promise was made, and with the $500 recovered from the wreck the young man went back to Philadelphia where his friends managed to save him when they get hard up, and can find a stranger. It 'goes' in the restaurants as well as the barrows. Keep your eyes open and yours wits about you, but don't get 'fresh,' and think you know it all. I'm giving you straight goods. Men who know a heap more than you about a sporting life have gone down there, and they have never been heard of since, I knew that, even if I could not prove it in a courtroom. Of all the 'fly' and at times desperate men that I have ver known, there are a worse lot at Gloucester than any place I ever struck, and I've [?]ealt faro bank in some pretty tough min- ing camps." --------------------------------------------- THE DUKE OF GLOUCESTER'S CASTLE ------------------------- [?]ome of the Ruler of Jersey's Gehenna and Tales Told of It. In the light of recent events in New-Jersey there was never a ferryboat better named than the one that takes one to Gloucester. Fearless was plastered all over it. The ferry ticket read, "W.J. Thompson, Treas- urer." Thomspson selected the name for the boat, as representing his chief character- [?]atic. Two other boats of the same line are called Dauntless, supposed to be named for another of the attributes of the owner of the town and the ferry, and a third is christened Peerless, which is what Thomp- son says his domain is. Twenty minutes' sail brings one to the portals of New-Jersey's darkest disgrace, the most cancerous growth on all her terri- tory. Here every vice is licensed and all that is worst in man and woman is catered to [?]oy a horde of men who have lost all that was born in them of deceny and of honor and chastity, of all the attributes that make man higher than the beast. A daylight sail down the river brings out in plain view a mansion on the shores of the river where lives the "boss" of the town. Set back in the centre of a perfectly-kept lawn, which, in Summer, is radiant with costly flowers and bristling with shrubs of the rarest, is "Thompson's Castle," as it is locally known. Appropriate this title seems, too. No robber baron was more thorougly intrenched in his castle than is Thompson. In this showy place he has made his home. The Delaware sweeps the lawn, where a boathouse, stored with craft for his chil- dren, modestly shows itself. But there is no modesty about the castle. It is arro- gant and self-assertive, as is its owern, and its bold coloring of yellow and red gives it a sort of air of defiance, such as Thomp- son himself assumes when lovers of law and order plead with him to put a stop to the from the further disgrace that stared him in the face. The castle was not originally inteded as a residence for the Thompson family, ac- cording to the stories of the gamblers in the town. Thompson's plan was to have cre- ated there a "clubhouse" on the plan of the "Pennsylvania Club" at Long Branch, where the "high-rollers" of Philadelphia and other cities might play for as high stakes as they wished. ---------------------------------- "BILLY" THOMPSON'S FERRY ------------- He Bought It from the Man Who Would Not Cater to the Gamblers. The ferry that takes one to Gloucester is the property of "Billy" Thompson, just as is everything else in and about Glouces- ter that is worth the owning. How it came into his possession is a good instance of the way in which he has worked every- thing to his own purposes in the creation of this Monaco of America. A Mr. Farr was the President of the ferry company as well as the owner of the Buena Vista property from which Thompson was driven when he first developed and tried to carry into execution his plans for making Gloucester a resort for the toughs. Mr. Farr would not run the ferryboats at night to accommodate the gangs of gam- blers and dissolute persons who made Gloucester their stamping ground in spite of him. Thompson tried to buy the ferry. Farr would not sell. So Thompson came to New-York and secured the fast river stream- ers Sylvan Deli and Sylvan Glen and ran them all night in opposition to the regular line. The Thompson crowd, of course, pa- tronized the Thompson boats, for on them all sorts of license were allowed the patrons. Men and nwomen could carouse as they pleased. Gambling was allowed if any one managed to escape from the clutches of the fiends at Gloucester with money enough to gamble at any sort of game. Finally Mr. Farr sold the ferry busi- ness to Thompson for $250,000, and he then had a practical monopoly of the carrying trade to his earthly Hades. Converted into a stock company, Thompson is said to have watered and ma- nipulated the stock os well that he remains owner of a majority of the stock, after get- ting back from the corporation all the ready money he had to put into it to get the franchise. So Thompson's boats go back and forth between the metropolis of Pennsylvania and the great dive of New-Jersey, weaving the web and carrying the flies to the nests of the human spiders that prey upon the mis- erable dupes that go by thousands to this New-Jersey Sodom. ------------------------------------ IN THE GAMBLING DENS. ----------------------- What Can Be Seen and Learned on a Saturday Evening Visit. It is but a few steps from the ferry house to the gates of Jersey's Gehenna. No perpetual fire is kept burning to destroy the pestilential odors that arise, as was the case in the Bibilical type of this place. Instead there is the constant beacon light of the wreckers to attract to their doom visitors to this blot on Jersey's fair face. Diagonally across from the ferry house, through Buena Vista Garden, is situated the nest of gambling dens that have made Gloucester a stench in the nostrils of the respectable people of the cursed community. There on the east side of the street, and running from one end of the block to the other, are situated seven houses where gambling is carried on day after day and week after week. There is no in- terference by the authorities of the city or the county, all of whom are sworn to execute the laws of the State against gam- bling, as well as against other crimes. From the ferry house a long board walk runs to the race track, between a row of