In the spring of this year, 1887, Brooklyn was examined by an investigating committee.  Even when Mayor Low was in power, three years before, the city was denounced by Democratic critics, so Mayor Whitney, of course, was the victim of Republican critics.  The whole thing was mere partisan hypocrisy.  If anyone asked me whether I was a Republican or a Democrat, I told them that I had tried both, and got out of them both.  I hope always to vote, but the title of the ticket at the top will not influence me.  Outside of heaven Brooklyn was the quietest place on Sunday.  The Packer and the Polytechnic institutes took care of our boys and girls.  Our judiciary at this time included remarkable men:  Judge Neilson, Judge Gilbert, and Judge Reynolds.  We had enough surplus doctors to endow a medical college for fifty other cities.

It looked as though our grandchildren would be very happy.  We were only in the early morning of development.  The cities would be multiplied a hundredfold, and yet we were groaning because a few politicians were conducting an investigation for lack of something better to do.  From time immemorial we had prayed for the President and Congress, but I never heard of any prayers for the State Legislatures, and they needed them most of all.  They brought about the groans of the nation, and we were constantly in complaint of them.  I remember a great mass meeting in the Academy of Music in Brooklyn, at which I was present, to protest against the passage of the Gambling Pool Bill, as it was called.  I was accused of being over-confident because I said the State Senate would not pass it without a public hearing.  A public hearing was given, however, and my faith in the legislators of the State increased.  We ministers of Brooklyn had to do a good deal of work outside of our pulpits, outside of our churches, on the street and in the crowds.

When the Ives Gambling Pool Bill was passed I urged that the Legislature should adjourn.  The race track men went to Albany and triumphed.  Brooklyn was disgraced before the world by our race tracks at Coney Island, which were a public shame!

All the money in the world, however, was not abused.  Philanthropists were helping the Church.  Miss Wolfe bequeathed a million dollars to evangelisation in New York; Mr. Depau, of Illinois, bequeathed five million dollars to religion, and the remaining three million of his fortune only to his family.  There were others—­Cyrus McCormick, James Lenox, Mr. Slater, Asa D. Packer.  They, with others, were men of great deeds.  We were just about ready to appreciate these progressive events.

In the summer of 1887 I urged a great World’s Fair, because I thought it was due in our country, to the inventors, the artists, the industries of America.  How to set the idea of a World’s Fair agoing?  It only needed enthusiasm among the prominent merchants and the rich men.  All great things first start in one brain, in one heart.  I proposed that a World’s Fair should be held in the great acreage between Prospect Park and the sea.