VI.
 

[HERE are many of my readers who can recall the bitter
J) warfare which was carried on at one time between Stephen
j H. Branch and old Chief Carson. Branch used to teach
^persons to read and write, and among his pupils was
Alfred Carson. When Branch demanded payment for his services
Carson laughed at the old man, and handed him a counter-claim for
clothes and board for seven years. This was the straw that broke
the camel's back, and for weeks afterwards Branch deluged the news¬
papers with a number of racy articles concerning his relations with
Carson. He taught Carson at the time the latter presented his
famous tank communication to the Common Council through Al¬
derman Thomas Christy, proposing to construct a tank on the summit
of the City Hall, huge enough to hold water sufficient to quench all
the fires in the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth fire districts.
Though Mr. Branch always considered this proposition a rational
and perfectly practical one, he had reason to believe that it was sug¬
gested by Carson's precocious son to his unsophisticated dad, and
that the aldermanic reformers grossly slighted daddy by rejecting, in
utter silence, his invaluable, astonishing, and almost supernatural
conception of the immortal tank.

The resolution at the time created considerable merriment, and
the attempt to .soak the heads of the habitues of the New York
City Hall was heralded all over the country. In the course of
one of his philippics against Chief Carson, Mr. Branch says: