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my friend, Mr. Randall, a certified copy of the Park Bill before taking the seven o’clock train to New York.”
    By eleven o’clock on the night of the triumph, he was in Union Square, New York, aglow with excitement, in front of the house of the corporation counsel, his friend Dillon. Dillon answered Dan’s ringing of the front doorbell by appearing at a third-floor window in nightcap and dressing gown to hear the great news, and descended to the ground floor to accept a copy of the enacted bill.
    As authorized by the act, Dan hoped, the municipal authorities would include within the park an area named Jones’ Woods, “a considerable tract of native forest, covered by large trees, with contiguous land extending to the East River.” His relations with the Common Council of New York, both professional and personal, led him to expect a favorable reaction. An old friend, the Democratic leader in the Board of Aldermen, however, told him frankly that although the boys on the council wanted to do all they could for his plan, “you know it is formidable and you must let up on Jones’ Woods and the East River frontage. The boys were offered $50,000 to strike out those plots and I can’t control them. The big purse is too tempting to resist.”
    Having been raised in Tammany, Dan was not at all outraged by these blatantly venal motives, but possibly regretted that he had no equivalent purse at his command. Still, he was able to arrange a characteristic New York deal for an extra hundred acres, through an understanding with Alfred Craven, “then chief engineer of the Croton Aqueduct, who desired his salary raised to $7,500 per annum. This I agreed to arrange for him, provided he would locate the new Aqueduct just then authorized within the limits of the proposed park.”
    Dan knew that Judge Robert Barnwell Roosevelt of the New York Supreme Court, in common with other large landholders, was opposed to the park. So even though the court had appointed commissioners to produce a report on the project, it let it be forgotten. Events preventedDan for the time being from pursuing the vision of a park through the maze of New York City’s special interests, but it was a matter to which he would return. 28
    Dan the civic-minded attorney was simultaneously fascinated by the problems of New York public transportation. Conscientiously trying to create a better city for his soon-to-be-born child, he applied his rambunctious intelligence to establishing a crosstown system of horse-drawn omnibuses in Manhattan, noting the receipts from similar services in Brooklyn, and devising equations for traffic. Certainly, by the start of the Civil War, eight years later, New York was full of the stubby, roofed, bathtub-style omnibuses that moved New Yorkers along the tracks and contributed to its traffic jams. But in 1853, Dan was in a position of being their advocate. “Omnibuses do not choke up the streets,” he boldly declared for the sake of doubters in the Common Council, and he backed up the assertion with mathematical formulae based on the speed, mass, and carrying capacity of the vehicles. 29
    In view of Dan’s notable political gifts, Robert Dillon offered some advice, almost certainly on the matter of his continued association with Fanny White, among other indiscretions. Dan was quick to plead in reply, “I cannot play the courtier to the multitude, much less to individuals.” He had never done it and never would, he said. Indeed, his approaches to President Pierce contained no note of sycophancy. So as for Dillon’s hope for his reform, he sternly rebuffed the idea: “You waste your own time and pain me by requesting it. . .. I know all the consequences of yielding to this idiosyncrasy, and have many a long year since resolved to enjoy it even at the price which must be inevitably paid. I have said to you before that I do not deem it a wise course, nor approve it, nor recommend it to any friend; but I’ve adopted it: it is mine,