en the saucepan on which we cook our criticisms; and when these
are done to a turn we cast the vessel into a dust-bin, trying with
mighty valor of volition to forget that it even exists as old iron.

Never was more blatant humbug aired than that about our "brilliant"
Wall Street financiers. Their "brilliancy" is merely a repulsive
egotism in one of its worst forms,--that of cupidity. They are like
misers with longer, quicker, and more sinewy fingers than other
misers, in the gathering together of dollars. Their shrewdness may be
exceptional, but a quality which consists half in accurate guessing
and half in bullying defiance is hardly worthy of the name. As for
their "nerve" and "coolness," these are not endowments that in such
connection can be admired or praised. For surely the gambler who
cannot face bravely those very slings and arrows of variant if not
always outrageous fortune which form the chief indices of his dingy
profession, cuts a mean enough figure in the cult of it. "Jim" Fisk
had traits like these, but who now applauds them? As well admire the
courage of a house-breaker in scaling a garden-wall at midnight, or
his exquisite tact in selecting a bed-chamber well-stored with jewels
and money. The so-called "great men" of Wall Street are foes of
society--foes merciless and malign. Their "generalship," their
"Napoleonic" attributes are terms coined by people of their own
damaging class, people with low motives, with even brutish morals. It
is time that this age of ours, so rich in theoretic if impracticable
humanitarianisms, forebore to flatter the spirits which work against
it in its efforts toward higher and wiser achievement. The anarchists
hanged in Chicago were men of mistaken purpose and fatuous belief. But
at least they were conceivably sincere, however dangerous to peace and
order. These czars and tycoons of finance, on the other hand, are
scoffers at the integrity of the commonweal, and have for their Lares
and Penates hideous little gods carved by their own misanthropy from
the harsh granite of self-worship. Every new conspiracy to amass
millions through wrecking railroads, through pouring vast sums upon
the stock market, through causing as vast sums to disappear from
public use, stains them blacker with the proof of their horrible
inhumanity. Even death does not always end their monstrous rapine, for
when they pay what is called the debt of nature they too often fling,
in their wills, a posthumous s