I intend to be the superstructure of my
story of "Frenzied Finance." I had, a year before in Paris, outlined
those plans to some of the brightest financial minds of Europe, and
while they had marvelled at their radicalness, they had pronounced them
sound, and had offered to furnish the hundred million of dollars
required for their execution. Then I realized that to take this money
from bankers would hamper me in the execution of my plans, and I
postponed putting the project in force until I could furnish the
necessary money through my own connections. Again, I had big ideas as
to the copper situation--ideas that only awaited unlimited capital to be
brought before the people, and which, if carried out, would do for them
what had as yet never been done--give them tremendous profits upon their
savings. And here were the unlimited capital and unlimited business
prestige right at hand, but----

"Mr. Rogers," I said, "don't! Please don't! I appreciate your
proposition, and I thank you, but I can't accept. I agree with you about
Addicks, the position I am in, and the mistake or foolish recklessness I
was guilty of when I linked up with this Boston mess, but that doesn't
alter the case an iota. I am enlisted with this man. I knew what he was
when I consented to take charge of his affairs, and I should hate myself
if I sold him out, even though I knew he would without hesitation sell
me out. I must be true to myself."

Mr. Rogers remained silent. I went on:

"This, if I accepted your proposal, I could no longer be, even were
Addicks and Boston Gas out of it. The man who is 'Standard Oil' wears a
collar, and if I did what you ask I should expect to wear a collar
and--and--I can't do it." I stopped; I was not excited; it was
impossible to be so with that calm figure, apparently cut from crystal
ice, so near me, but I was very much in earnest. I wondered what would
come next. Mr. Rogers raised his hand and held it out to me, mine
grasped it, and without a word thus we stood long enough to put that
seal on our friendship which none of the many financial hells we jointly
passed through in the after-nine years was hot enough to melt.

But that friendship is ended now. Henry H. Rogers' evidence in the
Boston "Gas Trial" was the spark that kindled the dead leaves of the
past into the conflagration which, now spread beyond the control of man,
has brought to light the hidden skeletons of forgotten misdeeds and
exposed them for all the