horned-frog, or a dreaming toad, in a fissure of a preadamite rock."

"I am sorry I haven't your art of making misfortune comfortable."

"Misfortune? My philosophical friend, there isn't any such thing. The
true man is superior to circumstances or accidents. (Some old fellow, I
believe, has said that; somebody always says my good things before me;
but no matter.) Nothing can happen amiss to the wise and good."

"Then I am neither wise nor good, for I have lost my all, and it comes
confoundedly amiss to me."

"Your all? That's what the shoemaker said; but he bought a new one for
six-pence. But, how happened it?"

"By my folly."

"I knew that, of course; but I wanted to know what folly in particular."

"I trusted it to a man whom I thought not only honest, but my friend,
and he has proved a scoundrel."

"You shouldn't have led him into temptation. You are _particeps
criminis_, and the partaker is as bad as the thief. Don't trust without
taking security, my friend; it's offering a premium to crime. Consider
your guilt now! Think of the family into whose innocent bosom you have
brought sin and remorse! Who is the luckless person?"

"Sandford!"

"I knew it. I expected it. He was too good by half. I didn't blame him
for his widow-and-orphan business; somebody must do it; but I made up my
mind some time ago that he would come to grief."

"Prophets are always plenty after the event."

"True, my friend. But just think! He passed by my pictures in the
Exhibition, and bought the canvas of my friend Greenleaf,--a man of
genius, doubtless, but young, you understand, young. Can you conceive
of the wickedness? I felt sure from that moment, that, if he were not
totally depraved, he at least had a moral inability, as the preachers
call it, that would be his ruin."

"Well, he is ruined effectually; but the worst of it is, that he has
dragged innocent people down with him."

"'Innocent,'--yes, you have the word. A man that cares for money at all,
and trusts all he has without security to any fair-spoken financier, is
an innocent, truly."

"Well, there is no use in lamenting, and just as little in the
consolation of thinking how the loss might have been avoided."

"I don't know. I don't admit that. I am not to be deprived of the rights
of a freeborn American. The 'I told-you-so' is a fine balm for all sorts
of wounds,--rather more soothing to physician than patient, perhaps.
Combined with the 'You-might-have-known-it,'