ng one's
temper." Who does control his temper, always?

To my mind the chief lesson was in the fact that the young men of
Brooklyn had taken too much of a notion to carry firearms. There was a
puppyism sprang up in Brooklyn that felt they couldn't live unless they
were armed. Young boys went about their daily occupations armed to the
teeth, as if Fulton Street were an ambush for Indians. I mention this,
because it was a singular phase of the social restlessness and tremor of
the times.

In commercial evolution there was the same indistinctness of standards.
The case of Dr. Lambert--the Life Insurance fraud--had no sooner been
disposed of, and Lambert sent to Sing-Sing, than the sudden failure of
Bonner & Co., brokers in Wall Street, presented us with the problem of
business "rehypothecation."

In my opinion a man has as much right to fail in business as he has to
get sick and die. In most cases it is more honourable to fail than to go
on. Every insolvent is not necessarily a scoundrel. The greatest crime
is to fail rich. John Bonner & Co., as brokers, had loaned money on
deposited collaterals, and then borrowed still larger sums on the same
collaterals. Their creditors were duped to the extent of from one to
three millions of dollars. It was the first crime of "rehypothecation."
It was not a Wall Street theft; it was a new use for an almost unknown
word in Noah Webster's dictionary. It was a new word in the rogue's
vocabulary. It was one of the first attempts made, in my knowledge, to
soften the aspect of crime by baptising it in that way. Crime in this
country will always be excused in proportion to how great it is. But
even in the face of Wall Street tricksters there were signs that the
days were gone when the Jay Goulds and the Jim Fisks could hold the
nation at their mercy.

The comedy of life is sometimes quite as instructive as a tragedy. There
was a flagrant disposition in America, in the late 'seventies, to
display family affairs in the newspapers. It became an epidemic of
notoriety. What a delicious literature it was! The private affairs of
the household printed by the million copies. Chief among these
novelettes of family life was the Hicks-Lord case. The world was
informed one morning in February, 1878, that a Mr. Lord, a millionaire,
had united his fortune with a Mrs. Hicks. The children of the former
were offended at the second marriage of the latter, more especially so
as the new reunion might change