at a great discount, and, as when a panic
sweeps over Wall Street, many frantically hastened to sell, and there
were but few buyers.

This led several of my customers to conspire to frighten me into
paying them large sums as hush money, pretending that I had secured
their purchases under false pretenses; but the Yankee spirit of
our fathers, "millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute,"
prompted me to defy their infamous demands.

Under the lead of a fiendishly "smart" lawyer, they declared that I
told them their lands were full of phosphate, and within city limits,
although my published circulars and maps stated nothing of the kind.
They denounced me as a fraud in the newspapers, brought lawsuits
against me, attached property, and proceeded in a most brutal manner
to compel payment of their unjust claims.

My word for half a century had everywhere been as good as my bond,
and my bond as good as gold. I had never before had a lawsuit or any
trouble with any one, and so in my inexperience I employed a lawyer
friend, who was no match for my enemies' human tiger. They testified
unfairly in court, and after many crushing annoyances from the law's
delays, my lawyer, putting in no defense, in order, as he said,
to save his ammunition for use in the Superior Court, to which he
appealed, they secured judgment.

All these slanders broke my never firm health; I was soon on the verge
of nervous prostration, and was ordered by my physician to at once
secure a change of climate to save my life. My innocent lawyer
supposed that a court of justice would postpone my trial until my
return; but we have now some "courts of injustice."

Some lawyers are worse than highway robbers; they make the laws as
legislators to suit their own iniquitous, selfish purposes, so worded
that they are susceptible of almost any interpretation, thus
leading to endless litigations by which these cannibal devourers of
reputations are robbing the public of their possessions. They employ
spies to stir up strife, and some lawyers and judges seem to be banded
together to fleece the confiding lambs of the public. The judge not
only refused to postpone the trial until I was able to attend, but
refused to have the jury informed that I was absent on account of
serious sickness.

We are bound hand and foot, the slaves of these law-sharks, and it
seems as if nothing but revolution and the banishing of these tyrants,
will ever deliver the public from the