"I am strong and secure," said I to myself as I strode through the
wonderful canyon of Broadway, whose walls are those mighty palaces of
finance and commerce from which business men have been ousted by cormorant
"captains of industry." I must _use_ my strength. How could I better
use it than by fluttering these vultures on their roosts, and perhaps
bringing down a bird or two?

I decided, however, that it was better to wait until they had stopped
rattling their beaks and claws on my shell in futile attack. "Meanwhile," I
reasoned carefully, "I can be getting good and ready."

Their first new move, after my little talk with Langdon, was intended
as a mortal blow to my credit Melville requested me to withdraw mine and
Blacklock and Company's accounts from the National Industrial Bank; and the
fact that this huge and powerful institution had thus branded me was slyly
given to the financial reporters of the newspapers. Far and wide it was
published; and the public was expected to believe that this was one more
and drastic measure in the "campaign of the honorable men of finance to
clean the Augean Stables of Wall Street." My daily letter to investors next
morning led off with this paragraph--the first notice I had taken publicly
of their attacks on me:

"In the effort to discredit the only remaining uncontrolled source of
financial truth, the big bandits have ordered my accounts out of their
chief gambling-house. I have transferred the accounts to the Discount and
Deposit National, where Leonidas Thornley stands guard against the new
order that seeks to make business a synonym for crime."

Thornley was of the type that was dominant in our commercial life before
the "financiers" came--just as song birds were common in our trees until
the noisy, brawling, thieving sparrows drove them out. His oldest son was
about to marry Joe's daughter--Alva. Many a Sunday I have spent at his
place near Morristown--a charming combination of city comfort with farm
freedom and fresh air. I remember, one Sunday, saying to him, after he had
seen his wife and daughters off to church: "Why haven't you got rich? Why
haven't you looked out for establishing these boys and girls of yours?"

"I don't want my girls to be sought for money," said he, "I don't want my
boys to rely on money. Perhaps I've seen too much of wealth, and have come
to have a prejudice against it. Then, too, I've never had the chance to get
rich."

I showed that I thought t