elling one's
vote for--but I forget; you did not sell your vote--you only accepted a
little trifle, a small token of esteem, for your brother-in-law. Oh, let
us come out and be frank with each other: I know you, Mr. Trollop.
I have met you on business three or four times; true, I never offered to
corrupt your principles--never hinted such a thing; but always when I had
finished sounding you, I manipulated you through an agent. Let us be
frank. Wear this comely disguise of virtue before the public--it will
count there; but here it is out of place. My dear sir, by and by there
is going to be an investigation into that National Internal Improvement
Directors' Relief Measure of a few years ago, and you know very well that
you will be a crippled man, as likely as not, when it is completed."

"It cannot be shown that a man is a knave merely for owning that stock.
I am not distressed about the National Improvement Relief Measure."

"Oh indeed I am not trying to distress you. I only wished, to make good
my assertion that I knew you. Several of you gentlemen bought of that
stack (without paying a penny down) received dividends from it, (think of
the happy idea of receiving dividends, and very large ones, too, from
stock one hasn't paid for!) and all the while your names never appeared
in the transaction; if ever you took the stock at all, you took it in
other people's names. Now you see, you had to know one of two things;
namely, you either knew that the idea of all this preposterous generosity
was to bribe you into future legislative friendship, or you didn't know
it. That is to say, you had to be either a knave or a--well, a fool
--there was no middle ground. You are not a fool, Mr. Trollop."

"Miss Hawking you flatter me. But seriously, you do not forget that some
of the best and purest men in Congress took that stock in that way?"

"Did Senator Bland?"

"Well, no--I believe not."

"Of course you believe not. Do you suppose he was ever approached, on
the subject?"

"Perhaps not."

"If you had approached him, for instance, fortified with the fact that
some of the best men in Congress, and the purest, etc., etc.; what would
have been the result?"

"Well, what WOULD have been the result?"

"He would have shown you the door! For Mr. Blank is neither a knave nor
a fool. There are other men in the Senate and the House whom no one
would have been hardy enough to approach with that Relief Stock in that
peculi