ers. Now let the books be opened! Better if you can have a
half-dozen offices in one room; then the agent can accommodate you
with anything you desire. If you want to take a "flyer" in this and a
"flyer" in that, you shall have it.

Coming in from the country are farmers, dairymen, day-laborers. Great
chances now for speedy emoluments. Pour in the hard-earned treasures.
Sure enough, a dividend of one per cent. per month! Forthwith, another
multitude are convinced of the safety of the investment. The second
month another dividend. The third month another. Whence do these
dividends come? From the product of the wells? Oh! no. It is your own
money they are paying you back. How generous of this company to give
you five dollars back, when you might have lost it all!

But the dividends stop. What is the matter? Instead of the
advertisement which covered a whole column of the newspapers,
there comes a modest little notice that "a special meeting of the
stockholders will be held for the purpose of transacting business
of importance." Perhaps it may be to assess the stockholders for the
purpose of keeping the little land they have, if they have any. Or it
may be for the election of a new group of officers, for the present
incumbents do not want to be always before the public. They are modest
men. They believe in rotation of office. They cannot consent any
longer to serve. Where have they gone to? They are busy putting up
a princely mansion at Long Branch, Germantown, or Chelsea. They have
served their day and generation, and have gone to their flocks and
herds. Where is the Church of God, that she allows in her membership
such gigantic abominations? Were the thirty pieces of silver that
Judas received denounced as unfit, and shall the Church of God have
nothing to say about this price of blood? Is sin to be excused because
it is as high as heaven, or deep as hell? The man who allows his name
to be used as president or director in connection with an enterprise
that he knows is to result in the sale of twenty thousand shares of an
undeveloped nothing--God will tear off the cloak of his hypocrisy, and
in the last day show him to all the universe--a brazen-faced gambler.
His house will be accursed. God's anathemas will flash in the
chandelier, and rattle in the swift hoofs of his silver-bitted grays;
and the day of fire will see him willing to leap into a burning
oil-well to hide himself from the face of the Lamb. The hundred
thou