your question then. I was bound by professional
rules not to disclose facts that came to me under a pledge of
confidence. I am going to violate these rules now, only because I owe
you a duty which seems to me to override all others.

"I do know facts in regard to Mr. Ratcliffe, which have seemed to me to
warrant a very low opinion of his character, and to mark him as unfit to
be, I will not say your husband, but even your acquaintance.

"You know that I am executor to Samuel Baker's will. You know who Samuel
Baker was. You have seen his wife. She has told you herself that I
assisted her in the examination and destruction of all her husband's
private papers according to his special death-bed request. One of the
first facts I learned from these papers and her explanations, was the
following.

"Just eight years ago, the great 'Inter-Oceanic Mail Steamship Company,'
wished to extend its service round the world, and, in order to do so, it
applied to Congress for a heavy subsidy. The management of this affair
was put into the hands of Mr. Baker, and all his private letters to the
President of the Company, in press copies, as well as the President's
replies, came into my possession. Baker's letters were, of course,
written in a sort of cypher, several kinds of which he was in the habit
of using. He left among his papers a key to this cypher, but Mrs. Baker
could have explained it without that help.

"It appeared from this correspondence that the bill was carried
successfully through the House, and, on reaching the Senate, was
referred to the appropriate Committee. Its ultimate passage was very
doubtful; the end of the session was close at hand; the Senate was very
evenly divided, and the Chairman of the Committee was decidedly hostile.

"The Chairman of that Committee was Senator Ratcliffe, always mentioned
by Mr. Baker in cypher, and with every precaution. If you care, however,
to verify the fact, and to trace the history of the Subsidy Bill through
all its stages, together with Mr. Ratcliffe's report, remarks, and votes
upon it, you have only to look into the journals and debates for that
year.

"At last Mr. Baker wrote that Senator Ratcliffe had put the bill in
his pocket, and unless some means could be found of overcoming his
opposition, there would be no report, and the bill would never come to
a vote. All ordinary kinds of argument and influence had been employed
upon him, and were exhausted. In this exigency Bake