1.
It was plain that that stranger had enabled me to make a goose of myself.
It was very, very plain; and so I went out and hired another artist.
By working on my vanity, the stranger had seduced me into declaring an income of two hundred and fourteen thousand dollars.

By law, one thousand dollars of this was exempt from income tax--the only relief I could see, and it was only a drop in the ocean.

At the legal five per cent., I must pay to the government the sum of ten thousand six hundred and fifty dollars, income tax! [I may remark, in this place, that I did not do it.] I am acquainted with a very opulent man, whose house is a palace, whose table is regal, whose outlays are enormous, yet a man who has no income, as I have often noticed by the revenue returns; and to him I went for advice in my distress.

He took my dreadful exhibition of receipts, he put on his glasses, he took his pen, and presto!--I was a pauper! It was the neatest thing that ever was.

He did it simply by deftly manipulating the bill of "DEDUCTIONS." He set down my "State, national, and municipal taxes" at so much; my "losses by shipwreck; fire, etc.," at so much; my "losses on sales of real estate"-- on "live stock sold"-- on "payments for rent of homestead"-- on "repairs, improvements, interest"-- on "previously taxed salary as an officer of the United States army, navy, revenue service," and other things.