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.