At the time, it occurred to me in no other light except as my due business, and I never took any large view at all.

But even now I do believe (though not yet in pickle of wisdom) that if every body, in its own little space and among its own little movements, will only do and take nothing without pure taste of the salt of justice, no reeking atrocity of national crimes could ever taint the heaven.
Such questions, however, become me not.

I have only to deal with very little things, sometimes too slim to handle well, and too hazy to be woven; and if they seem below my sense and dignity to treat of, I can only say that they seemed very big at the time when I had to encounter them.
For instance, what could be more important, in a little world of life, than for Uncle Sam to be put out, and dare even to think ill of me?
Yet this he did; and it shows how shallow are all those theories of the other sex which men are so pleased to indulge in.

Scarcely any thing could be more ridiculous from first to last, when calmly and truly considered, than the firm belief which no power of reason could for the time root out of him.
Uncle Sam, the dearest of all mankind to me, and the very kindest, was positively low-enough to believe, in his sad opinion of the female race, that my young head was turned because of the wealth to which I had no claim, except through his own justice.

He had insisted at first that the whole of that great nugget belonged to me by right of sole discovery.
I asked him whether, if any stranger had found it, it would have been considered his, and whether he would have allowed a "greaser," upon finding, to make off with it.