Why am I to be checked in the vast occupation of deep-draining mankind?
Why am I to be persecuted for habitually exciting the noblest feelings of our common nature?
Infamous!--I can characterize it by no other word--infamous! If I hadn't confidence in the future, I should despair of humanity--but I have confidence in the future.

Yes! one of these days (when I am dead and gone), as ideas enlarge and enlightenment progresses, the abstract merits of the profession now called swindling will be recognized.
When that day comes, don't drag me out of my grave and give me a public funeral; don't take advantage of my having no voice to raise in my own defense, and insult me by a national statue.

No! do me justice on my tombstone; dash me off, in one masterly sentence, on my epitaph.

Here lies Wragge, embalmed in the tardy recognition of his species: he plowed, sowed, and reaped his fellow-creatures; and enlightened posterity congratulates him on the uniform excellence of his crops." He stopped; not from want of confidence, not from want of words--purely from want of breath.

"I put it frankly, with a dash of humor," he said, pleasantly.