University of Virginia Library

10. CHAPTER X.
In what manner Mr. Zachariah Longstraw determined to improve his
fortune.

And now, the question occurring to me, I demanded
into what kind of business we should enter.

“That,” said Jonathan, “is a question more easily
made than answered, seeing that there are so
many ways of making money in this wicked world,
that an honest man can scarce tell which to choose
among them;” and then proceeded with great gravity
to indicate divers callings, which he pronounced
the most gainful in the world, and all or any of
which, he thought, Abel could easily turn his
hand to.

The first he advised was quackery—the making
and vending of nostrums to cure all manner of diseases,
including corns and the toothache; which
was a business that had the merit of requiring no
previous study or education, a tinker or cobbler being
just as fit to follow it as a man that had read
Paracelsus; and which, besides, as was evident
from the speed with which its professors in general
stepped from the kitchen-pot to the carriage, was
the quickest way of making a fortune that could be

imagined. I should have thought the young man
was joking (for he had that vice in him to the last),
had it not been for the fervour with which he pointed
out the advantages of the vocation. A great
recommendation, he averred, was, that it required
no capital beyond a few hundred dollars, to be laid
out in bottles and logwood, or some other colouring
material. Pump-water, he said, was cheap; and
as for the other sovereign ingredient, it was furnished
by the buyer himself. “Yes!” said Jonathan,
“faith is furnished by the buyer, who pays us
for the privilege of swallowing it; we sell men
their own conceits, bottled up with green, red, and
brown water; and thereby we make them their own
doctors. Who then can say the calling of the
quack is not honest—nay, even philanthropic? He
is a public benefactor—a friend even of physicians;
for he frees them from the painful necessity of killing,
by making men their own executioners.”

And thus he went on until I cut him short by
averring, that the whole business was little better
than wholesale cheating and murder. He then
recommended we should make Abel a tailor, solemnly
declaring that, next to quackery, tailoring,
which was a quackery of another sort, was the
most profitable trade that could be followed; the
mere gain from cabbaging, considering that an ingenious
tailor got at least one inch of cloth out of
every armhole, without counting the nails cribbed
from other parts of a coat, being immense, and his
profits, seeing that he lost nothing by a bad customer

that he did not charge to a good one, as certain
and immutable as the laws of the Medes and
Persians.

In short, my nephew Jonathan was in the mood
for expatiating on the merits of all money-making
vocations; in which I should follow him, were I
not urged by the exigencies arising from limited
time and space to adhere to my story. He made
divers recommendations, none of which I thought
of weight; and upon Abel, who had heard him
with gravity and attention, I was at last forced to
call for advice and assistance. It was his opinion,
and he advised accordingly, that all the money I
could raise should be thrown into the stock-market,
where, being applied to purchase and sale in the
usual way, he had no doubt it could be made to
yield a revenue of at least twenty per cent., and
perhaps twice as much; and this proposal, strange
as it may seem to the reader, after the experience
Abram Skinner had given me in such matters, I
did, after sundry doubts and hesitations, finally
agree to.

“Verily,” said I, “this is a gainful business,
friend Abel; but, of a surety, neither honest nor
humane, seeing that it is practised at the expense
of the ignorant, and often the needy.”

“Verily, no,” said Abel Snipe, with fervour; “it
shall be at the expense of the rich and niggardly—
the man that is a miser and uncharitable—the broker
and the gambler—the bull and the bear. Our
dealings shall not be with the poor and ignorant

man that dabbleth in stocks; but him will we charitably
pluck from the grasp of the covetous, and
thus protect, while drawing from the covetous man
those alms of benevolence which he would never
himself apply to the use of the afflicted.”

“Verily,” said I, pleased with the idea, “if we
can make the covetous man charitable, it will be a
good thing; and if we can protect the foolish ignorant
person from his grasp, it will be still better.
But, of a surety, Abel Snipe, this business will be
as gambling?”

“Yea, and verily,” said Abel Snipe, “it is as
gambling when a gambler follows it; but in the
hands of an honest man it is an honest profession.
Is not money, bagged up in stocks and other investments,
as merchandise? and, as merchandise,
shall it not be lawfully bought and sold?”

“And moreover,” said Jonathan, with equal earnestness,
“if it be no better than cheating and
swindling, this same buying and selling, are we not
embarking in it out of charity? Verily, uncle
Zachariah, in such a case as this, the end sanctifies
the means. Behold what is the crying evil arising
from money that is chartered in stocks, whether it
be in banks, rail-roads, loans, or otherwise. This
is money that is not taxed for charitable purposes;
it is money appropriated solely to the purposes of
gain. Why is it that a private man should be taxed
to support the poor, and a bank, that has greater
facilities for making money, be not taxed for the
purpose at all? Verily, uncle Zachariah, we will

do what the commonwealth should be doing; we
will impose a tax upon the gains of chartered
money, and distribute the proceeds among the
needy.”

To make short work of the matter, I will not
pursue our debate further, but merely state that I
was soon brought to consider Abel Snipe's scheme
the best, honestest, and most philanthropic in the
world, and to agree that he should open an office
as a stock-broker, turning a penny or two in that
way, while making much more by buying and selling
on his own account. To this I was brought,
in a great measure, by the representations and arguments
of Jonathan, among which I esteem as
still worthy of consideration that which stands above
expressed in his own words. I am still of opinion
that a tax, and a round one, should be imposed upon
the profits of all banks and other money-making
corporations, the same to be specifically appropriated
to hospitals, and other charitable foundations,
and perhaps also to public schools. In this way
evil might be made productive of good, and our avarice
rendered the parent of benevolence and knowledge.
Of a verity, my philanthropy is not yet got
out of me!

The aforementioned arrangement was made at
an early period of my new existence, that is to say,
at the close of spring; and the faithful Abel soon
began to render a good account of his stewardship,
by handing me over divers handsome sums of
money, the profits of his speculations, which Jonathan

and myself disbursed with rival enthusiasm.
The experiment was continued in a prosperous
manner until the month of September, when there
happened a catastrophe not less unexpected than
calamitous.