Parker Chandler's, and inside of three hours these had been substituted and the several agreements entered into with Rogers formally renounced. I retired to bed that night with a chuckle of self-satisfaction, and a convincing appreciation of the truth of the axiom I have referred to.
The low-down treachery and double-dealing characterizing this transaction, the utter callousness to sacred obligations it exhibits in men of presumed high standing and personal honor, may surprise my readers. I assure them that several such episodes will be told in the forthcoming pages of this history. Indeed, among a certain school of eminent financiers, loyalty is no more than devotion to the opportunity of making the highest profit. If circumstances shift this from the side of their enlistment to that of an adversary, their arms and hearts go where their pockets lead. It must be remembered that the Hessian who "down-town" is steeped in perfidy, trickery, and fraud, may appear before the "up-town" world as a Christian citizen and an example of domestic virtue. The type is not uncommon nowadays of the pleasant and proper gentleman, prompt to knock down any one daring to asperse his veracity after five any evening and all day Sunday, but who considers himself free to engage in any dirty juggle or misrepresentation from 9 a.m. to 4.45 p.m. In office hours you run no risk in calling him a liar, for then he'll laugh at the joke and tell you business is business. However, the foregoing episode was an experience that left an indelible impression on my mind, and the hatred and disgust it engendered precipitated events out of which in the course of years came the offences and injuries that are responsible for the story of "Frenzied Finance."
The immediate results of my reappearance were not startling. Rogers raved at Addicks and especially at Whitney, but he was too old a student of men, and the monkeys Dame Fortune makes of them, to sulk over the facts he could not remedy. He soon resumed his former attitude of waiting for something to turn up, which indeed he had maintained ever since my unsuccessful effort to make terms with him.