triumphal termination, there came athwart his victorious path a financial guerilla, "balloony," mysterious, yet as sticky as a jelly-fish, who was destined to exert a most maleficent influence on his after-life. Fate hangs no red lights at the cross-roads of a man's career. No "pricking of his thumbs," no strange portents warned the Master of "Standard Oil" that the impudent Philadelphia swashbuckler who dared interfere with the execution of his plan to fetter the "System's" yoke to the necks of the citizens of Brooklyn was the factor that destiny had chosen to shape the ends that he had rough-hewn.
The financial guerilla was J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks, votary of rotten finance, perpetual candidate for the United States Senate, wholesale debaucher of American citizenship and all-round corrupter of men—J. Edward O'Sullivan Addicks, a corporation political trickster, who has done more to hold up American laws, American elective franchises, and American corporations to the scorn of the civilized world than any other man of this or any previous age.