‘I landed at Boston. I went on to New York. I found that he had lately changed New York paper-money for New Jersey paper money, and had banked cash in New Brunswick. To take this Doctor Dundey, it was necessary to entrap him into the State of New York, which required a deal of artifice and trouble. At one time, he couldn’t be drawn into an appointment. At another time, he appointed to come to meet me, and a New York officer, on a pretext I made; and then his children had the measles. At last he came, per steamboat, and I took him, and lodged him in a New York prison called the Tombs; which I dare say you know, sir?’
Editorial acknowledgment to that effect.
‘I went to the Tombs, on the morning after his capture, to attend the examination before the magistrate. I was passing through the magistrate’s private room, when, happening to look round me to take notice of the place, as we generally have a habit of doing, I clapped my eyes, in one corner, on a—Carpet Bag.
‘What did I see upon that Carpet Bag, if you’ll believe me, but a green parrot on a stand, as large as life!
‘“That Carpet Bag, with the representation of a green parrot on a stand,” said I, “belongs to an English Jew, named Aaron Mesheck, and to no other man, alive or dead!”
‘I give you my word the New York Police Officers were doubled up with surprise.
‘“How did you ever come to know that?” said they.
‘“I think I ought to know that green parrot by this time,” said I; “for I have had as pretty a dance after that bird, at home, as ever I had, in all my life!”’
‘And was it Mesheck’s?’ we submissively inquired.
‘Was it, sir? Of course it was! He was in custody for another offence, in that very identical Tombs, at that very identical time. And, more than that! Some memoranda, relating to the fraud for which I had vainly endeavoured to take him, were found to be, at that moment, lying in that very same individual—Carpet Bag!’