“You said something awhile ago, Father Crimmins, about your first start into business in New York, and about your having a story to tell me regarding it?”
“Yes, yes; I took a contract to do $15,000 worth of work for Mr. Phelps, a banker in Wall street. I did the work. I got the money. When I came home I counted the money, and I found I had twenty-five hundred dollars over my right. I went down to him the next morning, and handed him the parcel of money, asked him to count it, as I thought there was some mistake. He said I should have counted it, and made sure of it, before I left the bank the day before; that it was no proper way to do business, to come in now, telling him the amount was short. ‘Oh,’ said I, ‘Mr. Phelps perhaps ’tis on the other foot, the boot is; you will see when you count the money.’ He counted it, and found the $2,500 mistake. He told Mr. Emmet of it; he told every one of it that had any work to do in my line. After that, I got as many contracts as I could fill—without making any bids at all for them. The cry went on the street, that Crimmins was an honest man; and, left to himself would do work as cheap and well as it could be done by any one.
“It was another illustration of the truth of the common saying, that ‘Honesty is the best policy.’ From the year 1850, up to the present day, I have been doing all the work of the House of Phelps, Dodge & Company.”
The foregoing twenty-seven chapters make a complete book. Anything written in them is not dependent for explanation or understanding, upon anything else that is to be written. But I will continue writing the “Recollections” from the year 1863 to the year 1898. They (if I live) will make a second book.
O’Donovan Rossa,
Mariner’s Harbor,
New York.