“He ort to be gulentined,” says the old man again. “Ort to have his head chopped right off with an axe.”
They all looked favorably at the old man now, and the grocer man trusted him right on the spot for a plug of tobacco.
Josiah come in jest then with the World in his hand, and he turned to Cornelius Cork, and says he:
“I see by the World to-day, there has been another case of public stealin’; another hundred and fifty thousand stole from us out of the public treasury.”
“Yes,” said Cornelius Cork in a mild gentle tone: “A little case of fraud, that is all.”
“Merely a deficit in accounts,” says the grocer man who was rapined, in a ’poligy tone.
“Only a triflin’ defalcation from the revenue,” says the old man, bitin’ off another chew of his tobacco with a serene countenance.
“Nothin’ to speak of,” says P. Cypher Bumpus. “Nothin’ worth mentionin’, a triflin’ abstraction, a diminution, a withdrawal of funds, a emblezzlement.”
Oh, what feelin’s I felt to hear ’em go on; but I didn’t say a word to ’em, I don’t believe in a woman bein’ bold and forred in her demeanor. But to see every one on ’em givin’ that stealin’ a bigger and a bigger name, swellin’ and puffin’ it out from fraud clear up to embezzlement, and no knowin’ where they would stop, if somebody didn’t interfere. I declare for’t, it give me such feelin’s that I spoke right out to Josiah, and my tones sounded low and awful, for I heerd ’em unbeknown to me.
Says I, “Josiah Allen, what feelin’s it makes me feel to see folks strain so, and hang back from eatin’ a gnat, and then swaller a elephant and a rinosterrous and a drumedary.” Says I, “When a poor man in the case of sickness steals a onion and a codfish, he is called a thief and a robber; he is drummed out of camp, sent to jail, knocked down by public opinion, and kicked after he is down by the same, till he is completely mortified, and shame and disgrace bow his forward down into the dust. But let a rich man steal all he can lay his hands to, and they think it is sunthin’ pretty in him, so pretty that they make a new name for it, and he wears that name like a feather in his cap. If he breaks down a purpose to cheat his creditors, they call it ‘compromisin’ ‘repudiation,’ both of these name stand up like beautiful feathers over his forward, and he looks grand and feels so. If he lays to and steals right out openly hundreds of thousands of dollars they have lots of curious and handsome names to ornament him with, all the way from defalcator and deficitor up to embezzler. Why, if some politician should steal the hull United States treasury, they would have to make a new set of names to trim him off with, there wouldn’t be none in the dictionary half big and noble enough.”