Jack—Mine and yours.
Jim—What the devil did he mean by that? My health is always good. I never had the rheumatism or gout, like you, Jack. What did the old reprobate mean by inquiring about my health? I’ll thank him to mind his own business.
Jack—Jim: Listen: For thirty years, you have imposed on me the financial department of our vast establishment, until I have racked my brain, and nearly worn myself into the grave, and I am pursued in my old age, by our creditors, as never before. True, we recently resumed payment, but we know that we did that for effect, and before we were fairly out of the woods. I tell you, brothers, we are in a very critical condition. People want bread, instead of books and papers, in these days of famine and commercial desolation. Now, brothers, I am desperate, and I favor a resort to desperate measures, to save the credit of our House.
Jim—I think I smell a skunk. To save our pecuniary credit, you would sacrifice our honor. Talk out, Jack, for I too am growing desperate, when the scuffle is between credit and honor, and I will die in defence of the latter.
Jack—Is not our Weekly declining, and our Monthly rapidly decaying, and our general business nearly paralysed. Must we not pay our notes? And how can we do that, unless we adopt the course of Bonner, who is devouring all the publishers of the civilised world. Now, Jim, it is very pleasant for you to sit here two or three hours every day, and talk about temperance, (and take a glass on the sly occasionally,) and praise Methodism, (and go to the Theatre, and some other very curious places of amusement,) and hold political meetings in our counting room, which you fill daily with a gang of seedy political vagabonds, who once, (with the aid of Divine Providence, and Methodists, and Daniel F. Tiemann, and Peter Cooper, and Judge Sidney Stewart, and the politicians of the Second, Sixth, and Eleventh Wards,) set a ball in motion, that elected you Mayor of New York, from which you did not make a cent, and did not add a cipher to your private fortune,—I say, all this is mighty pleasant for you, but not for me, as the entire financial department of our immense establishment has ever been on my shoulders, and I am getting very old, and I now am about to change our tactics, or we are forever lost.
Jim—Go on, Jack—go on. But stop a moment. Fletch: Just open the desk, and pass me the bottle of brandy. (Takes a stiff horn.) Now, Jack, go on, for I am prepared for anything.
Jack—I told Bennett that I thought of publishing his biography favorably in our Weekly.
Jim—And what did the old devil say to that?
Jack—His eyes brightened and glistened with perfect delight, and he said it was a darm fine idea.
Jim—Wes: Do you hear all this?