Tacoma, Wash., February 14, 1905.
Dear Sir: It would be greatly appreciated by at least one of your readers if you would furnish the great and only Donohoe the details of some really scandalous epoch of your past. It has been stated many times that one man cannot make a million dollars and do it honestly, so we must assume you have done some "things" in your past. We have a very high regard out West for the works of Mr. Dooley and Mark Twain, and also are regular subscribers of Puck and Judge, and we don't want to see these noted writers and periodicals unseated, even for the time being, by Mr. Donohoe.
Therefore we ask you to give him some tip from which he can work out something serious, so he can make a statement that is not "reported," or the deduction of which does not require Sherlock Holmes.
His work of "dissecting" so far reminds us of the work of a six months' student of a medical college on a Tom cat (no pun meant).
Yours very truly,
L. H. M.
I answered as follows:
My Dear Sir: Your request is similar to that of a hundred other correspondents. I regret I can do nothing to help out. Donohoe's trouble is, he is short of facts, so "short" that he seems to me completely "cornered." I am "long of" them, as you and all my other readers will admit before I am through my story, but my facts are not the kind Donohoe can use, or I would willingly let him have a few to assist him out of his present predicament.
Donohoe's employers, Rogers and the "Standard Oil," knew before they put him on to his present "job" that my life was a peculiarly and unusually open one—one that had absolutely no dark or covered corner in it; they knew it not only because all men in my walks of life know it, but because they had investigated it with their unerring search-light. Most men who have ever been on the inside of "Standard Oil" know that no man with a bad record could do business, much less have an intimate relation, with Rogers and Rockefeller for nine seconds; and my connection extended over nine years.
The tone of my correspondence during the year was not by any means altogether friendly. The writer of the following letter presented his conclusions straight from the shoulder and I was equally direct in my reply: