to other things.  I have often wondered, in the light of their subsequent actions, why they should have become so pressing just at this time.  At the same time, perhaps I was a little vain and self-sufficient.  I had once got the better of some agents of another great financier in a Western Power deal, and I felt that I could put this thing through too.  Hence I refused to heed the warning.  However, I found that all those who were previously interested to buy or at least develop the property were now suddenly grown cold, and a little later when, having entered on several other matters, I needed considerable cash, the State banking department descended on me and, crying fraud and insolvency, closed all my banks.

“You know how it is when they do this to you.  Cry ‘Fire!’ and you can nearly wreck a perfectly good theater building.  Depositors withdraw, securities tumble, investigation and legal expenses begin, your financial associates get frightened or ashamed and desert you.  Nothing is so squeamish or so retiring and nervous as money.  Time will show that I was not insolvent at the time.  The books will show a few technically illegal things, but so would the books or the affairs of any great bank, especially at this time, if quickly examined.  I was doing no more than all were doing, but they wanted to get me out—­and they did.”

Regardless of proceedings of various kinds—­legal, technical and the like—­X——­ was finally sent to the penitentiary, and spent some time there.  At the same time his confession finally wrecked about nine other eminent men, financiers all.  A dispassionate examination of all the evidence eight years later caused me to conclude without hesitation that the man had been a victim of a cold-blooded conspiracy, the object of which was to oust him from opportunities and to forestall him in methods which would certainly have led to enormous wealth.  He was apparently in a position and with the brains to do many of the things which the ablest and coldest financiers of his day had been and were doing, and they did not want to be bothered with, would not brook, in short, his approaching rivalry.  Like the various usurpers of regal powers in ancient days, they thought it best to kill a possible claimant to the throne in his infancy.

But that youth of his!  The long and devious path by which he had come!  Among the papers relating to the case and to a time when he could not have been more than eighteen, and when he was beginning his career as a book agent, was a letter written to his mother (August, 1892), which read: 

“MY DEAR PARENTS:  Please answer me at once if I can have anything of you, or something of you or nothing.  Remember this is the first and the last time in my life that I beg of you anything.  You have given to the other child not $15 but hundreds, and now when I, the very youngest, ask of you, my parents, $15, are you going to be so hard-hearted as to refuse me?  Without these $15 it is left to me