I awaited impatiently his coming.  It was on the stroke of the hour appointed.  The object of that interview may not with propriety be stated, nor the results described; but it may be said that that hour was the most intensely exciting of any of my professional life, causing the blood to chill and boil alternately.  The business was so peculiar, and connected with men so exalted in position, and conducted with such wonderful ability and tact, that now, years after, scarcely a day passes that my mind does not revert to those hours and do homage to those transcendent abilities by which it was conducted, till I sometimes think the possessor of them was an overmatch for Lucifer himself.  My eyes were for the first time opened to the marvellous in his department of knowledge and art; and the region of impossibility was materially circumscribed, and the domain of the prince of the powers of the air extended ad infinitum.  Into those regions it is not my present purpose to delve.

After a business acquaintance of several years with Mr. Sidney, I have learned that he was formerly a rich manufacturer, and that he was nearly ruined in fortune by the burning of several warehouses in which he had stored a large amount of merchandise that was uninsured.  The owners of these store-houses were men of wealth, influence, and respectability.  Alone of all the citizens, Mr. Sidney suspected that the block was intentionally set on fire to defraud the insurance-offices.  Without any aid or knowledge of other parties, he began an investigation, and ascertained that the buildings were insured far beyond their value.  He also ascertained that insurance had been obtained on a far greater amount of merchandise than the stores could contain; and still further, that the goods insured, as being deposited there, were not so deposited at the time of the fire.  He likewise procured a long array of facts tending to fix the burning upon the “merchant princes” who held the policies.  To his mind, they were convincing.  He therefore confronted these men, accused them of the arson, and demanded payment for his own loss.  This was, of course, declined.  Whereupon he gave them formal notice, that, if his demand were not liquidated within thirty days, never thereafter would an opportunity be afforded for a settlement.  That the notice produced peculiar excitement was evident. Yet the thirty days elapsed and his claim was not adjusted.

From that hour, with a just appreciation of the enormity of the offence which he believed to have been committed, he consecrated his vast energies to the detection of crime.  His whole soul was fired almost to frenzy with the greatness of his work, and he pursued it with a firmness of principle and fixedness of purpose that seemed almost madness, till he exposed to the world the most stupendous league of robbers ever dreamed of, extending into every State and Territory of the Union, and numbering, to his personal knowledge, over seven hundred men of influence and power, whose business as a copartnership was forgery, counterfeiting, burglary, arson, and any other crimes that might afford rich pecuniary remuneration.