As an instance of the temptations to which we were exposed, and of our tactical dispositions in resistance, I venture to relate a single experience of my own.  During an absence of my chief I got upon the trail of a lot of cotton—­seven hundred bales, as nearly as I now recollect—­which had been hidden with so exceptional ingenuity that I was unable to trace it.  One day there came to my office two well-dressed and mannerly fellows who suffered me to infer that they knew all about this cotton and controlled it.  When our conference on the subject ended it was past dinner time and they civilly invited me to dine with them, which, in hope of eliciting information over the wine, I did.  I knew well enough that they indulged a similar selfish hope, so I had no scruples about using their hospitality to their disadvantage if I could.  The subject, however, was not mentioned at table, and we were all singularly abstemious in the matter of champagne—­so much so that as we rose from a rather long session at the board we disclosed our sense of the ludicrousness of the situation by laughing outright.  Nevertheless, neither party would accept defeat, and for the next few weeks the war of hospitality was fast and furious.  We dined together nearly every day, sometimes at my expense, sometimes at theirs.  We drove, rode, walked, played at billiards and made many a night of it; but youth and temperance (in drink) pulled me through without serious inroads on my health.  We had early come to an understanding and a deadlock.  Failing to get the slenderest clew to the location of the cotton I offered them one-fourth if they would surrender it or disclose its hiding-place; they offered me one-fourth if I would sign a permit for its shipment as private property.

All things have an end, and this amusing contest finally closed.  Over the remains of a farewell dinner, unusually luxurious, as befitted the occasion, we parted with expressions of mutual esteem—­not, I hope, altogether insincere, and the ultimate fate of the cotton is to me unknown.  Up to the date of my departure from the agency not a bale of it had either come into possession of the Government or found an outlet.  I am sometimes disloyal enough to indulge myself in the hope that they baffled my successors as skilfully as they did me.  One cannot help feeling a certain tenderness for men who know and value a good dinner.

Another corrupt proposal that I had the good fortune to be afraid to entertain came, as it were, from within.  There was a dare-devil fellow whom, as I know him to be dead, I feel justified in naming Jack Harris.  He was engaged in all manner of speculative ventures on his own account, but the special agent had so frequently employed him in “enterprises of great pith and moment” that he was in a certain sense and to a certain extent one of us.  He seemed to me at the time unique, but shortly afterward I had learned to classify him as a type of the Californian adventurer