But all who read the message carefully realised that in it the President promised the people to put an end to the dishonour of thieving politics.  There was something in the air in Washington that seemed to afflict the men who went there with moral distemper.  I was told that Coates Ames was almost a Christian in Massachusetts, while in Washington, from his house, was born that monster—­The Credit Mobilier.  Congressmen who in their own homes would insist upon paying their private obligations, dollar for dollar, forgot this standard of business honour when they advocated a swindling policy for the Government of the United States.  In its day of trouble the Government was glad to promise gold to the people who had confidence in them, and just as gladly the Government proposed to swindle them by a silver falsehood in 1877.  But the Nation was just recovering from a four years’ drunk; Mr. Hayes undertook to steady us, during the aftereffects of our war-spree.  Why should we neglect to pay in full the price of our four years’ unrighteousness?  As a nation we had so often been relieved from financial depression up to that time, but, we were just entering a period of unlicensed ethics, not merely in public life, but in all our private standards of morality.

It seems to me, as I recall the character of Brooklyn life at this time, there never was a period in its history when it was so intolerably wicked.  And yet, we had 276 churches.  One night about Christmas time, in 1877, Brooklyn Heights was startled by a pistol shot that set everyone in New York and Brooklyn to moralising.  It was the Johnson tragedy.  A young husband shot his young wife, with intent to kill.  She was seriously wounded.  He went to prison.  There was a child, and for the sake of that child, who is now probably grown up, I will not relate the details.  In all my experience of life I have heard many stories of domestic failure, but there are always two sides.  Those who moralised about it said, “That’s what comes of marrying too young!” Others, moralising too, said, “That’s what comes of not controlling one’s temper.”  Who does control his temper, always?

To my mind the chief lesson was in the fact that the young men of Brooklyn had taken too much of a notion to carry firearms.  There was a puppyism sprang up in Brooklyn that felt they couldn’t live unless they were armed.  Young boys went about their daily occupations armed to the teeth, as if Fulton Street were an ambush for Indians.  I mention this, because it was a singular phase of the social restlessness and tremor of the times.

In commercial evolution there was the same indistinctness of standards.  The case of Dr. Lambert—­the Life Insurance fraud—­had no sooner been disposed of, and Lambert sent to Sing-Sing, than the sudden failure of Bonner & Co., brokers in Wall Street, presented us with the problem of business “rehypothecation.”