“‘Brother,’ says he, ’greetings!  Accept the apologies of friends.  I am Bill Bassett, the burglar.  Mr. Peters, you must make the acquaintance of Mr. Alfred E. Ricks.  Shake hands.  Mr. Peters,’ says Bill, ’stands about halfway between me and you, Mr. Ricks, in the line of havoc and corruption.  He always gives something for the money he gets.  I’m glad to meet you, Mr. Ricks—­you and Mr. Peters.  This is the first time I ever attended a full gathering of the National Synod of Sharks—­ housebreaking, swindling, and financiering all represented.  Please examine Mr. Rick’s credentials, Mr. Peters.’

“The piece of newspaper that Bill Bassett handed me had a good picture of this Ricks on it.  It was a Chicago paper, and it had obloquies of Ricks in every paragraph.  By reading it over I harvested the intelligence that said alleged Ricks had laid off all that portion of the State of Florida that lies under water into town lots and sold ’em to alleged innocent investors from his magnificently furnished offices in Chicago.  After he had taken in a hundred thousand or so dollars one of these fussy purchasers that are always making trouble (I’ve had ’em actually try gold watches I’ve sold ’em with acid) took a cheap excursion down to the land where it is always just before supper to look at his lot and see if it didn’t need a new paling or two on the fence, and market a few lemons in time for the Christmas present trade.  He hires a surveyor to find his lot for him.  They run the line out and find the flourishing town of Paradise Hollow, so advertised, to be about 40 rods and 16 poles S., 27 degrees E. of the middle of Lake Okeechobee.  This man’s lot was under thirty-six feet of water, and, besides, had been preempted so long by the alligators and gars that his title looked fishy.

“Naturally, the man goes back to Chicago and makes it as hot for Alfred E. Ricks as the morning after a prediction of snow by the weather bureau.  Ricks defied the allegation, but he couldn’t deny the alligators.  One morning the papers came out with a column about it, and Ricks come out by the fire-escape.  It seems the alleged authorities had beat him to the safe-deposit box where he kept his winnings, and Ricks has to westward ho! with only feetwear and a dozen 15-and-a-half English pokes in his shopping bag.  He happened to have some mileage left in his book, and that took him as far as the town in the wilderness where he was spilled out on me and Bill Bassett as Elijah III. with not a raven in sight for any of us.

“Then this Alfred E. Ricks lets out a squeak that he is hungry, too, and denies the hypothesis that he is good for the value, let alone the price, of a meal.  And so, there was the three of us, representing, if we had a mind to draw syllogisms and parabolas, labor and trade and capital.  Now, when trade has no capital there isn’t a dicker to be made.  And when capital has no money there’s a stagnation in steak and onions.  That put it up to the man with the jimmy.