“My fashionable friends, on hearing of my distress, had no more attentions to bestow upon me.  And as I had no more dinners to give, the newspapers also let me drop very quietly.  I should not forget to mention, however, that one huge fellow, who commanded the columns of a very small paper, and made the importance of his position a means of getting loans of his friends, said time would establish the fact that I was an adventurer.  I entertained a hope that the good old Evening Post would have answered this, but it never did.  It was something that I could console my heart with the fact, that the little paper could do me no harm, since its circulation never got beyond two hundred prosey old women, who admired the way the cunning fellow wore his hair and discoursed upon good society, though he held it a virtue never to pay a debt.

“A friend or two, as poor as myself, and who had clung to me as long as a dollar remained, advised the getting up of an affair of honor with this editor; but, as I had always chosen to be a philosopher, and believing valor an article better preserved with peace than war, I objected.  It was then suggested by one of my friends, who was, or had been a politician, (an enemy of his said he had twice been driven out of Wall Street for violating its rules of morality,) that the affair could be more easily settled over a champagne supper at Delmonico’s.  The best eater and drinker could then demand his opponent to consider himself vanquished and pay the bill, the same being accepted as a sufficient apology.  Upon inquiry, it was found that the editor was famous in this sort of warfare, hence it would not do to engage him at odds so unequal.  Telling my friends then, that I would take two weeks to consider it, they thought the matter might be indefinitely postponed.  Another friend hinted, slyly, that editors, as a general thing, held character of so little worth that nothing so much delighted them as to demolish it over a strongly compounded punch.

“Well, with the loss of my money, I had the satisfaction, or rather mortification, soon to know that I had gained the suspicions of mine host of the Astor, who had the temerity to stick his bill in the door one morning.  My balance on hand not being equal to the amount, I shoved the curious bit of paper into my pocket, and proceeded down stairs, slightly inclined to saunter and contemplate the matter over in the park.  But the polite host, with an eye made keen by his doubts, intercepted me at the bottom of the stairs, beckoned me behind the big bright counter, and said I must pardon the request, but he would like the trifle between us squared.  Notwithstanding his great respect for politicians in general, they so often forgot these little matters as to make it a serious affair with him.  The kindness of his manner set my conscience in a tumult; and this, added to the fact that he had entertained me in a princely style, sent me into a state of great grief.  One likes to perform kind offices to a courteous recipient.  Indeed, nothing would have so much pleased me as to discharge every obligation to so excellent a landlord.  I might at some future day need the comforts of his house, especially as several of my friends had intimated, while fortune smiled, that the voice of the people might one day call me to rule the nation.