It will come to you as strange, my friends, to hear objection—as though against an ill trait—to that open-handed generosity which is held by many to be among the marks of supreme virtue. Generosity, whether it be evidenced by gifts of money, of sympathy, of effort or of time, is only another word for weakness. If one were to go into careful consideration of the life-failure of any man, it would be found most often that his fortunes were slain by his generosity; and while, without consideration, he gave to others his countenance, his friendship, his money, his toil or whatever he conferred, he in truth but parted with his own future—with those raw materials wherewith he would otherwise have fashioned a victorious career. Generosity, in a commonest expression, is giving more than one receives; it is to give two hundred and get one hundred; he is blind, therefore, who does not see that any ardor of generosity would destroy a Rothschild.

From birth, and as an attribute inborn, I have been ever too quick to give. For a first part of my life at least, and until I shackled my impulse of liberality, I was the constant victim of that natural readiness. And I was cheated and swindled with every rising sun. I gave friendship and took pretense; I parted with money for words; ever I rendered the real and received the false, and sold the substance for the shadow to any and all who came pleasantly to smile across my counter. I was not over-old, however, when these dour truths broke on me, and I began to teach myself the solvent beauty of saying “No.”

During those months of exile—for exile it was—which I spent in Washington Square, I cultivated misanthropy—a hardness of spirit; almost, I might say, I fostered a hatred of my fellow man. And more or less I had success. I became owner of much stiffness of sentiment and a proneness to be practical; and kept ever before me like a star that, no matter how unimportant I might be to others, to myself at least I was most important of mankind. Doubtless, I lost in grace by such studies; but in its stead I succeeded to safety, and when we are at a final word, we live by what we keep and die by what we quit, and of all loyalties there’s no loyalty like loyalty to one’s self.

While I can record a conquest of my generosity and its subjugation to lines of careful tit-for-tat, there were other emotions against which I was unable to toughen my soul. I became never so redoubtable that I could beat off the assaults of shame; never so puissant of sentiment but I was prey to regrets. For which weaknesses, I could not think on the affairs of The Emperor’s Cigars and The German Girl’s Diamonds, nor on the sordid money I pouched as their fruits, without the blush mounting; nor was I strong enough to consider the latter adventure and escape a stab of sore remorse. Later could I have found the girl I would have made her restitution. Even now I hear again that scream which reached me on the forward deck of the “Wolfgang” that September afternoon.

But concerning the Cuban filibusterer, his outsailing against Spain; and the gold I got for his going—for these I say, I never have experienced either confusion or sorrow. My orders were to keep him in; I opened the port’s gate and let him out; I pocketed my yellow profits. And under equal conditions I would do as much again. It was an act of war against Spain; yet why should one shrink from one’s interest for a reason like that? Where was the moral wrong? Nations make war; and what is right for a country, is right for a man. That is rock-embedded verity, if one will but look, and that which is dishonest for an individual cannot be honest for a flag. You may—if you so choose—make war on Spain, and with as much of justice as any proudest people that ever put to sea. The question of difference is but a question of strength; and so you be strong enough you’ll be right enough, I warrant! For what says the poet?


“Right follows might

Like tail follows kite.”


It is a merest truism; we hear it in the storm; the very waves are its witnesses. Everywhere and under each condition, it is true. The proof lies all about. We read it on every page of history; behold it when armies overthrow a throne or the oak falls beneath the axe of the woodman. Do I disfavor war? On the contrary, I approve it as an institution of greatest excellence. War slays; war has its blood. But has peace no victims? Peace kills thousands where war kills tens; and if one is to consider misery, why then there be more starvation, more cold, more pain, and more suffering in one year of New York City peace than pinched and gnawed throughout the whole four years of civil war. And human life is of comparative small moment. We say otherwise; we believe otherwise; but we don’t act otherwise. Action is life’s text. Humanity is itself the preacher; in that silent sermon of existence—an existence of world’s goods and their acquirement—we forever show the thing of least consequence to be the life of man. However, I am not myself to preach, I who pushed forth to tell a story. It is the defect of age to be garrulous, and as one’s power to do departs, its place is ever taken by a weakness to talk.

This filibusterer whom I liberated to sail against Spain, I long ago told you was called Ryan. That, however, is a fictitious name; there was a Ryan, and the Spaniards took his life at Santiago. And because he with whom I dealt was also put up against a wall and riddled with Spanish lead, and further, because it is not well to give his true name, I call him Ryan now. His ship rode on her rope in New York bay; I was given the Harriet Lane to hold him from sailing away; his owners ashore—merchants these and folk on ’change—offered me ten thousand dollars; the gold was in bags, forty pounds of it; I turned my back at evening and in the morning he was gone.

You have been told how I never thought on those adventures of The Emperor’s Cigars, and The German Girl’s Diamonds, without sensations of shame, and pain. Indeed! they were engagements of ignobility! Following the latter affair I felt a strongest impulse to change somewhat my occupation. I longed for an employment a bit safer and less foul. I counted my fortunes; I was rich with over seventy thousand dollars; that might do, even though I gained no more. And so it fell that I was almost ready to leave the Customs, and forswear and, if possible, forget, those sins I had helped commit in its name.

In the former days, my home tribe was not without consequence in Old Dominion politics. And while we could not be said to have strengthened ourselves by that part we took against the union, still, now that peace was come, the family began little by little to regather a former weight. It had enough at this time to interfere for my advantage and rescue me from my present duty. I was detailed from Washington to go secretly to Europe, make the careless tour of her capitols, and keep an eye alive to the interests of both the Treasury and the State Department.

It was a gentleman’s work; this loafing from London to Paris, and from Paris to Berlin, with an occasional glance into Holland and its diamond cutting. And aside from expenses—which were paid by the government—I drew two salaries; one from the Customs and a second from the Secret Service. My business was to detect intended smuggling and cable the story, to the end that Betelnut Jack and Lorns and Quin and the others make intelligent seizures when the smugglers came into New York. The better to gain such news, I put myself on closest terms—and still keep myself a secret—with chief folk among houses of export; I went about with them, drank with them, dined with them; and I wheedled and lay in ambush for information of big sales. I sent in many a good story; and many a rich seizure came off through my interference. Also I lived vastly among legation underlings, and despatched what I found to the Department of State. There was no complaint that I didn’t earn my money from either my customs or my secret service paymaster. In truth! I stood high in their esteem.

At times, too, I was baffled. There was a lady, the handsome wife of a diamond dealer in Maiden Lane. She came twice a year to Europe. Obviously and in plain view—like the vulgarian she was not—this beautiful woman, as she went aboard ship in New York, would wear at throat and ears and on her hands full two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of stones—apparently. And there they seemed to be when she returned; and, of course, never a dime of duty. We were morally sure this beautiful woman was a beautiful smuggler; we were morally sure those stones were paste when she sailed from New York; we were morally sure they were genuine, of purest water, when she returned; we were morally sure the shift was made in Paris, and that a harvest of thousands was garnered with every trip. But what might we do? We had no proof; we could get none; we could only guess.

And there were other instances when we slipped. More than once I tracked a would-be smuggler to his ship and saw him out of port. And yet, when acting on my cables, the smuggler coming down the New York gang-plank was snapped up by my old comrades and searched, nothing was found. This mystery, for mystery it was, occurred a score of times. At last we learned the trick. The particular room occupied by the smuggler was taken both ways for a round dozen trips ahead. There were seven members of the smuggling combine. When one left the room, his voyage ended, and came ashore in New York, another went duly aboard and took possession for the return trip. The diamonds had not gone ashore. They were hidden in a sure place somewhere about the room; he who took it to go to Europe knew where. And i............