28 KEV. F. D. HUNTINGTON'S 



of human enterprise, every one of which originated, profess- 

 edly, in benevolent motives, was pursued for a time in 

 legitimate ways, and then became a means of speculation. 

 The reverend gentleman has only to step behind the curtain 

 of the business world to find that in this, at least, I do not 

 exaggerate ! There is not one trick, or a single act of folly, 

 that is narrated in the " History of the Hen Fever," which 

 is not paralleled, in the most sober of those modes of busi- 

 ness by which very many of even Mr. Huntington's own 

 social circle and congregation obtain their livelihood^ or 

 accumulate their wealth. His very salary is paid, to-day, 

 out of moneys obtained by means that it would hardly be 

 palatable or proper to disclose, or describe to him. Yet the 

 c6in he thus receives, like that which Vespasian exhibited 

 to his son Titus, does not emit a "bad odor " — it is not 

 oflfensive to him. 



Into all kinds of business, — in the buying and selling of 

 sugar, and coffee, and cotton, — in the traflSc that attends 

 the purchase and sale of rice, or flour, or rum, — there 

 enters, largely and continuously, the same spirit of exag- 

 geration, of delusion, of speculation, of trickery and deceit, 

 and open^ cheatery, in a greater or less degree. " Two 

 wrongs do not make one right," I am aware ; yet I con- 

 tend, again, that the mode of operations current during the 

 prevalence of the " hen fever" is by no means the excep- 

 tion to the rule ; and upon this account do I protest against 

 the reverend gentleman's singling out this "sin," and 

 against the animadversions and extraordinarily personal 

 Bpecifioations embodied in his Fast Day discourse. 



The stock-exchange is not generally supposed to be a 



