A MYSTERIOUS VISIT. 319 



As soon as he was gone I opened his advertisement. I studied it attentively for 

 four minutes. I then called up the cook, and said — 



" Hold me while I faint! Let Marie turn the griddle-cakes." 



By and by, when I came to, I sent down to the rum mill on the corner and hired 

 an artist by the week to sit up nights and curse that stranger, and give me a lift 

 occasionally in the daytime when I came to a hard place. 



Ah, what a miscreant he was ! His " advertisement " was nothing in the world 

 but a wicked tax-return — a string of impertinent questions about my private affairs, 

 occupying the best part of four foolscap pages of fine print — questions, I may 

 remark, gotten up with such marvelous ingenuity, that the oldest man in the world 

 couldn't understand what the most of them were driving at — questions, too, that 

 were calculated to make a man report about four times his actual income to keep 

 from swearing to a falsehood. I looked for a loophole, but there did not appear 

 to be any. Inquiry No. i covered my case as generously and as amply as an 

 Umbrella could cover an ant hill — 



" What were your profits, during the past year, from any trade, business, or vocation, wherever 

 carried on ? " 



And that inquiry was backed up by thirteen others of an equally searching 

 nature, the most modest of which required information as to whether I had 

 committed any burglary or highway robbery, or by any arson or other secret source 

 of emolument, had acquired property which was not enumerated in my statement 

 of income as set opposite to inquiry No. i. 



It was plain that that stranger had enabled me to make a goose of myself. It 

 was very, very plain ; and so I went out and hired another artist. By working on 

 my vanity, the stranger had seduced me into declaring an income of $214,000. By 

 law, $1000 of this was exempt from income-tax — the only relief I could see, and it 

 was only a drop in the ocean. At the legal five per cent, I must pay to the Govern- 

 ment the sum of ten thousand six hundred and fifty dollars, income-tax ! 



[I may remark, in this place, that I did not do it.] 



, I am acquainted with a very opulent man, whose house is a palace, whose table 



is regal, whose outlays are enormous, yet a man who has no income, as I have often 



noticed by the revenue returns ; and to him I went for advice, in my distress. He 



took my dreadful exhibition of receipts, he put on his glasses, he took his pen, and 



