"Well, now," he said, blithely, "as you are a stranger, a man of high and irreproachable honor, _sans peur et sans reproche_--and one, I know, who will not place me in an equivocal position here in my home by divulging my true position--I don't mind telling you, in all confidence, the truth. I am not, my dear sir, an ass. (What I say, remember, goes no farther.) I am, sir, a theoretical and practical politician of great--I only repeat what many of my friends (men of supreme mental attainments, and the best of judges) herald forth as undeniable truth--a politician, sir, of great depth and exceeding cunning--a rare combination, philosophers tell us. What a humbug this whole greenback question is! Why, sir, it is to that very element of scarcity over which they howl, that money, or anything else, owes its commercial value. Diminish the general scarcity of anything on earth to the point of a full supply for everybody and the commercial value at once becomes _nil_. There is nothing of more real value than atmospheric air; yet the supply is so great that all demands are filled, leaving an enormous surplus; and hence atmospheric air has no commercial value. There is nothing on earth of much less service to humanity than are diamonds; yet the possession of a pound of fair-sized diamonds would make a Croesus of a beggar. The dreams of the Greenbacker are but new phases of our childhood fancies of finding a mountain of pure gold, with which we are to make the whole world happy; it is conceivable to find the mountain of gold--but, alas! what will be its value when we have found it? Take actual money, for instance. Any metal might be used as money which the world should agree to call money, provided only that the metal is not so plentiful as to make it impossible to handle because of bulk, or so scarce as to make the unit of value impalpable. The standard may even from time to time be changed, if we do not object to the enormous trouble of making the change----" "And," I remarked, as he paused for a moment, "if we do not object to the robbery of either the debtor or the creditor, one or the other."