"But I am exempt," protested the Bibliomaniac. "I don't come within a thousand dollars of the minimum." "That may be all true enough," said the Idiot. "You know that, and I know that, but Uncle Sam doesn't know it, and you've got to satisfy him that you are not a plutocrat trying to pass yourself off as a member of one of those respectable middle-class financial families in which this land is so pleasingly rich. You've got to lay a statement of your financial condition before the government whether your income is ninety-seven cents a minute or forty-seven thousand dollars an hour. Nobody is exempt from that nuisance. As I understand it, the government requires every man, woman, and child to go to confession, and own up to just how little or how much he or she hasn't got. All men stand equal in the eyes of the law when it comes to the show-down. There is no discrimination in favor of the rich in this business, and the inconvenience of having a minion of authority prying into your private affairs is as much a privilege of yours as it is of Uncle John's, or good old Brother Scramble, the Egg King. Uncle Sam is going to put his eye on every man-jack of us and find out whether we are any good or not, and if so, for how much. He will have sleuths everywhere about to estimate the cubic financial contents of your trousers' pockets, and whether you keep your money in a bank, in a trust company, in a cigar box, your sock, or your wife's name, he is going right after it, and he'll get his share or know the reason why. There isn't a solitary nickel circulating in this land to-day that can hope to escape the eagle eye of the Secretary of the Treasury and his financial ferrets." "You surprise me," said the Bibliomaniac. "If what you say is true, it is a perfect outrage. You don't really mean to tell me that I have got to give a statement of my receipts to some snoopy-nosed old government official, do you?"