Finally, Mr. Redding was taken sick, and remained at home for three days. On the second day he sent for me, and showed me an advertisement he had caused to be put in the Herald, calling for twenty clerks of experience in the dry goods business, etc. "None need apply who cannot produce the best certificates of character, and come recommended by all parties in whose employ they may have ever been." He named a box in the Herald office as the place of address, and he already had sent his servant to the Herald office, and when I arrived was opening one of over fifty letters received. He showed me the advertisement and responses with an air of pride. "I have made up my mind that our salvation is in a change of clerks," said he. "The innocent and guilty must go alike. I will first dismiss twenty,--fortunately, we make our contracts with clerks in such way that I can do this,--and after twenty new ones are worked in, and know our modes of doing business, I will dismiss all the rest, and fill their places with new men. What do you think of my new plan?" I told him that, as a _dernier resort_, it was probably wise, but that fruitless though had been our work heretofore, I nevertheless wanted to try further; and I proposed that he go on and make the acquaintance of the new applicants privately, examine their credentials, and get ready to receive them, if wanted, in due time; but that so great and sudden a change of clerks could not but tend to confuse his customers, especially as many of their clerks had been with him for years, and they would inevitably take many of the customers with them; while he could not be sure that the newly-incoming clerks would bring him any trade at all. There was a wildness in Mr. Redding's eyes that day, which looked to me precursory of insanity, and I felt that anything like full espousal of his plan would excite him, and perhaps hasten the wreck of his intellect. But Mr. Redding got better, and reappeared at his store, and he told me when I next met him thereafter, that he had no heart to turn away some of his clerks who had been so long his companions, and he found it impossible to select the first twenty for decapitation. Mr. Redding communicated his plan to Mr. Phillips, and the latter, with his usual sagacity, opposed it, suggesting several reasons, among which was one which weighed much with Mr. Redding, to the effect that he could be no surer of the honesty of the new clerks than of that of the old, and that it was by no means certain that like losses were not being suffered in other houses, and that some of these new clerks might have been dismissed under like circumstances to those which suggested the dismission of his own clerks, and he added, "If you were to dismiss the clerks, you would be obliged, in honor, to give each one of them the best commendation for faithfulness in business, and you could not conscientiously refuse to add, 'for honesty and integrity.'"