And thus he went on until I cut him short by averring, that the whole business was little better than wholesale cheating and murder. He then recommended we should make Abel a tailor, solemnly declaring that, next to quackery, tailoring, which was a quackery of another sort, was the most profitable trade that could be followed; the mere gain from cabbaging, considering that an ingenious tailor got at least one inch of cloth out of every armhole, without counting the nails cribbed from other parts of a coat, being immense, and his profits, seeing that he lost nothing by a bad customer that he did not charge to a good one, as certain and immutable as the laws of the Medes and Persians. In short, my nephew Jonathan was in the mood for expatiating on the merits of all money-making vocations; in which I should follow him, were I not urged by the exigencies arising from limited time and space to adhere to my story. He made divers recommendations, none of which I thought of weight; and upon Abel, who had heard him with gravity and attention, I was at last forced to call for advice and assistance. It was his opinion, and he advised accordingly, that all the money I could raise should be thrown into the stock-market, where, being applied to purchase and sale in the usual way, he had no doubt it could be made to yield a revenue of at least twenty per cent., and perhaps twice as much; and this proposal, strange as it may seem to the reader, after the experience Abram Skinner had given me in such matters, I did, after sundry doubts and hesitations, finally agree to. "Verily," said I, "this is a gainful business, friend Abel; but, of a surety, neither honest nor humane, seeing that it is practised at the expense of the ignorant, and often the needy." "Verily, no," said Abel Snipe, with fervour; "it shall be at the expense of the rich and niggardly--the man that is a miser and uncharitable--the broker and the gambler--the bull and the bear. Our dealings shall not be with the poor and ignorant man that dabbleth in stocks; but him will we charitably pluck from the grasp of the covetous, and thus protect, while drawing from the covetous man those alms of benevolence which he would never himself apply to the use of the afflicted." "Verily," said I, pleased with the idea, "if we can make the covetous man charitable, it will be a good thing; and if we can protect the foolish ignorant person from his grasp, it will be still better. But, of a surety, Abel Snipe, this business will be as gambling?" "Yea, and verily," said Abel Snipe, "it is as gambling when a gambler follows it; but in the hands of an honest man it is an honest profession. Is not money, bagged up in stocks and other investments, as merchandise? and, as merchandise, shall it not be lawfully bought and sold?"