“Tainted money, like crude oil, may be refined,” asserted Tweed. “Yet even crude oil is not to be despised, for it accrues interest and some of the taint can be carbolized by sending bad rum to the heathen. It matters not what denomination tainted money is in, although the Baptists ought to be able to wash some of the taint away. In to-day’s issue of the Stygian Siftings, I read that a certain sect who won’t trust any other denomination to read their Bible for them, say that the pilfered pelf of frenzied financiers is all right if it be used for good purposes. It isn’t even necessary to keep the dirty dough in a separate flour barrel from the certified wheat; they are willing to convert tares and all into breakfast food. It resolves itself into a case of homeopathic treatment—the use of tainted money to remove a greater taint.” “Bribery, which in evening dress is called graft, has become such a popular pastime that the refusal of a man to touch money offered him leads one to the conclusion that it is not tainted but merely counterfeit,” said Shylock, as he tried to hide some degraded ducats in his blouse. “They wouldn’t let me shed one drop of blood, yet to-day the American capitalist gets his pound of flesh by bleeding the people.” “It’s a wonder Atlas wasn’t exposed for holding up the earth,” mused Anon. “Since the days of the gods, many a man has had his shoulder put out of joint trying to do the same stunt, but the weight of the world is still cause for worry.” “So deep-rooted in the universe is graft,” asserted Tweed, “that the chairman of an investigating committee, in making his report, went to the Jersey shore and looking out to sea, wrote: ‘I can see no graft.’ Even then he forgot the ship-building trust and also overlooked the unimportant fact that his very words were grafted from Lord Nelson.” “Who was the first grafter?” “Adam would have been had he been tempted with a plum instead of with an apple.” “Graft,” explained Noah, surnamed Webster, “is a botanical term for ‘splitting straws’ in the garden politic. Its principal fruits are plums, leafing out in ‘long green.’ A grafter is a captain of industry who has been found out.” “All men bow to the despotism of the dollar,” said a well-known anarchist with an unforgivable name. “It is no longer the divine right of kingship, but the divine right of dollarship, to rule the earth. The rulers of old had their armies and forced obedience; the rulers of to-day have their money bags and buy it.” “The dollar,” declared Alexander Hamilton, “is the corner-stone of our egotistic civilization, and the dollar is terribly hard. Its hardness may make it better as a corner-stone but does not especially fit it for use as a pillow for tired humanity.” “Growing socialistic, eh? My dear Alexander, you have been exclusive owner of six feet of land long enough to be cured of that fanciful fad.”