Their first new move, after my little talk with Langdon, was intended as a mortal blow to my credit Melville requested me to withdraw mine and Blacklock and Company's accounts from the National Industrial Bank; and the fact that this huge and powerful institution had thus branded me was slyly given to the financial reporters of the newspapers. Far and wide it was published; and the public was expected to believe that this was one more and drastic measure in the “campaign of the honorable men of finance to clean the Augean Stables of Wall Street.” My daily letter to investors next morning led off with this paragraph--the first notice I had taken publicly of their attacks on me: “In the effort to discredit the only remaining uncontrolled source of financial truth, the big bandits have ordered my accounts out of their chief gambling-house. I have transferred the accounts to the Discount and Deposit National, where Leonidas Thornley stands guard against the new order that seeks to make business a synonym for crime.” Thornley was of the type that was dominant in our commercial life before the “financiers” came--just as song birds were common in our trees until the noisy, brawling, thieving sparrows drove them out. His oldest son was about to marry Joe's daughter--Alva. Many a Sunday I have spent at his place near Morristown--a charming combination of city comfort with farm freedom and fresh air. I remember, one Sunday, saying to him, after he had seen his wife and daughters off to church: “Why haven't you got rich? Why haven't you looked out for establishing these boys and girls of yours?” “I don't want my girls to be sought for money,” said he, “I don't want my boys to rely on money. Perhaps I've seen too much of wealth, and have come to have a prejudice against it. Then, too, I've never had the chance to get rich.” I showed that I thought that he was simply jesting. “I mean it,” said he, looking at me with eyes as straight as a well-brought-up girl's. “How could my mind be judicial if I were personally interested in the enterprises people look to me for advice about?” And not only did he keep himself clear and his mind judicial but also he was, like all really good people, exceedingly slow to believe others guilty of the things he would as soon have thought of doing as he would have thought of slipping into the teller's cage during the lunch hour and pocketing a package of bank-notes. He gave me his motto--a curious one: “Believe in everybody; trust in nobody.” “Only a thief wishes to be trusted,” he explained, “and only a fool trusts. I let no one trust me; I trust no one. But I believe evil of no man. Even when he has been convicted, I see the mitigating circumstances.”