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This gentleman stands away up among the very best of the solid men of the
city--the men of moral weight, of commercial integrity, of unimpeachable
social spotlessness--and so I bowed to his example. I went down to the
revenue office, and under the accusing eyes of my old visitor I stood up
and swore to lie after lie, fraud after fraud, villainy after villainy,
till my soul was coated inches and inches thick with perjury, and my
self-respect gone for ever and ever.
But what of it? It is nothing more than thousands of the richest and
proudest, and most respected, honored, and courted men in America do
every year. And so I don't care. I am not ashamed. I shall simply,
for the present, talk little and eschew fire-proof gloves, lest I fall
into certain dreadful habits irrevocably.
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