investigate. When questioned we told them frankly what we were doing.
At first, argument was used to dissuade us from such a policy, but
when we were told we had no right to the business I replied that
we were not dealing in a patented article and I knew of no law to
prevent us from trading as dealers if we so desired.

That ended the argument, and men who for years had been in close
business intimacy and friendship with us, became our enemies.

I knew well what that meant. Henceforth I was to get my share of
the personal animosity that in this trade superseded the spirit of
fair competition.

Those men held up before the world as models of Christian piety, who
never missed a church service, whose names appeared in the papers
as subscribers to charitable and mission funds; those Sunday-school
teachers who would not have in their homes on the Sabbath day
a newspaper, who would not take a glass of wine at dinner because
of the example to their boys, and yet in their efforts to injure a
business rival never hesitated to break the Ninth Commandment--not
in words, oh no, too cautious for that, nothing that one could
put his finger on; but the shrug of the shoulder, the significant
raising of the eye-brows, the insinuation, the little hint to
unsettle confidence. Bah! on such Christianity.

And now those men were to train their guns on me.

I had been twenty years in the trade and knew how others had fared.
I grant, in many cases, it was tit-for-tat, the man injured had
done his best to injured others. With _few exceptions_ the entire