When I notified Stoddard of the situation, so that he might not commend his friend, "Mr. Randall," to others, I expressed the hope that he had not himself lent the man any money. In reply he said:
"Lent him money? Why, my dear George Cary Eggleston, what a creative imagination you must have! 'You'd orter 'a' been a poet.' Still, if I had had any money, as of course I hadn't, I should have lent it to him freely. As he didn't ask for it--probably he knew my chronic impecuniosity too well to do that--I didn't know he was 'on the borrow.' Anyhow, I'm going to run him to earth."
[Sidenote: Moses and My Green Spectacles]
And he did. It appeared in the outcome that the man had called upon Edmund Clarence Stedman, bearing a letter from Sidney Lanier--forged, of course. Stedman had taken him out to lunch and then, as he expressed a wish to meet the literary men of the town, had given him a note of introduction to Stoddard together with several other such notes to men of letters, which were never delivered. The man proved to be the "carpetbag" ex-Governor Moses, who had looted the state of South Carolina to an extent that threatened the bankruptcy of that commonwealth. He had saved little if anything out of his plunderings, and, returning to the North, had entered upon a successful career as a "confidence man." He was peculiarly well-equipped for the part. Sagacious, well-informed, educated, and possessed of altogether pleasing manners, he succeeded in imposing himself upon the unsuspecting for many years. At last, some years after my first encounter with him, he was "caught in the act" of swindling, and sent for a term to the Massachusetts state prison.
On his release, at the end of his sentence, he resumed his old business of victimizing the unsuspicious--among whom I was one. It was only a few years ago when he rang my door bell and introduced himself as a confidential employee of the Lothrop Publishing Company of Boston, who were my publishers. He had seen me, he said, during the only visit I had ever made to the offices of the company, but had not had the pleasure of an introduction. Being in New York he had given himself the pleasure of calling, the more because he wished to consult me concerning the artistic make-up of a book I then had in preparation at the Lothrops'.