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Secrecy as to profits, which always suggests that they are as large as to make one ashamed of them, has been the bane of the coal-mining industry. For nearly half a century wages have borne some relation to selling prices, and there have been quarterly audits of typical selected mines in each district by joint auditors appointed by the owners and the miners.
What is to me a means of livelihood is to him the merest hobby of a dilettante. He has an extraordinary faculty for figures, and audits the books in some of the government departments. Mycroft lodges in Pall Mall, and he walks round the corner into Whitehall every morning and back every evening.
Him and me seen the elephant and the owl, and we had specimens of this seidlitz powder wine; and Cherokee he audits all the bills, C.O.D. His pockets looked like a pool table's after a fifteen-ball run. "Cherokee must have struck pay ore," remarked California Ed. "Well, he's white. I'm much obliged to him for his success."
I was at my wits' end. I have borrowed under fictitious names, used names of obscure persons as borrowers, have put up dummy security. It was possible because I controlled the audits. But it has done no good. The losses have far outbalanced the winnings and to-day I am in for twenty-five thousand dollars."
Yet twice every year they were ready with their rent when it suited Master Jordas to come for it, since audits at the hall, and tenants' dinners, were not to their liking. The rent was a trifle; but Jordas respected them highly for handing it done up in white paper, without even making him leave the saddle.
I knew a nobleman in England, that had the greatest audits of any man in my time; a great grazier, a great sheep-master, a great timber man, a great collier, a great corn-master, a great lead-man, and so of iron, and a number of the like points of husbandry. So as the earth seemed a sea to him, in respect of the perpetual importation.
It interested me, after so many years, to see the two women together. Tiny audits Lena's accounts occasionally, and invests her money for her; and Lena, apparently, takes care that Tiny doesn't grow too miserly. 'If there's anything I can't stand, she said to me in Tiny's presence, 'it's a shabby rich woman. Tiny smiled grimly and assured me that Lena would never be either shabby or rich.
But we can steadily increase our real control over these acts by insisting that all of them shall be plainly recorded, and their results objectively measured. I should say, perhaps, that we can progressively hope to insist. For the working out of such standards and of such audits has only begun.
The upshot of all this is, that in point of fact the debtor appoints his assignees, audits his own accounts, and draws up the certificate of bankruptcy himself. Given these premises, it is easy to imagine the devices of Frontin, the trickeries of Sganarelle, the lies of Mascarille, and the empty bags of Scapin which such a system develops.
You couldn't expect anything more of the inhabitants of the part of the country in the veins of whose people flow just about that mixture of blood, but in the Harpeth Valley we have been Americans for two and a half centuries, and I'll show 'em an American garden if it does unhinge both mine and Dabney's backs and make Cockrell swear I'm crazy when he audits my accounts once every month.
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