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Should he ever be tempted into magnificent speculation, he then, at once, loses his distinctive features, and becomes what we term "financier." This latter word conveys the diddling idea in every respect except that of magnitude. A diddler may thus be regarded as a banker in petto a "financial operation," as a diddle at Brobdignag.
Jeremy Diddler, after all, is an amusing person; but the greater part of the pleasure he affords us is derived from the fact, that, cunning as he is in all his efforts to deceive us, we are still more so, for we have found him out. Were I to characterise the leading feature of the age, I should certainly say it is this pretension.
There is a headache in the morning; we are not going into Parliament for our native town; we are not going to shoot those French officers who have been speaking disrespectfully of our country; and poor Jeremy Diddler calls about eleven o'clock for another half-sovereign, and we are unwell in bed, and can't see him, and send him empty away.
Your diddler is impertinent. He swaggers. He sets his arms a-kimbo. He thrusts his hands in his trowsers' pockets. He sneers in your face. He treads on your corns. He eats your dinner, he drinks your wine, he borrows your money, he pulls your nose, he kicks your poodle, and he kisses your wife. Grin: Your true diddler winds up all with a grin. But this nobody sees but himself.
Rover too; you might get up Rover while you were about it, and Cassio, and Jeremy Diddler. You can easily knock them off; one part helps the other so much. Here they are, cues and all.
A camp-meeting, or something similar, is to be held at a certain spot which is accessible only by means of a free bridge. A diddler stations himself upon this bridge, respectfully informs all passers by of the new county law, which establishes a toll of one cent for foot passengers, two for horses and donkeys, and so forth, and so forth.
Every man was considered honest until he gave proof to the contrary. There was an occasional Jeremy Diddler, but his operations were very limited. When the Rebellion began, the old customs on the Mississippi were swept away. The most rigid "pay-on-entering" system was adopted, and the man who could evade it must be very shrewd. The wealth along the Great River melted into thin air.
Some grumble but all submit, and the diddler goes home a wealthier man by some fifty or sixty dollars well earned. This taking a toll from a great crowd of people is an excessively troublesome thing. A neat diddle is this. A friend holds one of the diddler's promises to pay, filled up and signed in due form, upon the ordinary blanks printed in red ink.
I am the cause of your virtue, my lad. You are pleased that yesterday at dinner you refrained from the dry champagne? My name is Worldly Prudence, not Self-denial, and I caused you to refrain. You are pleased because you gave a guinea to Diddler? I am Laziness, not Generosity, which inspired you. You hug yourself because you resisted other temptation?
He might have accepted Conniston as a Dick Turpin, a Claude Duval or a Macheath, but not as a Jeremy Diddler or a Bill Sykes. The printed lines were lies. They must be. Derwent Conniston might have killed a dozen men, but he had never cracked a safe. To think it was to think the inconceivable. He turned to the letters. They were postmarked Darlington, England.
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