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He was the more aggressive half of the reincarnation. Indeed, it came presently to be the opinion of the correspondents that he was the activating principle of the whole infatuation, and held the other in a spell. He was full of sound and rhetoric and moved himself to ecstacy with sonorous sayings. His talk was a wild compound of Scripture, Theosophy and Populism.

The Kingdom of Heaven on earth was at hand, he said. The conditions foretold in Revelations were fulfilled. The seven heads of the beast were the seven conspiracies against the money of the people. The ten horns of the beast were the ten monopolies nourished in Wall Street—the Sugar Trust, the Oil Trust, and so on.

“We are fast undermining the structure of monopoly in the hearts of the people,” he declaimed, reaching his peroration. “Like Cyrus of old we are fast tunnelling under the boodlers’ Euphrates and will soon be able to march under the walls of the second Babylon, and its mysteries, too. The infernal, blood-sucking bank system will be overthrown, for the handwriting is on the wall.”