title: A Counterfeiter's Paradise: The Wicked Lives and Surprising Adventures of Three Early American Moneymakers
author:  Ben Tarnoff 
description: Ben Tarnoff has worked at Lapham's Quarterly and his writing has appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle. He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in 2007. He lives in New York City.
zlib_text: 
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Conscience in Art
  
  
    
  
  
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  _( The Gentle Grafter - 10 )_
  
  
  
  
  
  ### O. Henry
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## O. Henry
  
  
  ## The Gentle Grafter
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Conscience in Art
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "I never could hold my partner, Andy Tucker, down to legitimate ethics of pure
  swindling," said Jeff Peters to me one day.
  
  
  "Andy had too much imagination to be honest. He used to devise schemes of
  money-getting so fraudulent and high-financial that they wouldn't have been
  allowed in the bylaws of a railroad rebate system.
  
  
  "Myself, I never believed in taking any man's dollars unless I gave him
  something for it—something in the way of rolled gold jewelry, garden seeds,
  lumbago lotion, stock certificates, stove polish or a crack on the head to
  show for his money. I guess I must have had New England ancestors away back
  and inherited some of their stanch and rugged fear of the police.
  
  
  "But Andy's family tree was in different kind. I don't think he could have
  traced his descent any further bac