How we cite our quotes: (Chapter, Paragraph)
Quote #4
"Nay, back, back—receipt, my receipt! Ugh, ugh, ugh! Who are you? What have I done? Where go you? My gold, my gold! Ugh, ugh, ugh!"
But, unluckily for this final flicker of reason, the stranger was now beyond ear-shot, nor was any one else within hearing of so feeble a call. (15, 51-52)
Too late, the miser realizes he has slipped up. In his greedy hopes of tripling his money, he lost sight of the fact that he didn't complete any paperwork. This "aha" moment is immediate. Not everyone in the novel comes to such knowledge so quickly.
Quote #5
He revolves the crafty process of sociable chat, by which, as he fancies, the man with the brass-plate wormed into him, and made such a fool of him as insensibly to persuade him to waive, in his exceptional case, that general law of distrust systematically applied to the race. He revolves, but cannot comprehend, the operation, still less the operator. Was the man a trickster, it must be more for the love than the lucre. Two or three dirty dollars the motive to so many nice wiles? And yet how full of mean needs his seeming. (23, 4)
Pitch is mulling things over. He realizes the PIO representative is probably just going to run away with his cash. What he doesn't fully grasp is how this happened—he's a resolute cynic, after all. Yeah, well, sometimes folly comes about through nothing more than social chitchat. You're expecting to fight off a con artist, and you fail to see that your friendly companion is conning you. Worse, the con itself is obscured by the very fact that the con-man is a wolf in buddy's clothing.
Quote #6
"I ask? I ask a loan? Frank, by this hand, under no circumstances would I accept a loan, though without asking pressed on me. The experience of China Aster might warn me."
"And what was that?"
"Not very unlike the experience of the man that built himself a palace of moon-beams, and when the moon set was surprised that his palace vanished with it. I will tell you about China Aster. (39, 58-60)
Before Egbert tells the story of China Aster, he prefaces it with his criticism of the foolishness of borrowing funds from a friend. This criticism takes the form of a pretty but disparaging simile of a dreamer whose house is built on moonbeams. Clearly not a solid foundation for your palace, right? The deeper meaning is that if you're going the house-of-sand-and-fog route, you can't be bummed when your world comes crashing down.