Yes, some things never change. This is from the opening of the immortal "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street" (1853) by Herman Melville. The story's narrator, a Wall Street lawyer who employed Bartleby, describes himself thus:
"I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best. Hence, though I belong to a profession proverbially energetic and nervous, even to turbulence, at times, yet nothing of that sort have I ever suffered to invade my peace. I am one of those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury, or in any way draws down public applause; but in the cool tranquillity of a snug retreat, do a snug business among rich men's bonds and mortgages and title-deeds. All who know me consider me an eminently safe man. The late John Jacob Astor, a personage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing my first grand point to be prudence; my next, method. I do not speak it in vanity, but simply record the fact, that I was not unemployed in my profession by the late John Jacob Astor; a name which, I admit, I love to repeat, for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion. I will freely add, that I was not insensible to the late John Jacob Astor's good opinion."
The online site where I found a text of Bartleby has a footnote that (needlessly) describes the estimable John Jacob Astor in these terms: "A poor German immigrant to the United States, Astor (1763-1848) was immensely successful in fur trading and real estate, becoming the richest man of his time. However, his name was synonymous with the worst abuses of big business: monopoly, worker exploitation, and political corruption."
Carl