All human hubris must eventually find its resting place. We look out across the vast, rolling expanse of this American republic, a landscape littered with the quiet bones of empires and the forgotten ledgers of bankrupt kings, only to find our gaze narrowing down to a single, gilded tower on Fifth Avenue and the stubborn mortality of the mortal man who built it. They say a man can outrun his creditors, outtalk his prosecutors, and outvote his executioners, but he cannot outlive the two grim constants that govern this mortal coil. It was an old maxim of mine, polished by years of watching the human comedy unfold from the Mississippi to the Potomac, that there are only two things in this life which are absolutely certain, and those are Death and Taxes.

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