The University of Hard Knocks [28]
and silver mines. Nobody knows how much mining stock I have owned. Nobody could know while I kept that drawer shut. As I looked over my gold and silver mine stock, I often noticed that it was printed in green. I used to wonder why they printed it in green--wonder if they wanted it to harmonize with me! And I would realize I had so much to live for--the dividends. I have been so near the dividends I could smell them. Only one more assessment, then we will cut the melon! I have heard that all my life and never got a piece of the rind.
Getting "Selected"
Why go farther? I am not half done confessing. Each bump only increased my faith that the next ship would be mine. Good, honest, retired ministers would come periodically and sell me stock in some new enterprise that had millions in it--in its prospectus. I would buy because I knew the minister was honest and believed in it. He was selling it on his reputation. Favorite dodge of the promoter to get the ministers to sell his shares.
I was also greatly interested in companies where I put in one dollar and got back a dollar or two of bonds and a dollar or two of stock. That was doubling and trebling my money over night. An old banker once said to me, "Why don't you invest in something that will pay you five or six per cent. and get it?"
I pitied his lack of vision. Bankers were such "tightwads." They had no imagination! Nothing interested me that did not offer fifty or a hundred per cent.--then. Give me the five per cent. now!
By the time I was thirty-four I was a rich man in worthless paper. It would have been better for me if I had thrown about all my savings into the bottom of the sea.
Then I got a confidential letter from a friend of our family I had never met. His name was Thomas A. Cleage, and he was in the Rialto Building, St. Louis, Missouri. He wrote me in extreme confidence, "You have been selected."
Were you ever selected? If you were, then you know the thrill that rent my manly bosom as I read that letter from this man who said he was a friend of our family. "You have been selected because you are a prominent citizen and have a large influence in your community. You are a natural leader and everybody looks up to you."
He knew me! He was the only man who did know me. So I took the cork clear under.
"Because of your tremendous influence you have been selected to go in with us in the inner circle and get a thousand per cent. dividends."
Did you get that? I hope you did. I did not! But I took a night train for St. Louis. I was afraid somebody might beat me there if I waited till next day. I sat up all night in a day coach to save money for Tom, the friend of our family. But I see now I need not have hurried so. They would have waited a month with the sheep-shears ready. Lambie, lambie, lambie, come to St. Louis!
I don't get any sympathy from this crowd. You laugh at me. You respect not my feelings. I am not going to tell you a thing that happened in St. Louis. It is none of your business!
O, I am so glad I went to St. Louis. Being naturally bright, I could not learn it at home, back in Ohio. I had to go clear down to St. Louis to Tom Cleage's bucket-shop and pay him eleven hundred dollars to corner the wheat market of the world. That is all I paid him. I could not borrow any more. I joined what he called a "pool." I think it must have been a pool, for I know I fell in and got soaked!
That bump set me to thinking. My fever began to reduce. I got the thirty-third degree in financial suckerdom for only eleven hundred dollars.
I have always regarded Tom as one of my great school teachers. I have always regarded the eleven hundred as the finest investment I had made up to that time, for I got the most out of it. I do not feel hard toward goldbrick men and "blue sky" venders. I sometimes feel that we should endow them. How else can we save a sucker? You cannot tell him anything, because he is naturally bright and knows better. You simply have to trim him till he bleeds.
I Am Cured
It is worth eleven hundred dollars
Getting "Selected"
Why go farther? I am not half done confessing. Each bump only increased my faith that the next ship would be mine. Good, honest, retired ministers would come periodically and sell me stock in some new enterprise that had millions in it--in its prospectus. I would buy because I knew the minister was honest and believed in it. He was selling it on his reputation. Favorite dodge of the promoter to get the ministers to sell his shares.
I was also greatly interested in companies where I put in one dollar and got back a dollar or two of bonds and a dollar or two of stock. That was doubling and trebling my money over night. An old banker once said to me, "Why don't you invest in something that will pay you five or six per cent. and get it?"
I pitied his lack of vision. Bankers were such "tightwads." They had no imagination! Nothing interested me that did not offer fifty or a hundred per cent.--then. Give me the five per cent. now!
By the time I was thirty-four I was a rich man in worthless paper. It would have been better for me if I had thrown about all my savings into the bottom of the sea.
Then I got a confidential letter from a friend of our family I had never met. His name was Thomas A. Cleage, and he was in the Rialto Building, St. Louis, Missouri. He wrote me in extreme confidence, "You have been selected."
Were you ever selected? If you were, then you know the thrill that rent my manly bosom as I read that letter from this man who said he was a friend of our family. "You have been selected because you are a prominent citizen and have a large influence in your community. You are a natural leader and everybody looks up to you."
He knew me! He was the only man who did know me. So I took the cork clear under.
"Because of your tremendous influence you have been selected to go in with us in the inner circle and get a thousand per cent. dividends."
Did you get that? I hope you did. I did not! But I took a night train for St. Louis. I was afraid somebody might beat me there if I waited till next day. I sat up all night in a day coach to save money for Tom, the friend of our family. But I see now I need not have hurried so. They would have waited a month with the sheep-shears ready. Lambie, lambie, lambie, come to St. Louis!
I don't get any sympathy from this crowd. You laugh at me. You respect not my feelings. I am not going to tell you a thing that happened in St. Louis. It is none of your business!
O, I am so glad I went to St. Louis. Being naturally bright, I could not learn it at home, back in Ohio. I had to go clear down to St. Louis to Tom Cleage's bucket-shop and pay him eleven hundred dollars to corner the wheat market of the world. That is all I paid him. I could not borrow any more. I joined what he called a "pool." I think it must have been a pool, for I know I fell in and got soaked!
That bump set me to thinking. My fever began to reduce. I got the thirty-third degree in financial suckerdom for only eleven hundred dollars.
I have always regarded Tom as one of my great school teachers. I have always regarded the eleven hundred as the finest investment I had made up to that time, for I got the most out of it. I do not feel hard toward goldbrick men and "blue sky" venders. I sometimes feel that we should endow them. How else can we save a sucker? You cannot tell him anything, because he is naturally bright and knows better. You simply have to trim him till he bleeds.
I Am Cured
It is worth eleven hundred dollars