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Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
manners and a kindly smile. I could see that he made friends easily and kept them. Why
not? He was healthy and therefore good-humored. He had slathers of money and
therefore could not be suspected of sordid motives. These things, together with his
education and social training, made it easy for him to be not only polite but friendly, and
not only friendly but helpful.
I said nothing. I had nothing to say and, besides, I always let the other man have his say
in full before I do any talking. Somebody told me that the late James Stillman, president
of the National City Bank who, by the way, was an intimate friend of Williamson's made
it his practice to listen in silence, with an impassive face, to anybody who brought a
proposition to him. After the man got through Mr. Stillman continued to look at him, as
though the man had not finished. So the man, feeling urged to say something more, did
so. Simply by looking and listening Stillman often made the man offer terms much more
advantageous to the bank than he had meant to offer when he began to speak.
I don't keep silent just to induce people to offer a better bargain, but because I like to
know all the facts of the case. By letting a man have his say in full you are able to decide
at once. It is a great time-saver. It averts debates and prolonged discussions that get
nowhere. Nearly every business proposition that is brought to me can be settled, as far as
my participation in it is concerned, by my saying yes or no. But I cannot say yes or no
right off unless I have the complete proposition before me.
Dan Williamson did the talking and I did the listening. He told me he had heard a great
deal about my operations in the stock market and how he regretted that I had gone
outside of my bailiwick and come a cropper in cotton. Still it was to my bad luck that he
owed the pleasure of that interview with me. He thought my forte was the stock market,
that I was born for it and that I should not stray from it.
"And that is the reason, Mr. Livingston," he concluded pleasantly, "why we wish to do
business with you."
"Do business how?" I asked him.
"Be your brokers," he said. "My firm would like to do your stock business."
"I'd like to give it to you," I said, "but I can't."
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