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Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
side a year and a half before, and, of course, the Street gossips and the stupid rumor
mongers had acquired the habit of blaming me for every decline in prices. To this day
when the market is very weak they say I am raiding it.
I didn't have to reflect. I saw at a glance that Dan Williamson was offering me a chance
to come back and come back quickly. I took the check, banked it, opened an account
with his firm and began trading. It was a good active market, broad enough for a man
not to have to stick to one or two specialties. I had begun to fear, as I told you, that I had
lost the knack of hitting it right. But it seems I hadn't. In three weeks' time I had made a
profit of one hundred and twelve thousand dollars out of the twenty-five thousand that
Dan Williamson lent me.
I went to him and said, "I've come to pay you back that twenty-five thousand dollars."
"No, no!" he said and waved me away exactly as if I had offered him a castor-oil
cocktail. "No, no, my boy. Wait until your account amounts to something. Don't think
about it yet. You've only got chicken feed there."
There is where I made the mistake that I have regretted more than any other I ever made
in my Wall Street career. It was responsible for long and dreary years of suffering. I
should have insisted on his taking the money. I was on my way to a bigger fortune than I
had lost and walking pretty fast. For three weeks my average profit was 150 per cent per
week. From then on my trading would be on a steadily increasing scale. But instead of
freeing myself from all obligation I let him have his way and did not compel him to
accept the twenty-five thousand dollars. Of course, since he didn't draw out the twentyfive
thousand dollars he had advanced me I felt I could not very well draw out my profit.
I was very grateful to him, but I am so constituted that I don't like to owe money or
favours. I can pay the money back with money, but the favours and kindnesses I must
pay back in kind and you are apt to find these moral obligations mighty high priced at
times. Moreover there is no statute of limitations.
I left the money undisturbed and resumed my trading. I was getting on very nicely. I was
recovering my poise and I was sure it would not be very long before I should get back
into my 1907 stride. Once I did that, all I'd ask for would be for the market to hold out a
little while and I'd more than make up my losses. But making or not making the money
was not bothering me much. What made me happy was that I was losing the habit of
being wrong, of not being myself. It had played havoc with me for months but I had
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