him and he wanted to recoup,
if he could. But how to get the two thousand five hundred dollars
necessary to start in business? Prescott pleaded poverty, yet talked
constantly of the ease with which a fortune might be made if they could
only once "get in right." It was a period of increased dividends, of
stock-jobbing operations of enormous magnitude, of "fifty-point
movements," when the lucky purchaser of only a hundred shares of some
inconspicuous railroad sometimes found that he could sell out next week
with five thousand dollars' profit. The air seemed full of money. It
appeared to rain banknotes and stock certificates.

In the "loan cage" at the trust company John handled daily millions in
securities, a great part of which were negotiable. When almost everybody
was so rich he wondered why any one remained poor. Two or three men of
his own age gave up their jobs in other concerns and became traders,
while another opened an office of his own. John was told that they had
acted on "good information," had bought a few hundred shares of Union
Pacific, and were now comfortably fixed. He would have been glad to
buy, but copper had left him without anything to buy with.

One day Prescott took him out to lunch and confided to him that one of
the big speculators had tipped him off to buy cotton, since there was
going to be a failure in the crop. It was practically a sure thing. Two
thousand dollars' margin would buy enough cotton to start them in
business, even if the rise was only a very small one.

"Why don't you borrow a couple of bonds?" asked Prescott.

"Borrow from whom?" inquired John.

"Why, from some customer of the trust company."

"No one would lend them to me," answered John.

"Well, borrow them, anyhow. They would never know about it, and you
could put them back as soon as we closed the account," suggested
Prescott.

John was shocked, and said so.

"You are easy," said his comrade. "Don't you know that the trust
companies do it themselves all the time? The presidents of the railroads
use the holdings of their companies as collateral. Even the banks use
their deposits for trading. Didn't old ---- dump a lot of rotten stuff
on you? Why don't you get even? Let me tell you something. Fully
one-half of the men who are now successful financiers got their start by
putting up as margin securities deposited with them. No one ever knew
the difference, and now they are on their feet. If you took two bonds
overnigh