n be felt only on the great financial battlefields. If the
critics of the stock-gambler could be put through a single minute of a
thousand I have known they would be less brash in their denunciations.
And let it be remembered that in these terrific dollar-wars there is as
much opportunity for heroism, for generosity, for kindly deeds, as ever
physical fighting affords. I read here in the papers of the noble act
of a captain in the navy who has taken his life in his hands; in another
place of a rich man who has given a million to create a charity. On the
same page that these men are eulogized I will find references to "Jim
Keene, the stock-gambler," etc., "heartless, soulless stock-sharp," etc.
"Jim Keene, Stock-gambler," keeps no press agent to flaunt his kindly
acts, but from the noble things I know he has done, and the things
others with whom I am personally acquainted know he has done--men,
women, and children saved from misery, pain, and death, at the risk of
ruin to himself--I'll warrant the celestial scroll shows to his record
as many deeds of mercy and noble daring as are credited to any soldier
or philanthropist who has achieved worldly fame in recent years.

The desire for sudden wealth is strong in all parts of our American
community. Men want money, and women too, for a score of reasons--some
good, some bad--and the stock-market is the magical place where miracles
occur and dollars multiply themselves overnight. The agent for all the
cupidity of the world is the stock-broker, and he sees life from a
strange angle.

Hundreds of letters come to me daily from all kinds of people, who have
no other call upon me than their belief that, having at some previous
time profitably followed my advice or advice credited to me, they have a
right, when "the papers say" I am doing or going to do this, that, or
the other thing in stocks, to come to me with their troubles. In 1899
there reached me from a woman a picture of her husband, herself, her
three children, and the aged father and mother of her husband. I wish I
might print it, but I dare not through fear that they would be
recognized. The letter accompanying it was one of the most touchingly
pathetic I have ever read. I investigated the case. The statements made
were absolutely true. The woman's husband was the cashier of one of the
small national banks in one of the old towns in a New England State. His
father's brother had been cashier before him. The family's past w