nd all Wall Street was green with envy at our success and his
enterprise was trying to hide itself behind the garbage barrels, John
Moore said to me:

"Lawson, we all think we are the masters of our own fortunes, but we are
not. We are only working on a schedule laid out by some One who does not
take our desires into consideration."

And it is so. The ablest Wall Street man is only like the burglar who,
after working for weeks to loot a second story, is astounded to find,
while lugging his swag by the police station, that the bag he thought
full of dead sealskins contains a live parrot with a lusty vocabulary,
"Police! Robbers!"

CHAPTER X

ROGERS GRASPS "COPPERS"

The next day our gas business brought me to New York, and after Mr.
Rogers and myself had threshed out the matter I had come about, he said
with a smile:

"Well, I've heard from John Moore. Are you satisfied now? Will you drop
that copper will-o'-the-wisp?"

"Far from it," I replied. "I'm surer than ever of my position. In going
over the ground with Moore I got the whole business in perspective, and
now I know I'm right. All his argument amounted to anyway was that it
was impossible for so gigantic a thing to have lain out in the travelled
highways all these years."

I ran on vigorously for a few moments, in a way I felt might pique his
curiosity, if it did not gain my point. Finally he said:

"Well, Lawson, what more can I do?"

"This," I answered: "go over the matter fully with me yourself. I will
surely carry it through one way or another; if not with you, with
others, and I cannot drop it with you until I have your personal
judgment."

Instantly came one of those flash decisions for which H. H. Rogers is
noted among his business associates, the oft-proved correctness of which
goes far toward making him the pre-eminent American financier of the
day.

"Lawson," he said, "be in New York next Sunday, and I will listen until
you have run the subject out."

That decision changed the face of the copper world.

Sunday is Mr. Rogers' pick of days for a lengthy hearing, and returning
from church, he came directly to the "stowaway" rooms at the Murray Hill
Hotel, at which we frequently met while the Wall Street world was
trying to trace and keep track of our movements. I had been there for
some time awaiting him and was keyed for the struggle.

Of my ability to land John Moore I had felt confident, yet I had failed;
but this time in adva