and
it was all I could do to prevent a quick crash. My profits--the immense
sum of money I had obtained at the settlement--had been used up,
together with the great sums I had borrowed on my own allotment of
shares. At intervals I stopped long enough to make brief excursions into
sugar or other stocks, out of which I captured additional hundreds of
thousands, but every cent of such gains went toward staying the
avalanche. These indeed were days of desperation and black despair, all
the more trying because I had to look happy and talk hopefully; all the
more difficult because my enemies came out of their holes and did their
share to balk my efforts; all the more painful because the public were
beginning to doubt whether the second section was coming--and whether it
had best come--and our Boston "Coppers" had begun to drop in value.

During all this time I had troubled myself but little about the Flower
pool, which had been set going soon after the conversation in which Mr.
Rogers had told me that he and Mr. Rockefeller intended to unload their
stock. I concluded that the pool would surely get a share of what they
had to sell, and showed no inclination to join in with it. But at last
Mr. Rogers said to me:

"As every one is going into the pool, Lawson, it will seem strange if
you are missing, so you had better send Flower your check and I will see
you get it back later."

"For how much?" I asked him.

"A hundred thousand will be about right," he answered, and I sent it,
and that was all I had heard of the subject until one day after the
stock had been weaker than usual I received by mail a brusk notice from
Flower & Co. to mail them another hundred thousand dollars. Immediately
I called up the banking-house, and learned to my horror and astonishment
that the pool had accumulated over 225,000 shares. I went at once to Mr.
Rogers with Flower's call and said:

"I know nothing whatever of this affair, Mr. Rogers, and as I have not
been unloading any of my stock and have all I can do to keep up my end
anyway, you will look after it, of course."

He took the notice and said: "I will attend to it." Remembering his
intentions to unload, after what I had heard of the pool's accumulations
I was not surprised at Mr. Rogers' willingness to take care of this
matter of mine. It is of interest now, in looking back over our affairs,
to recall that though there were several periods later when the sledding
was hard, and I needed al