not dare confess to Roebuck what I was doing in Textile. He was
bitterly opposed to stock gambling, denouncing it as both immoral and
unbusinesslike. No gambling for him! When his business sagacity and
foresight(?) informed him a certain stock was going to be worth a great
deal more than it was then quoted at, he would buy outright in large
quantities; when that same sagacity and foresight of the fellow who has
himself marked the cards warned him that a stock was about to fall, he sold
outright. But gamble--never! And I felt that, if he should learn that I had
staked a large part of my entire fortune on a single gambling operation, he
would straightway cut me off from his confidence, would look on me as too
deeply tainted by my long career as a "bucket-shop" man to be worthy of
full rank and power as a financier. Financiers do not gamble. Their only
vice is grand larceny.

All this was flashing through my mind while I was thanking him.

"I am glad to have such a long forewarning," I was saying. "Can I be of use
to you? You know my machinery is perfect--I can buy anything and in any
quantity without starting rumors and drawing the crowd."

"No thank you, Matthew," was his answer. "I have all of those stocks I
wish--at present."

Whether it is peculiar to me, I don't know--probably not--but my memory
is so constituted that it takes an indelible and complete impression of
whatever is sent to it by my eyes and ears; and just as by looking closely
you can find in a photographic plate a hundred details that escape your
glance, so on those memory plates of mine I often find long afterward many
and many a detail that escaped me when my eyes and ears were taking the
impression. On my memory plate of that moment in my interview with Roebuck,
I find details so significant that my failing to note them at the time
shows how unfit I then was to guard my interests. For instance, I find
that just before he spoke those words declining my assistance and implying
that he had already increased his holdings, he opened and closed his hands
several times, finally closed and clinched them--a sure sign of energetic
nervous action, and in that particular instance a sign of deception,
because there was no energy in his remark and no reason for energy. I am
not superstitious, but I believe in palmistry to a certain extent. Even
more than the face are the hands a sensitive recorder of what is passing in
the mind.

But I was then too intent upon