se father
was living from hand to mouth; I who could not have emerged from a forced
settlement with enough to enable me to keep a trap. Still, when one is
rich, the reputation of being rich is heavily expensive; but when one is
poor the reputation of being rich can be made a wealth-giving asset.

Even as I was reading these fables of my millions, there lay on the desk
before me a statement of the exact posture of my affairs--a memorandum made
by myself for my own eyes, and to be burned as soon as I mastered it. On
the face of the figures the balance against me was appalling. My chief
asset, indeed my only asset that measured up toward my debts, was my Coal
stocks, those bought and those contracted for; and, while their par value
far exceeded my liabilities, they had to appear in my memorandum at their
actual market value on that day. I looked at the calendar--seventeen days
until the reorganization scheme would be announced, only seventeen days!

Less than three business weeks, and I should be out of the storm and
sailing safer and smoother seas than I had ever known. "To indulge in vague
_hopes_ is bad," thought I, "but not to indulge in _a_ hope, especially
when one has only it between him and the pit." And I proceeded to plan on
the not unwarranted assumption that my Coal hope was a present reality.
Indeed, what alternative had I? To put it among the future's uncertainties
was to put myself among the utterly ruined. Using as collateral the Coal
stocks I had bought outright, I borrowed more money, and with it went still
deeper into the Coal venture. Everything or nothing!--since the chances in
my favor were a thousand, to practically none against me. Everything or
nothing!--since only by staking everything could I possibly save anything
at all.

The morality of these and many of my other doings in those days will no
doubt be condemned. By no one more severely than by myself--now that the
necessities which then compelled me have passed. There is no subject on
which men talk and think, more humbug than on that subject of morality. As
a matter of fact, except in those personal relations that are governed by
the affections, what is morality but the mandate of policy, and what is
policy but the mandate of necessity? My criticism of Roebuck and the other
"high financiers" is not upon their morality, but upon their policy, which
is short-sighted and stupid and base. The moral difference between me and
them is that, white I