ted that, "in spite of the
malicious attacks from the gambling element, the new securities are being
absorbed by the public at prices approximating their value." Then--But I
shall quote my investors' letter the following morning:

"At half-past nine yesterday--nine-twenty-eight, to be exact--President
Melville, of the National Industrial Bank, loaned six hundred thousand
dollars. He loaned it to Bill Van Nest, an ex-gambler and proprietor of
pool rooms, now silent partner in Hoe & Wittekind, brokers, on the New York
Stock Exchange, and also in Filbert & Jonas, curb brokers. He loaned it to
Van Nest without security.

"Van Nest used the money yesterday to push up the price of the new coal
securities by 'wash sales'--which means, by making false purchases and
sales of the stock in order to give the public the impression of eager
buying. Van Nest sold to himself and bought from himself 347,060 of the
352,681 shares traded in.

"Melville, in addition to being president of one of the largest banks in
the world, is a director in no less than seventy-three great industrial
enterprises, including railways, telegraph companies, _savings-banks and
life-insurance companies_. Bill Van Nest has done time in the Nevada
State Penitentiary for horse-stealing."

* * * * *

That was all. And it was enough--quite enough. I was a national figure,
as much so as if I had tried to assassinate the president. Indeed, I had
exploded a bomb under a greater than the president--under the chiefs of the
real government of the United States, the government that levied daily upon
every citizen, and that had state and national and the principal municipal
governments in its strong box.

I confess I was as much astounded at the effect of my bomb as old Melville
must have been. I felt that I had been obscure, as I looked at the
newspapers, with Matthew Blacklock appropriating almost the entire front
page of each. I was the isolated, the conspicuous figure, standing alone
upon the steps of the temple of Mammon, where mankind daily and devoutly
comes to offer worship.

Not that the newspapers praised me. I recall none that spoke well of me.
The nearest approach to praise was the "Blacklock squeals on the Wall
Street gang" in one of the sensational penny sheets that strengthen
the plutocracy by lying about it. Some of the papers insinuated that
I had gone mad; others that I had been bought up by a rival gang to
the Roebu