d pointed out that Prime Steam Lard at eight cents for the
November delivery, and the West alive with hogs, was a crime against
the consumer, I felt inclined to agree with him, and we took the bear
side of the market together.

Somehow, after we had gone short a big line, the law of supply and
demand quit business. There were plenty of hogs out West, and all the
packers were making plenty of lard, but people seemed to be frying
everything they ate, and using lard in place of hair-oil, for the
Prime Steam moved out as fast as it was made. The market simply sucked
up our short sales and hollered for more, like a six-months shoat at
the trough. Pound away as we would, the November option moved slowly
up to 8-1/2, to 9, to 9-1/2. Then, with delivery day only six weeks
off, it jumped overnight to 10, and closed firm at 12-1/4. We stood to
lose a little over a million apiece right there, and no knowing what
the crowd that was under the market would gouge us for in the end.

As soon as 'Change closed that day, Old Ham and I got together and
gave ourselves one guess apiece to find out where we stood, and we
both guessed right--in a corner.

We had a little over a month to get together the lard to deliver on
our short sales or else pay up, but we hadn't had enough experience in
the paying-up business to feel like engaging in it. So that afternoon
we wired our agents through the West to start anything that looked
like a hog toward Chicago, and our men in the East to ship us every
tierce of Prime Steam they could lay their hands on. Then we made
ready to try out every bit of hog fat, from a grease spot up, that we
could find in the country. And all the time the price kept climbing on
us like a nigger going up a persimmon tree, till it was rising
seventeen cents.

So far the bull crowd had managed to keep their identity hidden, and
we'd been pretty modest about telling the names of the big bears,
because we weren't very proud of the way we'd been caught napping, and
because Old Ham was mighty anxious that Percy shouldn't know that his
safe old father had been using up the exception to his rule of no
speculation.

It was a near thing for us, but the American hog responded nobly--and
a good many other critters as well, I suspect--and when it came on
toward delivery day we found that we had the actual lard to turn over
on our short contracts, and some to spare. But Ham and I had lost a
little fat ourselves, and we had learned a