er slip, and the old man went mad again. I
asked my host if it wasn't pretty busy today; he said "no, it's a dull
market."

That 25,000 bushels of wheat was sold half a dozen times. Every broker
who handled it got a commission. The buying and selling was speculation.

Outside the board were the hangers on, the down-and-outs, the has-beens,
who used to be in the pit and throw fits like the nice old man I've
described.

These has-beens have the speculation bug, and hope they can come back
some day and make fortunes out of lucky guesses.

The only ones who make money on the board of trade are the company who
rents offices, the cigar man, the lunch man, and the telegraph
operators, and the commission men who get one-eighth of a cent a bushel
either way the market goes. Some of these commission men get the
speculation bug and go broke, and yet there are callow youths and
business men and clerks and other outsiders who believe they are smart
enough to speculate on the Board of Trade. That belief helps fatten our
penitentiaries.

No outsider ever made money on the Board of Trade if he stayed with the
game. And the speculators on the inside graduate to the down-and-out
class if they play long enough. There's a group of millionaires who
control them and all others are pikers.

You can't beat the Board of Trade; it's not in the cards.

STARS

A Little Study of the Universe

Tonight I am in the Ozarks and old Mother Earth is passing through the
belt of meteoric dust, that great mysterious sea in the universe through
which we pass every year about the middle of November.

It is midnight. I will not reach my destination until 1:30 in the
morning. Two fellow passengers in the car, after cussing their luck,
have finally gone to Snoozeland, while I call the passing hours
opportunity.

I look out into the night and marvel at the countless stars in the
infinite black void, and wonder how closely those stars may be connected
with humanity.

That they are connected I have no doubt, for truly "the sun, the moon,
the stars, and endless space as well, are parts, are things, like me,
that cometh from and runneth by one grand power of which I am in truth a
part, an atom though I be."

How many stars are there? Well, let's get ready to appreciate number. I
can see about 3,000; with opera glasses I could see 30,000.

The late Franklin Adams photographed the whole canopy with 206
photographs. He counted the stars by math