d go to par. But
Mr. Beverly did not counsel buying the stock. 'I did not let mother have
any,' he said, 'though I took some myself. But the bonds are different.
You're getting the last that will be sold at par. In three days they
will be placed before the public at 102 1/2 and interest.'"

"I was well pleased when I left Mr. Beverly's office. In a few days I
was still more pleased to learn that I could sell my Petunia sixes for
104 if so wished. But I did not wish it; and Mr. Beverly told me that
he should not sell his mother's unless they went to 110. 'In that case,'
said he, 'it might be worth while to capitalise her premium.'"

"I liked the idea of capitalising one's premium. If you had fifty bonds
that cost you par, and sold them at 110, you would then buy at par
fifty-five bonds of some other rising kind, and go on doing this
until--I named no limit for this process; but my delighted mind saw
visions of eighty and a hundred thousand a year--comfort at least, if
not affluence in New York--and I explained to Ethel what the phrase
capitalising one's premium meant. I showed her the Petunias, too, and we
read what it said on the coupons aloud together. Ethel was at first not
quite satisfied with the arrangement of the coupons. 'Thirty dollars on
January first, and thirty on July first,' she said. That seems a long
while to wait for those payments, Richard. And there are only two in
every year, though you pay them a thousand dollars all at once. It does
not seem very prompt on their part.' I told her that this was the rule.
'But,' she urged, 'don't you think that a man like Mr. Beverly might be
able to get them to make an exception if he explained the circumstances?
Other people may be satisfied with waiting for little crumbs in this
way, but why should we?' I soon made her understand how it was, however,
and I explained many other facts about investments and the stock market
to her, as I learned them. It was a great pleasure to do this. We came
to talk about finance even more than we talked of my writings; for
during that Spring I invested a good deal more rapidly than I wrote. The
Petunias had taken only one-twentieth of a million dollars; and though
Mr. Beverly warned me to rush hastily into nothing, and pointed out the
good sense of distributing my eggs in a number of baskets, still we
both agreed that the sooner all my money was bringing me five or six per
cent, the better."

"I have come to think that it might b