saved up, he concluded that he would follow in the wake of Mr. Gould's
orders. One day, he naively mentioned his desire to Mr. Gould, when the
financier seemed in a particularly favorable frame of mind; but Edward
did not succeed in drawing out the advice he hoped for. "At least,"
reasoned Edward, "he knew of my intention; and if he considered it a
violation of confidence he would have said as much."

Construing the financier's silence to mean at least not a prohibition,
Edward went to his Sunday-school teacher, who was a member of a Wall
Street brokerage firm, laid the facts before him, and asked him if he
would buy for him some Western Union stock. Edward explained, however,
that somehow he did not like the gambling idea of buying "on margin,"
and preferred to purchase the stock outright. He was shown that this
would mean smaller profits; but the boy had in mind the loss of his
father's fortune, brought about largely by "stock margins," and he did
not intend to follow that example. So, prudently, under the brokerage of
his Sunday-school teacher, and guided by the tips of no less a man than
the controlling factor of stock-market finance, Edward Bok took his
first plunge in Wall Street!

Of course the boy's buying and selling tallied precisely with the rise
and fall of Western Union stock. It could scarcely have been otherwise.
Jay Gould had the cards all in his hands; and as he bought and sold, so
Edward bought and sold. The trouble was, the combination did not end
there, as Edward might have foreseen had he been older and thus wiser.
For as Edward bought and sold, so did his Sunday-school teacher, and all
his customers who had seen the wonderful acumen of their broker in
choosing exactly the right time to buy and sell Western Union. But
Edward did not know this.

One day a rumor became current on the Street that an agreement had been
reached by the Western Union Company and its bitter rival, the American
Union Telegraph Company, whereby the former was to absorb the latter.
Naturally, the report affected Western Union stock. But Mr. Gould denied
it in toto; said the report was not true, no such consolidation was in
view or had even been considered. Down tumbled the stock, of course.

But it so happened that Edward knew the rumor was true, because Mr.
Gould, some time before, had personally given him the contract of
consolidation to copy. The next day a rumor to the effect that the
American Union was to absorb the W