her did we
actually negotiate for Fifth Avenue property.

The Little Woman bought many papers during the day. In some of them
early stock quotations were printed in red, so it might be truly said
that these were red-letter days for the Little Woman. When she heard
"_Extra!_" being shouted in the street far below she could not
dispossess herself of the idea that it had been issued to announce a
sensational advance of the Stock. Even as late as ten o'clock one night
she insisted on my going down for one, though I explained that the Stock
Exchange had closed some seven hours before. The Precious Ones fairly
kept the elevator busy during the afternoon, going for extras, and when
the final Wall Street edition was secured they would come shouting in,

"Here it is. Look at the Stock, quick, Mamma, and see how much we've
made to-day!"

Truly this was a gilded age; though I confess that it did not seem quite
real, and looking back now the memory of it seems less pleasant than
that of some of the very hard epochs that had gone before. Still, it
occupies a place all its own and is not without value in life's
completed scheme.

The Stock did not go to fifty. It limped before it got to forty, and we
began to be harassed by paltry fractional advances, with even an
occasional fractional decline. We did not approve of this. It was
annoying to look in the Wall Street edition and find that we had made
only twelve dollars and a half, instead of a hundred or two, as had been
the case in the beginning. We even thought of selling Calfskin Common
and buying a stock that would not act that way; but my friend of the
exchange advised against it. He said this was merely a temporary thing,
and that fifty and a hundred would come along in good time. He adjusted
the stop-loss for us so that there was no danger of the Stock being sold
on a temporary decline, and we sat down to wait and watch the papers
while the Stock gathered strength for a new upward rush that was sure to
come, and would place us in a position to gratify a good many of the
ambitions lately formed.

A feverish and nerve-destroying ten days followed. The Stock had become
to us as a personal Presence that we watched as it stumbled and
struggled and panted, and dug its common Calfskin toes into things in a
frantic effort to scale the market. I know now that the men who had
organized the deal were boasting and shouting, and beating the air in
their wild encouragement, while those