ng capital. It is the practice in establishing such companies to
issue and sell bonds enough to cover the cost of the plant, or very
nearly that. The profits are so certain and so great that the
bonds--even at so low a figure as five per cent. interest--go off like
hot cakes. But that isn't all. Here in Cairo we shall hardly have to
bond the company at all. You see we shall have almost no engineering
work to do. In other cities a gas company must dig deep trenches--often
through solid rock--in which to lay its mains. Here in Cairo we shall
have no digging at all to do. You observed, as we drove to-day, that the
city is built upon a tongue of very low-lying ground. A levee,
forty-five feet high, has been built around it, and contractors are now
busily filling in the streets so as to raise them nearly, though not
quite, to the grade of the levee. Every street is a long embankment.
Now, when we come to lay our mains, we shall put them along the sides of
these embankments, with no cost at all for digging."

So Tandy went on for an hour. At the end of that time Temple felt
himself sufficiently sure of his ground to venture a little further:

"I am inclined to think," he said, "that I shall want to take at least a
little of the barrel-factory stock to-morrow, and possibly I may
subscribe for some of the gas stock also; of that I am not yet sure. But
before I take either, I must invest four or five thousand dollars in
something absolutely secure. I have been going over the latest reports
of your bank, and the other one--Hallam's--and they have impressed me
with the conviction that the very best and safest investment a man of
small means, like myself, can make in this town, is in bank stock. This
city is a point at which so many lines of travel and traffic converge,
that the exchange business itself must be sufficient to pay a bank's
expenses. In fact it pays more, as the reports show. And then there is
the larger business--lending money on sound enterprises, financing
industrial companies, and especially advancing money on bills of lading
for goods in transit. In view of all this it surprises me to learn that
the stock in the two banks here stands only a trifle above par."

"Oh, that's because of two things. People here have got it into their
heads that anything less than ten or twelve per cent., as a return for
money invested, is ridiculously small. So they don't want bank stocks.
On the other hand, the eastern capitalists h