red not much wiser men. Gilmartin,
after the first numbing shock, tried to learn of fresh opportunities in
the drug business. But his heart was not in his search. There was the
shame of confessing defeat in Wall Street so soon after leaving Maiden
Lane; but far stronger than this was the effect of the poison of
gambling. If it was bad enough to be obliged to begin lower than he had
been at Maxwell & Kip's, it was worse to condemn himself to long weary
years of work in the drug business when his reward, if he remained
strong and healthy, would consist merely in being able to save a few
thousands. But a few lucky weeks in the stock market would win him back
all he had lost--and more!

He should have begun in a small way while he was learning to speculate.
He saw it now very clearly. Every one of his mistakes had been due to
inexperience. He had imagined he knew the market. But it was only now
that he really knew it, and therefore it was only now, after the slump
had taught him so much, that he could reasonably hope to succeed. His
mind, brooding over his losses, definitely dismissed as futile the
resumption of the purchase and sale of drugs, and dwelt persistently on
the sudden acquisition of stock market wisdom. Properly applied, this
wisdom ought to mean much to him. In a few weeks he was again spending
his days before the quotation board, gossiping with those customers who
had survived, giving and receiving advice. And as time passed the grip
of Wall Street on his soul grew stronger until it strangled all other
aspirations. He could talk, think, dream of nothing but stocks. He could
not read the newspapers without thinking how the market would "take" the
news contained therein. If a huge refinery burned down, with a loss to
the "Trust" of $4,000,000, he sighed because he had not foreseen the
catastrophe and had sold Sugar short. If a strike by the men of the
Suburban Trolley Company led to violence and destruction of life and
property, he cursed an unrelenting Fate because he had not had the
prescience to "put out" a thousand shares of Trolley. And he constantly
calculated to the last fraction of a point how much money he would
have made if he had sold short just before the calamity at the very top
prices and had covered his stock at the bottom. Had he only known! The
atmosphere of the Street, the odor of speculation surrounded him on all
sides, enveloped him like a fog, from which the things of the outside
world appea