o dictate a
contract, and, coming into Mr. Cary's office, decided to dictate it
then and there. An hour afterward Edward delivered the copy of the
contract to Mr. Gould, and the financier was so struck by its accuracy
and by the legibility of the handwriting that afterward he almost daily
"happened in" to dictate to Mr. Cary's stenographer. Mr. Gould's
private stenographer was in his own office in lower Broadway; but on
his way down-town in the morning Mr. Gould invariably stopped at the
Western Union Building, at 195 Broadway; and the habit resulted in the
installation of a private office there. He borrowed Edward to do his
stenography. The boy found himself taking not only letters from Mr.
Gould's dictation, but, what interested him particularly, the
financier's orders to buy and sell stock.

Edward watched the effects on the stock-market of these little notes
which he wrote out and then shot through a pneumatic tube to Mr.
Gould's brokers. Naturally, the results enthralled the boy, and he
told Mr. Cary about his discoveries. This, in turn, interested Mr.
Cary; Mr. Gould's dictations were frequently given in Mr. Cary's own
office, where, as his desk was not ten feet from that of his
stenographer, the attorney heard them, and began to buy and sell
according to the magnate's decisions.

Edward had now become tremendously interested in the stock game which
he saw constantly played by the great financier; and having a little
money 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