of his pocket the prospectus of a Cornish gold mine.
It is only on having actually lost money that one realises what an awful
thing the loss of it is, and finds out how easily it is lost by those who
venture out of the middle of the most beaten path. Ernest had had his
facer, as he had had his attack of poverty, young, and sufficiently badly
for a sensible man to be little likely to forget it. I can fancy few
pieces of good fortune greater than this as happening to any man,
provided, of course, that he is not damaged irretrievably.

So strongly do I feel on this subject that if I had my way I would have a
speculation master attached to every school. The boys would be
encouraged to read the _Money Market Review_, the _Railway News_, and all
the best financial papers, and should establish a stock exchange amongst
themselves in which pence should stand as pounds. Then let them see how
this making haste to get rich moneys out in actual practice. There might
be a prize awarded by the head-master to the most prudent dealer, and the
boys who lost their money time after time should be dismissed. Of course
if any boy proved to have a genius for speculation and made money--well
and good, let him speculate by all means.

If Universities were not the worst teachers in the world I should like to
see professorships of speculation established at Oxford and Cambridge.
When I reflect, however, that the only things worth doing which Oxford
and Cambridge can do well are cooking, cricket, rowing and games, of
which there is no professorship, I fear that the establishment of a
professorial chair would end in teaching young men neither how to
speculate, nor how not to speculate, but would simply turn them out as
bad speculators.

I heard of one case in which a father actually carried my idea into
practice. He wanted his son to learn how little confidence was to be
placed in glowing prospectuses and flaming articles, and found him five
hundred pounds which he was to invest according to his lights. The
father expected he would lose the money; but it did not turn out so in
practice, for the boy took so much pains and played so cautiously that
the money kept growing and growing till the father took it away again,
increment and all--as he was pleased to say, in self defence.

I had made my own mistakes with money about the year 1846, when everyone
else was making them. For a few years I had been so scared and had
suffered so severely