“Believe me, old chap,” said he, laying his slim hand on my shoulder, “believe me, I had nothing on my mind beyond your own safety, and the safety of that cub of yours. And I think you will agree that I have exhibited a knowledge of what winds and currents and rocks might interrupt or wreck one in his voyages after stocks.”
“Admitting all you say,” I replied, “it does not follow that another may not know or learn to know as much.”
“But Wall Street is such a quicksand,” he persisted. “Gad! it swallows nine of every ten who set foot in it. And to deduce safety for another, because I am and have been safe, might troll you into error. You should consider my peculiar case. I was born with beak and claw for the game. Like the fish-hawk, I can hover above the stream of stocks, and swoop in and out, taking my quarry where it swims. And then, remember my arrangements. I have an agent at the elbow of every opportunity. I have made the world my spy, since I pay the highest price for information. If a word be said in a cabinet, I hear it; if a decision of court is to be handed down, I know it; if any of our great forces or monarchs of the street so much as move a finger, I see it. And yet, with all I know, and all I see, and all I hear, and all my nets and snares as complicated as the works of a watch, added to a native genius, the best I may do is win four times in seven. In Wall Street, a man meets with not alone the foreseeable, but the unforeseeable; he does, really! He is like a man in a tempest, and may be struck dead by some cloud-leveled bolt while you and he stand talking, don't y' know!”
Morton fell a long day's journey short of convincing me that Wall Street was a theater of peril for young Van Flange. Moreover, the boy said true; it offered the one way open to his feet. Thus reasoning, and led by my love for my girl and my delight to think how she was happy, I did all I might to further the ambitions of young Van Flange, and embark him as a trader of stocks. He took office rooms in Broad Street; and on the one or two occasions when I set foot in them, I was flattered as well as amazed by the array of clerks and stock-tickers, blackboards, and tall baskets, which met my untaught gaze. The scene seemed to buzz and vibrate with prosperity, and the air was vital of those riches which it promised.
It is scarce required that I say I paid not the least attention to young Van Flange and his business affairs. I possessed no stock knowledge, being as darkened touching Wall Street as any Hottentot. More than that, my time was taken up with Tammany Hall. The flow of general feeling continued to favor a return of the machine, for the public was becoming more and sorely irked of a misfit “reform” that was too tight in one place while too loose in another. There stood no doubt of it; I had only to wait and maintain my own lines in order, and the town would be my own again. It would yet lie in my lap like a goose in the lap of a Dutch woman; and I to feather-line my personal nest with its plumage to what soft extent I would. For all that, I must watch lynx-like my own forces, guarding against schism, keeping my people together solidly for the battle that was to be won.
Much and frequently, I discussed the situation with Morton. With his traction operations, he had an interest almost as deep as my own. He was, too, the one man on whose wisdom of politics I had been educated to rely. When it became a question of votes and how to get them, I had yet to meet Morton going wrong.
“You should have an issue,” said Morton. “You should not have two, for the public is like a dog, don't y' know, and can chase no more than just one rabbit at a time. But one you should have—something you could point to and promise for the future. As affairs stand—and gad! it has been that way since I have had a memory—you and the opposition will go into the campaign like a pair of beldame scolds, railing at one another. Politics has become a contest of who can throw the most mud. Really, the town is beastly tired of both of you—it is, 'pon my word!”
“Now what issue would you offer?”
“Do you recall what I told our friend Bronson? Public Ownership should be the great card. Go in for the ownership by the town of street railways, water works, gas plants, and that sort of thing, don't y' know, and the rabble will trample on itself to vote your ticket.”
“And do you shout 'Municipal Ownership!'—you with a street railway to lose?”