Although I acted in numerous capacities for my Western employer, and apparently satisfied him with my efforts, my salary was small. In order to live I gave my evenings to gathering the improvident into the fold of the Western Insurance Company. Sometimes I did very well at this, and what I learned of insurance was afterwards useful. When the boom broke the insurance harvest disappeared. This was one of the reasons for my return home. I was not cut out for an insurance man. I hated opening up my pack and displaying my wares to people. Yet I made some little success in insurance, as long as my list of friends and acquaintances lasted. Approaching strangers was very distasteful to me.
I persevered in the insurance business after I returned home, and for three years lived upon the precarious commissions made upon the street, with my office in my hat, mainly; sometimes a friend would lend me desk-room in one corner of his place of business. A year after our coming home our Fourth Beloved was added to us.
What course in life I was suited to follow I could not see. I was like a ship without compass or instruments, with no set course, but drifting this way and that, according to wind and weather. If I had thoroughly understood what my calling was in life, I might not have found it possible to follow it, for I had to go after the immediate dollar. Certainly I was quite unsuited for those activities ordinarily referred to as “business,” and I have yet to learn that I have any special aptitude in any particular direction.
I had always flattered myself that want of mental balance was not one of my failings. I had made the common every-day mistakes of youth and inexperience, but had an exalted idea of my wisdom, until I had a streak of luck. I wrote one of Montreal’s wealthy men for a policy of fifty thousand dollars, and as a consequence went completely off my head. Commissions on life insurance were very high when I was young; in fact, the insurance company received very little of the first year’s premium. The agent got the better part of it.
To be a gambler within reason is nothing very uncommon or very dreadful. In one form or another the gambling spirit is nearly universal. Business is permeated with it. It looks as if it were a normal instinct. The gambling fever overcame me like a disease. It ran in my blood and dominated my mind. I dreamed schemes and systems and planned coups. That I ever returned to my natural self is a marvel for which I am exceedingly thankful.
My initiation came through the slim and insidious ten-dollar chance in a bucket shop. The possession of what to me was a large amount of money—my commission on a fifty thousand dollar life policy—must have gone to my head. I did not become a gambler in one day or one week, but gradually became more feverish and daring, until I graduated as a plunger and a better in every form of chance. I tried them all—horse-racing, athletic events, roulette, faro, poker and even craps. As often happens with tyros, I was fortunate to begin with. But I became useless as a citizen, as a father and husband, made Muriel thoroughly miserable, and did not increase my own happiness or satisfaction with life. But, strange to say, I made money. The more we love, and are loved, the more power we have to aggravate those who love us.
In seventeen months my commission of twelve hundred dollars had grown to the wonderful sum of twenty-one thousand dollars. During that time I had many nerve-racking ups and downs, but blind chance favoured me, and I prospered financially. I lost in nearly every other direction. I became known as a gambler, but not as what is understood as a sport, for I never drank, or mixed with fast society. Unless you have been a gambler and a regular frequenter of gambling places, you have no idea of the extraordinary-looking people who seem to have money to risk on the turn of a card or a wheel. Men who appear to be gentlemen are rare in the gambling crowd. It is not the people who dress well and keep up appearances who have the bulk of the money floating about in such company; but the shabby people who care more for money than appearances. I have seen thousands of dollars change hands amidst a shabby unkempt crowd, who looked as if one could buy them and their belongings for five or ten dollars a head; and all in quietness and calm without a murmur. Nothing is despised so much among the gambling fraternity as one who bawls, weeps or babbles.
The families interested in my life now besieged me with importunities to be good. Not that they were so truly interested in my soul, but they wished to see something saved out of the large sum of money I had accumulated. They did not know exactly how much I was worth, but they knew, by some means or other that is was a large amount, and implored me to be wise, and tie up at least half of it in such a way that I could not lay careless hands upon it. Their prayers were useless. I could not be moved. I thought I knew exactly what I was about, and advice only annoyed me. I fully intended and expected to win a million, if not more. My fall came soon and suddenly. The “Pyramid,” like nearly all inventions of the Devil, is very successful when not a failure and very disastrous when not a success. It was the main cause of my financial crash. This scheme is as old as perdition, but many have no knowledge of its peculiarities, and only a gambler knows the power of its fascination. I attempted a pyramid in wheat, buying a modest ten thousand bushels on margin. The market went down and I remargined my original ten thousand bushels and bought twenty thousand bushels more. Again the market dropped, I remargined my holdings and bought forty thousand bushels more and so on while the market continued to fall, until I held over a million bushels. If the market had recovered even a few cents, my average price was so low that I would have been able to get out with a small loss or a small profit; but the market was against me and I was wiped out. Not only did I lose my all, but I was involved deeply beyond.
When I look back at the gambling period of my life it seems impossible that I went through such an experience and regained my equilibrium. For over a year my days were spent in bucket shops and brokers’ offices, and my nights, often till dawn, at the poker or roulette table, with faro as a relaxation. How I stood the nervous waste is a mystery, for during the whole of that period my perceptive faculties were on the alert day and night, an honest night’s sleep was a thing unknown to me. A loss which to-day would put me in a sick bed for a week was in those days a laughable incident. One day I took Muriel to the race track at Belair. We lunched in the city and I bought her a pair of gloves. I had four hundred and fifty dollars in my pocket. On my return, Muriel’s gloves were all there was to show for my money, and we laughed at the joke of it. Many of the bookmakers were my friends, but they separated me from my money with the best heart in the world.
In my earlier pages I have said things uncomplimentary to parsons, but there are parsons and parsons. For the sake of the help and sympathy I received from one dear soul, I offer prayers for all parsons, pastors and masters.