“I hardly know what to do,” he continued. “I have a few hundred dollars left, which I will leave with you, and you can use your pleasure with it. I am going out to the country for the remainder of the summer. I will leave my address with you, and, if there is any good result, you can let me know of it. I really don’t hope for much, and of course, I need hardly tell you that, in the event of being ‘wiped out,’ you need not apply to me for more margin. Let this go with the rest,” he added, in a despairing tone.
The man walked sadly out, and I did not see him again for months. I invested his pittance on the carte blanche order which he had given me, to the best of my judgment. The result was favorable, and his account began to accumulate. He was duly advised, according to our business methods, of his good luck, but I did not hear anything from him personally for several months.
One day, a portly gentleman, with rosy health beaming in his face, stepped into my private office, and was quite profuse in his thanks to me.
“Well,” I said; “I have but a hazy recollection of your acquaintance, if I know you at all.”
“Don’t you recollect,” he said, “the time I went to the country in summer, when I told you my case, and how I had been unfortunate in speculation?”
“And are you the man who went to the country in despair to die?” I asked, in surprise at his changed appearance.
“I am,” he replied, “and I owe the wonderful change which you now see to your timely advice. I staked almost my last dollar on that counsel, and now I am comfortably fixed through your management of the small fund placed at your disposal.”
How, this was an example of a man who did make money simply by taking the advice that was freely tendered him.
There are others who lose, in spite of all that the most honest judgment can do to prevent them.
Some men, when they have money, are so fearfully perverse that all attempts to get them to do the right thing only have the opposite effect, and they prefer to follow every wild rumor.