“No; but I am the agent of some Western mines. I have an office in New York. How much money do you think I made last month?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Six hundred dollars.”
“Do tell! How’d you make it?”
“By selling mining shares. I get a commission. But what I made wasn’t a circumstance to what some of my customers made. Why, one man bought five hundred shares of stock of me, and in three weeks the stock went up four dollars a share. That’s two thousand dollars.”
“You don’t say? Was the stock high priced?”
“Only four dollars a share. It just doubled.”
This was the beginning of a conversation which finally ended in Jacob Winter’s giving his nephew an order to buy a thousand dollars’ worth of shares in the Muddy Gulch Mining Company of Nevada. The purchase represented five hundred shares at two dollars a share.
“You think it’s safe, Ezra?” asked Jacob anxiously.
“Uncle Jacob, you’ll double your money in three months, perhaps in one. Give me a power of attorney and I’ll sell for you at the top of the market.”