“That may do, but it is too slow for me. I owned a house uptown. I sold for thirty thousand dollars. In six weeks I made twenty thousand more out of it.”
“Is it possible?” ejaculated the squire. “Twenty thousand, did you say?”
“To be sure. Of course that was extra good luck. You can't expect to do as well often, but there are always ways of turning over capital.”
“May I ask in what way you made this large sum?”
“To be sure. I speculated in Erie. It is all the time fluctuating. I became convinced that it was on the rise. I went in and the event justified my action.”
Temple spoke quietly, as if it were no great matter, after all. His host was very much impressed, and felt like a man who has discovered a gold mine. He had succeeded in saving up about two thousand dollars a year for some years; but what was that to twenty thousand dollars made in six weeks? Still, prudence led him to suggest: “But isn't there danger of losing heavily?”
“Not if you are acquainted with the stock market. It is the ignoramuses that get bit.”
“I know very little of the stock market myself,” confessed Squire Leech. “I own some bank stocks.”
“No money to be made in bank stocks.”
“They pay good dividends.”