The succeeding chapters will tell.
CHAPTER XIX.
The Real Estate Fake—Booming a Town—Making a Fortune—Tricks of Other People—All This World Is a Fake and Every Person in It a Fakir—The Politician and the Widow—A Diamond Ring for Two Cents.
“Almost twenty years in the faking and book business. How times flies; and yet I have gained enough experience in those twenty years to last a lifetime.”
So I mused one day while tilted back in my chair in front of the “Ashland” hotel, the principal house in a western town, which perhaps you may recognize under the name of Buxton.
I remember, as distinctly as though the time was yesterday, all the surroundings of that little town. The place was on the eve of a boom, and the best informed were in a fever of excitement over its prospects. I took out my bank book and looked over its pages.
No. The past ten years of my life had not been wasted. Each succeeding page showed a record of profits and gains, even though it was only when I switched from street selling and the like to the handling of a general line of books, and a little later on to the exclusive traveling in the interests of the Banner encyclopedia, that fortune seemed really coming at my command.
I had then what was a fair little fortune laid by. Of late years I had been always a winner, and felt sure that I could carry the “Banner” successfully for many years to come. Even in the little bits of speculation in which, more for the sake of diversion than profit, I had been engaged success had invariably crowned my efforts. Why should I not launch out more boldly? I believed I saw a chance to make thousands in the time I was taking to make hundreds, and without the possibility of any great loss. And if I did lose, what matter, since I had strength and experience through which I could soon recoup myself?