“I bought for eighty cents, and am selling for a dollar and thirty. You can make the calculation yourself. And what is more than all this, Mr. Townsend, I have not had to use ten thousand dollars real money from beginning to end. My credit was enough. Although such a handsome profit has been made, only two or three of the first notes given for the stock have fallen due.”
“You sold on time?”
“Certainly. But the notes of such men as D—— and P——, J. S——, and L——, are as good as so much gold, any day.”
“It’s surprising,” remarked Townsend, thoughtfully.
“But no more so than true,” said Cleveland, in a confident voice. “Now is the time for a man who possesses good credit and a clear head to make or double his fortune. I shall treble mine, and you can easily do the same, and this, too, without interfering at all with your regular business operations. Mine go on the same as usual.”
Mr. Cleveland believed what he said. But he was slightly mistaken. To these grand speculating schemes he gave up all his own thoughts and attention, and left his regular business in charge of his eldest clerk, in whom he had unlimited confidence. He was satisfied to believe that every thing was conducted as well as it could have been done, if he had given to it all his personal attention. In this, however, he was in error.
Mr. Townsend hardly knew what to think. His confidence in the old way that he had been for years pursuing, was impaired, and in spite of his better judgment, confidence in the new way was gaining strength. It occurred to him that he might be neglecting, unwisely, to improve the golden opportunities that were presenting themselves every day, because they did not exactly accord with his old notions of business. He remembered how successful he had been, many years before, in speculating in flour and cotton, and then asked himself why he might not be quite as successful, if he tried his hand in some of the many money-making schemes that were put in operation all around him.
Another disastrous voyage, which no human foresight could have prevented, completely unsettled his mind, and, in this state, with a kind of bewildered desperation, he stepped aside from the old beaten way, into one of the many paths that diverged towards the mountains of wealth that were seen in the distance, towering up to the skies.
Cleveland, like a tempting spirit, was near him to suggest the path he should take. Stocks, Townsend had a prejudice against, except United States Bank stock, and in that there was not sufficient fluctuation in the price to make its purchase desirable. As a safe investment of money, he would have preferred it to almost any thing else; but as a matter of speculation, the inducements were not strong.
“I do not like to have any thing to do with stocks,” he said to Cleveland, who proposed their buying up a majority of the stock of a broken bank, the charter of which was perpetual, and embraced several advantages not usually possessed by banking institutions. “To me there is something intangible about them. A ship, a bale of cotton, or a piece of real estate, have a certain value in themselves; will always bring a certain price; but scrip is merely a representative of property that may or may not exist. You are never certain about it.”