I considered myself uncommonly lucky in thus securing what I wanted at so low a price, as I then regarded it; for the broker assured me, and such seemed to be the prevailing opinion among the knowing ones, that the stock I bought would rise six per cent. at least within two or three months. I expected, so sanguine is my temperament, to sell at that advance in less than a fortnight; and already considered myself as six hundred dollars richer than I was before. “A nice little sum that,” thought I, “for a beginning, and will furnish the out-goings for a month, next summer, at Saratoga, and the disbursements of a trip to Niagara, returning by way of Montreal, Quebec, and Lake George.”
There is a proverb about counting the young of barn-yard fowls, before the tender chickens are fairly out of their shells; which proverb admonishes us never to make such a reckoning till the hatching is completed, lest we should be disappointed as to the number. Experience has taught me that this proverb, with some slight verbal alterations, would apply equally well to the expected profits from speculation in stocks. One should never count his gains, nor appropriate them to any specific purpose, until they be realized.
In a day or two I found, much to my chagrin, that the stock I had so fortunately purchased, instead of being on the high road to one hundred and ten, began to grow tired of advancing, as though it were leg-weary, and turning suddenly about, took, like a school-boy coming home, “cross lots” the shortest possible way back to its old position on the wrong side of par. I ascribe this sudden change to two causes; first, I was the owner of some of the stock, which reason was enough of itself to knock down that or any other security; as I never in my life touched any thing of the kind that did not immediately become “heavy,” and of less value than it was before. Tom Moore complained most beautifully of similar ill-luck, and said, in his own inimitable way,
“I never nursed a dear gazelle,
To glad me with its soft black eye,
But when it came to know me well,
And love me, it was sure to die.”
And I can and do say with more truth, (for Tom evidently fibbed, or rather made Hinda do so,) and with equally good rhymes, that
I never bought a single mill
Of stock, in that vile street named Wall,