"It'll strengthen prices," he replied, "the way I'll manage it. This is the age of the sensational--the yellow--and you people haven't been yellow enough in your methods of selling dirt. If you say sensationalism is immoral, I won't dispute it, but just simply ask how the fact happens to be material?" I saw that he was going out of his way to say this, and avoided discussion by asking him to particularize as to his methods. "We shall pursue a progressively startling course of advertising, to the end that the interest shall just miss acute mania. I'll have the best auctioneer in the world. On the day of the auction we'll have a series of doings which will leave the people absolutely no way out of buying. We'll have a scale of upset prices which will prevent loss. Why, I'll make such a killing as never was known outside of the Fifteen Decisive Battles. I sha'n't seem to do all this personally. I shall turn the work over to Tolliver; but I'll be the power behind the movement. The gestures and stage business will be those of Esau, but the word-painting will be that of Jacob." "Well," said I, "I see nothing wrong about your plan; and it may be practicable." "There being nothing wrong about it is no objection from my standpoint," said he. "In fact, I think I prefer to have it morally right rather than otherwise, other things being equal, you know. As for its practicability, you watch the Captain, and you'll see!" This talk with Giddings convinced me that he was entirely himself again; and also that the boom was going on apace. It had now long reached the stage where the efforts of our syndicate were reinforced by those of hundreds of men, who, following the lines of their own interests, were powerfully and effectively striving to accomplish the same ends. I pointed this out in a letter to Mr. Elkins in New York. "I am glad to note," said he in reply, "that affairs are going on so cheerfully at home. Don't imagine, however, that because a horde of volunteers (most of them nine-spots) have taken hold, our old guard is of any less importance. Do you remember what a Prince Rupert's drop is? I absolutely know you don't, and to save you the trouble of looking it up, I'll explain that it is a glass pollywog which holds together all right until you snap off the tip of its tail. Then a job lot of molecular stresses are thrown out of balance, and the thing develops the surprising faculty of flying into innumerable fragments, with a very pleasing explosion. Whether the name is a tribute of Prince Rupert's propensity to fly off the handle, or whether he discovered the drop, or first noted its peculiarities, I leave for the historian of the Cromwellian epoch to decide. The point I make is this. Our syndicate is the tail of the Lattimore Rupert's drop; and the Grain Belt Trust Co. is the very slenderest and thinnest tip of the pollywog's propeller. Hence the writer's tendency to count the strokes of the clock these nights."