Then the E. & W. management lost its ordinary temper and accused the bears of malignant falsehood. There was nothing unusual in this, in a locality where no one is ever suspected of telling the truth while he can make anything by lying. When, however, E. & W. issued invitations to large operators, particularly in the company’s stock, for a special excursion over the road, with opportunities for thorough investigation, the bears growled sullenly and began to look for a living elsewhere. The excursion-start was a grand success in the eyes of Mr. Marge, who made with it his first trip in the capacity of an investigating investor. There were men on the train to whom Marge had in other days scarcely dared to lift his eyes in Wall Street, yet now they treated him as an equal, not only socially but financially. He saw his own name in newspapers of cities through which the party passed; his name had appeared in print before, but only among lists of guests at parties, or as usher or a bridegroom’s best man at a wedding,--not as a financier. It was gratifying, too, to have presented to him some presidents of Western banks who joined the party, and be named to these financiers as one of the most prominent investors in E. & W. He saw more, too, of his own country than ever before; his eyes and wits were quick enough to make him enter heartily into the spirit of a new enterprise or two which some of the E. & W. directors with the party were projecting. It might retard a little his accumulation of E. & W. stock, but the difference would be in his favor in the end. To “get in on the ground-floor” of some great enterprise had been his darling idea for years; he had hoped for it as unwearyingly as for a rich wife; now at last his desire was to be granted: the rich wife would be easy enough to find after he himself became rich. Unaccustomed though he was to slumbering with a jolting bed under him, his dreams in the sleeping-car were rosier than any he had known since the hair began to grow thin on the top of his head.