Those who follow this method always succeed. There has hardly been a year within my recollection, going back nearly thirty years, when there have not been two or three squalls in “the Street,” during the year, when it was possible to purchase stocks below their intrinsic value. The squall usually passes over in a few days, and then the lucky buyers of stocks at panic prices come in for their profits ranging from five to ten per cent. on the entire venture. The question of making money, then, becomes a mere matter of calculation, depending on the number of the squalls that may occur during any particular year. If the venture is made at the right time—at the lucky moment, so to speak—and each successive venture is fortunate, as happens often to those who use their judgment in the best way, it is possible to realize a net gain of fifty per cent. per annum on the aggregate of the year’s investments. In this way it is easy to see how the rich will get richer, and the poor poorer. Sometimes men make money in Wall Street by strange turns in their fortunes that appear like having been governed by a special Providence, and this sometimes occurs when men appear to be utter wrecks. One of the strangest examples of this kind, in my personal experience, occurred in the summer of 1885. A man called at my office utterly broken down in spirit, but with a few hundred dollars left out of many thousands that he had possessed a few months previously. “I read your letter of the third of July,” he said, “and had some mind to act on the advice which it contained, but was unfortunately dissuaded therefrom by reading an article in a city paper by a very able writer, who had got the bearish mania, then prevalent, on the brain, and who, I am informed, is now, like myself, almost ruined.” “I hardly know what to do,” he continued. “I have a few hundred dollars left, which I will leave with you, and you can use your pleasure with it. I am going out to the country for the remainder of the summer. I will leave my address with you, and, if there is any good result, you can let me know of it. I really don’t hope for much, and of course, I need hardly tell you that, in the event of being ‘wiped out,’ you need not apply to me for more margin. Let this go with the rest,” he added, in a despairing tone. The man walked sadly out, and I did not see him again for months. I invested his pittance on the _carte blanche_ order which he had given me, to the best of my judgment. The result was favorable, and his account began to accumulate. He was duly advised, according to our business methods, of his good luck, but I did not hear anything from him personally for several months. One day, a portly gentleman, with rosy health beaming in his face, stepped into my private office, and was quite profuse in his thanks to me. “Well,” I said; “I have but a hazy recollection of your acquaintance, if I know you at all.”