So when Mr. Rogers shifted bobbins in his shuttle and agreeably and naturally wove fancy patterns into the woof of our conversation, I suspected no sinister motive. Indeed, in reply to his kindly queries, I was delighted to tell him how well I was getting along with Butte, Montana, and the other stocks that I had been dealing in, and how deeply interested all the country was in our plans. We must have been fully half an hour discussing the degree to which the craze for "Coppers" had spread over all America and had affected even Europe, and it was pleasant to realize his interest in my own personal well-being. Then, suddenly, as the thread on a bobbin runs out, he paused and shifted to the old subject--just as if a new phase of it had occurred to him. "To come back, Lawson, to Lewisohn Brothers. We must buy that concern, and at once. Had you best do it or we?" Our pleasant talk had restored my mind to its normal alertness, and I grasped at once the significance of the switch. "I don't think I could begin to do as well as you on a trade of that kind, Mr. Rogers," I answered, off the reel, "for I don't suppose they will be anxious to sell, will they?" "Anxious?" he replied, as quick as a chipmunk; "about as anxious as Apollo to have one of his front teeth pulled! But they will sell, and at my price, too. I think I know just where they stand, and when they know I know it, I don't believe they will be long in seeing it my way, for I shall show them what coming in with us means, and just what refusing my offer means, too!" Click! His jaws came together. "These are my plans," he continued. "They have all the money they want, and such a large European and American following that nothing could be accomplished by a financial squeeze, even if we resorted to that form of pressure; and they are very bright men. Leonard Lewisohn, head of the firm, is second to no man in America as a business man, which means he will not hanker for a fight with us; and when I show him we will buy, if necessary, the control of all the companies they represent, he will see the absolute futility of opposing us. I have it right from the inside of his own concern that Lewisohn Brothers have on hand a little over five millions cash and its equivalent, and that they consider the good-will and business of the firm worth ten to twelve millions more, which is fair enough, for their direct earnings must be a million and a quarter to a million and a half a year. Now here is what I propose offering them, and no more: We will incorporate the firm into a new selling company, which will have irrevocable contracts not only with our consolidated companies but with everything that we can influence, and the capital will be just the cash on hand, say five millions, we to take fifty-one per cent. of the stock and give them forty-nine. I will undertake to show them that their forty-nine will be more valuable under those conditions than the whole is now."