“I’ll tell you how I found out the secret. I was a schoolmaster in the State of Maine, and it was as much as I could do to make both ends meet. What with flogging the boys, leading the choir Sundays, living in a leaky school-house and drinking hard cider, I grew as thin as a rail, and had to call in a traveling doctor. After he had looked into me and my case; ‘Mister,’ says he, ‘there’s only one thing for you to do, you must speculate.’ I had a kind of notion what he meant, for all winter the folks had been talking about the eastern land speculation; so, says I, ‘Doctor, I haven’t got a cent to begin with.’ ‘So much the better,’ says he, ‘a man who has money is a fool to speculate; you’ve got nothing to lose, so begin right away.’ I sold my things all but one suit of clothes, and a neighbor gave me a lift in his wagon as far as Bangor. I took lodgings at the crack hotel, and by keeping my ears open at the table and in the bar-room, soon had all the slang of speculation by heart, and, having the gift of the gab, by the third day out-talked all the boarders about ‘lots,’ ‘water privileges,’ ‘sites’ and ‘deeds.’ One morning I found an old gentleman sitting in the parlor, looking very glum. ‘Ah,’ says I, ‘great bargain that of Jones, two hundred acres, including the main street as far as the railroad depot—that is, where they’re to be when Jonesville’s built.’ ‘Some people have all the luck,’ says the old gentleman. ‘There isn’t a better tract than mine in all Maine, but I can’t get an offer.’ ‘It’s because you don’t talk it up,’ says I. ‘Well,’ says he, ‘you seem to understand the business. Here’s my bond, all you can get over three thousand dollars you may have.’ I set right to work, got the editors to mention the thing as a rare chance, whispered about in all corners that the land had been surveyed for a manufacturing town, and had a splendid map drawn, with a colored border, six meeting-houses, a lyceum, blocks of stores, hay-scales, a state prison and a rural cemetery—with Gerrytown in large letters at the bottom, and then hung it up in the hall. Before the week was out, I sold the land for cash to a company for twenty thousand dollars, gave the old gentleman his three thousand, and have been speculating ever since. I own two thirds of a granite quarry in New Hampshire, half of a coal mine in Pennsylvania, and a prairie in Illinois, besides lots of bank stock, half of a canal and a whole India rubber factory. I’ve been in New Orleans, buying cotton, and came here to see about the silk business, and mean to dip into the marble line a little. I’ve never had the dyspeps_y_ since I began to speculate. It exercises all the organs and keeps a man going like a steamboat.” Just then a bell was heard from within, and the stranger, thinking it the signal for dinner, precipitately withdrew. * * * * * THE SHEPHERD AND THE BROOK.