I went to him and said, “I’ve come to pay you back that twenty-five thousand dollars.” “No, no!” he said and waved me away exactly as if I had offered him a castor-oil cocktail. “No, no, my boy. Wait until your account amounts to something. Don’t think about it yet. You’ve only got chicken feed there.” There is where I made the mistake that I have regretted more than any other I ever made in my Wall Street career. It was responsible for long and dreary years of suffering. I should have insisted on his taking the money. I was on my way to a bigger fortune than I had lost and walking pretty fast. For three weeks my average profit was 150 per cent per week. From then on my trading would be on a steadily increasing scale. But instead of freeing myself from all obligation I let him have his way and did not compel him to accept the twenty-five thousand dollars. Of course, since he didn’t draw out the twenty-five thousand dollars he had advanced me I felt I could not very well draw out my profit. I was very grateful to him, but I am so constituted that I don’t like to owe money or favours. I can pay the money back with money, but the favours and kindnesses I must pay back in kind--and you are apt to find these moral obligations mighty high priced at times. Moreover there is no statute of limitations. I left the money undisturbed and resumed my trading. I was getting on very nicely. I was recovering my poise and I was sure it would not be very long before I should get back into my 1907 stride. Once I did that, all I’d ask for would be for the market to hold out a little while and I’d more than make up my losses. But making or not making the money was not bothering me much. What made me happy was that I was losing the habit of being wrong, of not being myself. It had played havoc with me for months but I had learned my lesson. Just about that time I turned bear and I began to sell short several railroad stocks. Among them was Chesapeake & Atlantic. I think I put out a short line in it; about eight thousand shares. One morning when I got downtown Dan Williamson called me into his private office before the market opened and said to me: “Larry, don’t do anything in Chesapeake & Atlantic just now. That was a bad play of yours, selling eight thousand short. I covered it for you this morning in London and went long.” I was sure Chesapeake & Atlantic was going down. The tape told it to me quite plainly; and besides I was bearish on the whole market, not violently or insanely bearish, but enough to feel comfortable with a moderate short line out. I said to Williamson, “What did you do that for? I am bearish on the whole market and they are all going lower.” But he just shook his head and said, “I did it because I happen to know something about Chesapeake & Atlantic that you couldn’t know. My advice to you is not to sell that stock short until I tell you it is safe to do so.”