I traded pretty steadily and had very good luck. I have never sought newspaper publicity, but neither have I gone out of my way to hide myself. At the same time, you know that professional Wall Street exaggerates both the successes and the failures of whichever operator happens to be active; and, of course, the newspapers hear about him and print rumors. I have been broke so many times, according to the gossips, or have made so many millions, according to the same authorities, that my only reaction to such reports is to wonder how and where they are born. And how they grow! I have had broker friend after broker friend bring the same story to me, a little changed each time, improved, more circumstantial. All this preface is to tell you how I first came to undertake the manipulation of a stock for someone else. The stories the newspapers printed of how I had paid back in full the millions I owed did the trick. My plungings and my winnings were so magnified by the newspapers that I was talked about in Wall Street. The day was past when an operator swinging a line of two hundred thousand shares of stock could dominate the market. But, as you know, the public always desires to find successors to the old leaders. It was Mr. Keene’s reputation as a skillful stock operator, a winner of millions on his own hook, that made promoters and banking houses apply to him for selling large blocks of securities. In short, his services as manipulator were in demand because of the stories the Street had heard about his previous successes as a trader. But Keene was gone--passed on to that heaven where he once said he wouldn’t stay a moment unless he found Sysonby there waiting for him. Two or three other men who made stock-market history for a few months had relapsed into the obscurity of prolonged inactivity. I refer particularly to certain of those plunging Westerners who came to Wall Street in 1901 and after making many millions out of their Steel holdings remained in Wall Street. They were in reality superpromoters rather than operators of the Keene type. But they were extremely able, extremely rich and extremely successful in the securities of the companies which they and their friends controlled. They were not really great manipulators, like Keene or Governor Flower. Still, the Street found in them plenty to gossip about and they certainly had a following among the professionals and the sportier commission houses. After they ceased to trade actively the Street found itself without manipulators; at least, it couldn’t read about them in the newspapers.