That afternoon I was told the reason for that opportune but mystifying rise. It seems that the floor traders had been tipped off after the close the night before and also the next morning before the opening, that I was bullish as blazes on Consolidated Stove and was going to rush the price right up fifteen or twenty points without a reaction, as was my custom--that is, my custom according to people who never kept my books. The tipster in chief was no less a personage than Joshua Wolff. It was his own inside buying that started the rise of the day before. His cronies among the floor traders were only too willing to follow his tip, for he knew too much to give wrong steers to his fellows. As a matter of fact, there was not so much stock pressing on the market as had been feared. Consider that I had tied up three hundred thousand shares and you will realize that the old fears had been well founded. It now proved less of a job than I had anticipated to put up the stock. After all, Governor Flower was right. Whenever he was accused of manipulating his firm’s specialties, like Chicago Gas, Federal Steel or B. R. T., he used to say: “The only way I know of making a stock go up is to buy it.” That also was the floor traders’ only way, and the price responded. On the next day, before breakfast, I read in the morning papers what was read by thousands and what undoubtedly was sent over the wires to hundreds of branches and out-of-town offices, and that was that Larry Livingston was about to begin active bull operations in Consolidated Stove. The additional details differed. One version had it that I had formed an insiders’ pool and was going to punish the over-extended short interest. Another hinted at dividend announcements in the near future. Another reminded the world that what I usually did to a stock I was bullish on was something to remember. Still another accused the company of concealing its assets in order to permit accumulation by insiders. And all of them agreed that the rise hadn’t fairly started. By the time I reached my office and read my mail before the market opened I was made aware that the Street was flooded with red-hot tips to buy Consolidated Stove at once. My telephone bell kept ringing and the clerk who answered the calls heard the same question asked in one form or another a hundred times that morning: Was it true that Consolidated Stove was going up? I must say that Joshua Wolff and Kane and Gordon--and possibly Jim Barnes--handled that little tipping job mighty well. I had no idea that I had such a following. Why, that morning the buying orders came in from all over the country--orders to buy thousands of shares of a stock that nobody wanted at any price three days before. And don’t forget that, as a matter of fact, all that the public had to go by was my newspaper reputation as a successful plunger; something for which I had to thank an imaginative reporter or two.