“I have sent for you,” he said, “because I want you to go instantly to your friend Livingston and say to him that we hope he will not sell any more stocks to-day. The market can’t stand much more pressure. As it is, it will be an immensely difficult task to avert a devastating panic. Appeal to your friend’s patriotism. This is a case where a man has to work for the benefit of all. Let me know at once what he says.” My friend came right over and told me. He was very tactful. I suppose he thought that having planned to smash the market I would consider his request as equivalent to throwing away the chance to make about ten million dollars. He knew I was sore on some of the big guns for the way they had acted trying to land the public with a lot of stock when they knew as well as I did what was coming. As a matter of fact, the big men were big sufferers and lots of the stocks I bought at the very bottom were in famous financial names. I didn’t know it at the time, but it did not matter. I had practically covered all my shorts and it seemed to me there was a chance to buy stocks cheap and help the needed recovery in prices at the same time--if nobody hammered the market. So I told my friend, “Go back and tell Mr. Blank that I agree with them and that I fully realised the gravity of the situation even before he sent for you. I not only will not sell any more stocks to-day, but I am going in and buy as much as I can carry.” And I kept my word. I bought one hundred thousand shares that day, for the long account. I did not sell another stock short for nine months. That is why I said to friends that my dream had come true and that I had been king for a moment. The stock market at one time that day certainly was at the mercy of anybody who wanted to hammer it. I do not suffer from delusions of grandeur; in fact you know how I feel about being accused of raiding the market and about the way my operations are exaggerated by the gossip of the Street. I came out of it in fine shape. The newspapers said that Larry Livingston, the Boy Plunger, had made several millions. Well, I was worth over one million after the close of business that day. But my biggest winnings were not in dollars but in the intangibles: I had been right, I had looked ahead and followed a clear-cut plan. I had learned what a man must do in order to make big money; I was permanently out of the gambler class; I had at last learned to trade intelligently in a big way. It was a day of days for me. _X_