The old fellow asked me a lot of questions. When I got through telling him about my usual practice in trading he nodded and said, “Yes! Yes! You’re right. The way you’re built, the way your mind runs, makes your system a good system for you. It comes easy for you to practice what you preach, because the money you bet is the least of your cares. I recollect Pat Hearne. Ever hear of him? Well, he was a very well-known sporting man and he had an account with us. Clever chap and nervy. He made money in stocks, and that made people ask him for advice. He would never give any. If they asked him point-blank for his opinion about the wisdom of their commitments he used a favorite race-track maxim of his: ‘You can’t tell till you bet.’ He traded in our office. He would buy one hundred shares of some active stock and when, or if, it went up 1 per cent he would buy another hundred. On another point’s advance, another hundred shares; and so on. He used to say he wasn’t playing the game to make money for others and therefore he would put in a stop-loss order one point below the price of his last purchase. When the price kept going up he simply moved up his stop with it. On a 1 per cent reaction he was stopped out. He declared he did not see any sense in losing more than one point, whether it came out of his original margin or out of his paper profits. “You know, a professional gambler is not looking for long shots, but for sure money. Of course long shots are fine when they come in. In the stock market Pat wasn’t after tips or playing to catch twenty-points-a-week advances, but sure money in sufficient quantity to provide him with a good living. Of all the thousands of outsiders that I have run across in Wall Street, Pat Hearne was the only one who saw in stock speculation merely a game of chance like faro or roulette, but, nevertheless, had the sense to stick to a relatively sound betting method. “After Hearne’s death one of our customers who had always traded with Pat and used his system made over one hundred thousand dollars in Lackawanna. Then he switched over to some other stock and because he had made a big stake he thought he need not stick to Pat’s way. When a reaction came, instead of cutting short his losses he let them run--as though they were profits. Of course every cent went. When he finally quit he owed us several thousand dollars. “He hung around for two or three years. He kept the fever long after the cash had gone; but we did not object as long as he behaved himself. I remember that he used to admit freely that he had been ten thousand kinds of an ass not to stick to Pat Hearne’s style of play. Well, one day he came to me greatly excited and asked me to let him sell some stock short in our office. He was a nice enough chap who had been a good customer in his day and I told him I personally would guarantee his account for one hundred shares.