It was after that deal that some of the papers referred to me as the Cotton King. But, as I said, I really was not entitled to that crown. It is not necessary to tell you that there is not enough money in the United States to buy the columns of the New York _World_ or enough personal pull to secure the publication of a story like that. It gave me an utterly unearned reputation that time. But I have not told this story to moralize on the crowns that are sometimes pressed down upon the brows of undeserving traders or to emphasize the need of seizing the opportunity, no matter where or how it comes. My object merely was to account for the vast amount of newspaper notoriety that came to me as a result of my deal in July cotton. If it hadn’t been for the newspapers I never would have met that remarkable man, Percy Thomas. _XII_ Not long after I closed my July cotton deal more successfully than I had expected I received by mail a request for an interview. The letter was signed by Percy Thomas. Of course I immediately answered that I’d be glad to see him at my office at any time he cared to call. The next day he came. I had long admired him. His name was a household word wherever men took an interest in growing or buying or selling cotton. In Europe as well as all over this country people quoted _Percy Thomas’_ opinions to me. I remember once at a Swiss resort talking to a Cairo banker who was interested in cotton growing in Egypt in association with the late Sir Ernest Cassel. When he heard I was from New York he immediately asked me about Percy Thomas, whose market reports he received and read with unfailing regularity. Thomas, I always thought, went about his business scientifically. He was a true speculator, a thinker with the vision of a dreamer and the courage of a fighting man--an unusually well-informed man, who knew both the theory and the practice of trading in cotton. He loved to hear and to express ideas and theories and abstractions, and at the same time there was mighty little about the practical side of the cotton market or the psychology of cotton traders that he did not know, for he had been trading for years and had made and lost vast sums. After the failure of his old Stock Exchange firm of Sheldon & Thomas he went it alone. Inside of two years he came back, almost spectacularly. I remember reading in the _Sun_ that the first thing he did when he got back on his feet financially was to pay off his old creditors in full, and the next was to hire an expert to study and determine for him how he had best invest a million dollars. This expert examined the properties and analysed the reports of several companies and then recommended the purchase of Delaware & Hudson stock.