Roebuck had given me the impression that it would be six months, at least, before what I was in those fatuous days thinking of as “_our_” plan for “putting the coal industry on a sound business basis” would be ready for the public. So, when he sent for me shortly after I became engaged to Miss Ellersly, and said: “Melville will publish the plan on the first of next month and will open the subscription books on the third--a Thursday,” I was taken by surprise and was anything but pleased. His words meant that, if I wished to make a great fortune, now was the time to buy coal stocks, and buy heavily--for on the very day of the publication of the plan every coal stock would surely soar. Buy I must; not to buy was to throw away a fortune. Yet how could I buy when I was gambling in Textile up to my limit of safety, if not beyond? I did not dare confess to Roebuck what I was doing in Textile. He was bitterly opposed to stock gambling, denouncing it as both immoral and unbusinesslike. No gambling for him! When his business sagacity and foresight(?) informed him a certain stock was going to be worth a great deal more than it was then quoted at, he would buy outright in large quantities; when that same sagacity and foresight of the fellow who has himself marked the cards warned him that a stock was about to fall, he sold outright. But gamble--never! And I felt that, if he should learn that I had staked a large part of my entire fortune on a single gambling operation, he would straightway cut me off from his confidence, would look on me as too deeply tainted by my long career as a “bucket-shop” man to be worthy of full rank and power as a financier. Financiers do not gamble. Their only vice is grand larceny. All this was flashing through my mind while I was thanking him. “I am glad to have such a long forewarning,” I was saying. “Can I be of use to you? You know my machinery is perfect--I can buy anything and in any quantity without starting rumors and drawing the crowd.” “No thank you, Matthew,” was his answer. “I have all of those stocks I wish--at present.”