of the stock, twenty thousand shares of which they would distribute among their customers at the par value of one dollar per share. I called on the president of the grocery company, who said his firm thought so well of the prospect that they had bought twenty thousand shares as a speculative investment, and a like amount to distribute among their customers. He represented that although the shares were easily worth $5 each he considered it good advertising for his company to sell them at par, $1; and with a view to extending the benefits as widely as possible he preferred to dispose of the stock in small lots. He cheerfully gave me the names and addresses of the directors of the new mining company and suggested that, if interested, I might write to them. One was a physician of good repute, another was general auditor of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Co., another was a western lawyer of prominence, and so on. I wrote to each of these three, telling them of my interest in the matter, also asking for a candid expression of their opinions about the property. Each of them sent me a personally written reply, substantially corroborating what information I already had, and saying that they had given their names and their financial support to the company solely upon the recommendation of the mining engineer, whom they knew personally and trusted implicitly. Further than that they knew nothing, but were willing to take a gamble on his judgment. After receiving the second of these three letters I hurried to the office of the grocery and provision company, and to my great disappointment, found that they had only a few hundred shares left. When I told the president that I would take the entire lot at his price, one dollar per share, he shook his head. He said the stock was going rapidly in five, ten, and twenty share lots, and that in justice to their other customers and friends he did not think it fair to let me have more than one hundred shares at most. But finally he yielded to my persuasive argument, that inasmuch as he had only a few hundred shares left he might as well let me have them all and thus finish the whole transaction at once, saving himself the bother of peddling them out piecemeal.