tu'n me off for not gwine to yo' doctah?' 'No, James,' says I. 'I'd turn you off for not having any sense!' I believe he did go to you, doctor, and I'm much obliged. Of course you'll send the bill to me. I'm not like some people that think anything's good enough for a nigger--I want the poor devils that work for me to have the best that's going. When a man's brought up on a Virginia plantation with three or four hundred of 'em around, and knows he owns 'em all, and is responsible in a way to his Maker for every one of those black souls--why, sir, you can't get over the feeling all at once. Here, you, George, Sam, one of you bring another bottle of that twelve-year-old Bourbon and a syphon of soda. I won't have any whisky in the house, sir, under seven years old, and preferably ten--preferably ten or twelve. It comes a few dollars higher a bottle, but when you're getting a thing, you might as well get it good, and if whisky's not properly aged it's raw stuff, firewater, worst thing in the world for the stomach. My wife sometimes accuses me of extravagance in the table, but I always say: 'Well, Miranda, we've got to _live_, haven't we?' As long as Phosphate preferred keeps soaring skywards, and dividends keep rolling in without my having to do a lick of work to get 'em, _I_ don't see that we're living too high. We keep within bounds, I guess. Within bounds. I don't intend to spend all my income just because my principal is invested in something as solid as a rock. By George, sir, I always save up a little wad every year--I can do it without straining myself, and manage to scratch along in tolerable comfort besides--so as to buy whatever Phosphate I can lay hands on, but it's getting scarce, mighty scarce. It's been pretty well gobbled up by the big fellows with money that always get hold of all the good things; only I'm what you might call on the inside, you know, and that gives me a chance to help myself or let in a friend once in a while. But it's no use showing the figures to Madame there, she can't make head or tail of 'em, women never can; she says they give her the headache. Now last week, I let out inadvertently--for I try never to bring my little business anxieties home--that I stood to lose fifteen thousand if Ozark Field went off another point. Gad, sir, she laid awake all night--thought we were going to the poorhouse right off! Couldn't help laughing, though I did feel sorry for her, too. Nothing I could say would reassure her--women are funny. Well, I wasn't just longing to lose my fifteen thousand either, a man don't like to be inconvenienced that way, even temporarily. Fifteen thousand means something to me, though it wouldn't be much to the people I'm thrown with all the time. I tell you, sir, those big capitalists, their money kind of scares you, and yet it gives you a mighty secure feeling to know that they're behind these enterprises. All their millions are made up of thousands after all, and