With the necessary capital and machinery duly prepared for instant action when a good opportunity occurs, the cool man plants himself in a prominent position from which he can discern at once the small cloud on the horizon which warns of the coming storm. The telegrams in the daily press, as they rise above such hypothetical horizon, are the harmless or otherwise little clouds which our speculator will scan, making a note of any which may seem to deserve attention for any special reason, on account of the effect they may be calculated to have upon the public mind. Well-conducted journals only admit into their columns telegrams from trusted correspondents, or from the public companies who supply them, and whose interest it is to adopt every precaution against imposition. An important telegram in a high class journal standing on its merits will always produce more or less effect, and it is of much consequence, but in the second rank, in the chain of machinery necessary to insure success for the speculator, that he be posted hourly throughout the day in the telegraphic news which reaches the seat of his operations. Side by side with this telegraphic intelligence which appears in the press, the speculator will receive private telegrams in cipher from his correspondents abroad, and according to his skill and intelligence in reading between the lines of the two, and judging of the probable course of events by their light, will he be able to operate profitably or not. Pure speculation as a business, the sole object of which is to gain money, is, from the point of view of risk, removed far out of the ordinary path in which men labour for profit. Only a small percentage of men desire, even if they thought they possessed the required exceptional qualities, to gain their living in such a way. Most men reason that life is short, and that to spend it always in an atmosphere of excitement, under circumstances which keep up a constant destructive mental strain, is a mode of gaining money that involves too heavy sacrifices. The speculator who deliberately selects that calling must consequently be a man peculiarly constituted. He is generally a man of rather singular habits of thought, who thinks it quite legitimate to start a Juggernaut, and drive it over the crowd, if thereby he can do it profitably. Perfectly legitimate processes of working a market with him, would be considered little better than cheating by the ordinary run of men. He employs systematically all sorts of devices for getting the better of others who are ignorant and less sharp in foreseeing events than he. He does not scruple to lay traps, and drive the public into them, by plying them with fictitious telegrams, if he can get them published, and by forming syndicates to “rig” the markets. He partakes, indeed, a good deal of the nature of the bandit, who prepares the way for forcing concession to his demands by firing a volley into the carriage of the traveller to