Stand off from all _doubtful_ enterprises! Resolve that if, in a lawful way, you cannot earn a living, then you will die an honest man, and be buried in an honest sepulchre.
There are two or three reasons why you should have nothing to do with such operations. Mentioning the lowest motive first, it will desolate you financially. I asked a man of large observation and undoubted integrity, how many of the professed stock-gamblers made a _permanent_ fortune. He answered, "Not one! not one of those who made this their only business." For a little while you may plunge in a round of seeming prosperity; but your money is put into a bag with holes. You cannot successfully bury a dishonest dollar. You may put it down into the very heart of the earth; you may heave rocks upon the top of it; on top of the rocks you may put banks and all moneyed institutions, but that dishonest dollar beneath will begin to heave and toss and upturn itself, and keep on until it comes to the resurrection of damnation.
Then this stock-gambling life is wretchedly unhappy. It makes the nerves shake, and the brain hot, and the heart sad, and the life disquieted.
A man in Philadelphia, who seems to be an exception to the rule--that such men do not permanently prosper--who has well on towards a million of dollars, and is nearly seventy years of age, may be seen, every day, going in and out, eaten up of stocks, torn in an inquisition of stocks, rode by a nightmare of stocks; and, with the earnestness of a drowning man, he rushes into a broker's shop, crying out: "Did you get me those shares?" In such an anxious, exciting life there are griefs, disappointments, anguish, but there is no happiness.
Worse than all, it destroys the soul. The day must come when the worthless scrip will fall out of the clutches of the stock-gambler. Satan will play upon him the "cornering" game which, down on Wall street, he played upon a fellow-operator. Now he would be glad to exchange all his interest in Venango County for one share in the Christian's prospect of heaven. Hopeless, he falls back in his last sickness. His delirium is filled with senseless talk about "percentages" and "commissions" and "buyer, sixty days," and "stocks up," and "stocks down." He thinks that the physician who feels his pulse is trying to steal his "board book." He starts up at midnight, saying: "One thousand shares of Reading at 116-1/2. Take it!" _Falls back dead. No more dividends.... Swindled out of heaven_. STOCKS DOWN!