"I do not understand that," said the man in the dull handkerchief. "I made ten thousand clear in one day by the Birmingham, which, after all, is the best line going."
"You might have made a hundred thousand if it had been the worst," answered the man of rounds. "You say you don't understand it. I will explain--I am always ready to explain. On uncertain lines, very uncertain indeed, there is always the most fluctuation. Now the business of a speculator is to take advantage of fluctuations. You will say it is not safe, perhaps; but that is a mistake. The speculation in the bad-line business can be reduced to a mathematical certainty, as I proved to the worthy gentleman with whom I have been a doing a little business this morning, Mr. Tracy, of Northferry. He preferred good lines, and thought them both safer and more right and proper, and all that sort of thing. So I only dealt with the safeness; for, after all, that is the question with a speculator; and I showed him that the very worst lines have their up at some time; it may not be very great, but the difference between it and the down is greater always than in good lines. 'Suppose, my dear Sir,' I said, 'that the fifty-pound share is at first at ninety per cent. discount; then is the time to buy. You never suppose that it will rise to par; but when the surveying is all done, the notices are served, the forms all complied with, and after a tremendous bustle--always make a tremendous bustle, it tells on the market--and, after a tremendous bustle, you have got your bill into the Board of Trade, the share is sure to go up till it sticks at seventy or seventy-five per cent, discount. Then sell as fast as possible, and you gain more than cent. per cent. upon your outlay.' There is no scheme so bad upon the face of the earth that it cannot be raised full ten per cent. with a little trouble. Let a man start a line to the moon, and if I do not bring it up ten per cent. from the first quotations, my name is not Scriptolemus Bond."
"You must have made a good thing of it, Mr. Bond, I suppose," said the man in the handkerchief.
"Pretty well, pretty well!" answered the other with a shrewd wink of the eye; "not quite up to Hudson yet; but I shall soon be a head of him, for he does nothing but dabble with paltry good lines. I have enough in this box to make three men's fortunes;" and he rapped the tin case by his side.