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“The next thing I did was to leave home–‘run away,’ I suppose, is the way to put it. I got to Boston, and went for a cabin-boy on a steamer; travelled down to Panama, and from there to Brazil. At Brazil I got on another ship, and came round to San Francisco. I got into trouble in San Francisco with the chief mate of the Flying Polly, because I tried to teach him his business. One of the first things I learned in life was not to interfere with people who had a trade and didn’t understand it. In San Francisco I got out of the situation. I took to selling newspapers in the streets.

“There wasn’t enough money in it. I went for a cabin-boy again, and travelled to Australia. There, once more, I resigned my position, chiefly because I wouldn’t cheerfully let the Mate bang me about the quarter-deck. I expect I was a precocious youth, and wasn’t exactly the kind for Sunday-school prizes. In Melbourne I began to speculate. I found a ticket for the theatre where an American actor–our biggest actor today–was playing, and I tried to sell it outside the door of the theatre where they were crowding to see him. The man who bought it was the actor himself. He gave me two dollars more than the regular price. I expect he knew from my voice I was an American. Is there anything peculiar about my voice, Miss Raglan?”

She looked at him quickly, smiled, and said in a low tone: “Yes, something peculiar. Please go on.”

“Well, anyway, he said to me: ‘Look here, where did you come from, my boy?’ I told him the State of Maine. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked. ‘Speculating, said I, and seeing things.’ He looked me up and down. ‘How are you getting on?’ ‘Well. I’ve made four dollars to-day,’ I answered. ‘Out of this ticket?’ I expect I grinned. He suddenly caught me by the arm and whisked me inside the theatre–the first time I’d ever been in a theatre in my life. I shall never forget it. He took me around to his dressing-room, stuck me in a corner, and prodded me with his forefinger. ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘I guess I’ll hire you to speculate for me.’ And that’s how I came to get twenty-five dollars a month and my living from a great American actor. When I got back to America–with him–I had two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and good clothes. I started a peanut-stand, and sold papers and books, and became a speculator. I heard two men talking one day at my stall about a railway that was going to run through a certain village, and how they intended to buy up the whole place. I had four hundred and fifty dollars then. I went down to that village, and bought some lots myself. I made four thousand dollars. Then I sold more books, and went on speculating.”

He paused, blew his cigar-smoke slowly from him a moment; then turned with a quick look to Miss Raglan, and smiled as at some incongruous thing. He was wondering what would be the effect of his next words.

“When I was about twenty-two, and had ten thousand dollars, I fell in love. She was a bright-faced, smart girl. Her mother kept a boarding-house in New York; not an up-town boarding-house. She waited on table. I suppose a man can be clever in making money, and knowing how to handle men, and not know much about women. I thought she was worth a good deal more to me than the ten thousand dollars. She didn’t know I had that money. A drummer–that’s a commercial traveller–came along, who had a salary of, maybe, a thousand dollars a year. She jilted me. She made a mistake. That year I made twenty-five thousand dollars. I saw her a couple of years ago. She was keeping a boarding-house too, and her daughter was waiting on table. I’m sorry for that girl: it isn’t any fun being poor. I didn’t take much interest in women after that. I put my surplus affections into stocks and shares, and bulling and bearing… Well, that is the way the thing has gone till now.”