82 WALL STREET AND THE WILDS 



decline and selling the same amount at every 

 eighth advance. 



All day I stood there, buying and selling, buy- 

 ing and selling, with a stubby pencil in my right 

 hand and in my left a note-book, on the one and 

 other side of which I dashed down prices with 

 hieroglyphs for names as I nodded to the right 

 and the left my acceptance of bids and offers. 

 One minute might pass without a transaction and 

 in the next a score be crowded. Always my bid 

 and offer were on the floor a quarter per cent 

 apart. Thus if I had just bought five thousand 

 at a premium of fifty and one-eighth per cent, I 

 would bid fifty for five more, and offer to sell five 

 at fifty and one quarter. Every purchase was 

 balanced, sooner or later, by a sale of the same 

 amount at an advance of an eighth per cent. 

 Thus if I made one purchase and sale in each 

 minute of a day's session my profit for that day 

 would be $1,875. Often this profit was multi- 

 plied, for in times of much excitement the price 

 would skip the fractions and jump one per cent 

 at a leap, in which case instead of selling five 



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