THE CALL OF THE STREET 335 



opened in Fifth Avenue and orders poured in. 

 Transactions increased until they were many 

 thousand shares a day and yet the business was 

 precarious. Margins were smaller in those days 

 and brokers were more imprudent, or less hard- 

 hearted, according to one's angle of view, and 

 while profits rolled up, bad debts accumulated, 

 through carrying customers beyond their mar- 

 gins, debts that footed up several hundred thou- 

 sand dollars in a few years. There were other 

 losses, fairly ascribable to the "easy come, easy 

 go" rule that seems to obtain in money matters. 

 To use a word that I dislike, I undertook to 

 "finance" the building of the Washington City 

 and Point Lookout Railroad. S. T. Suit, an old 

 friend of mine, was the enthusiastic projector of 

 the line, but it chanced that one Smoot, a rival of 

 Suit, had a similar project. While we were 

 grading and bridging and laying ties toward the 

 Point Lookout end of the Washington City and 

 Point Lookout road, Smoot was doing the same 

 near the Washington end of the Southern Mary- 

 land. Later the rival roads were laying parallel 



