Self-made man

“ The manager looked him over attentively and seemed to be pleased with his looks.
“Well, Jack,” said Mr. Bishop, “Mr. Atherton has spoken to me about you. You seem to be a smart boy, and that is what we want here. You appear to have acquired something of a reputation for nerve and cool-headedness for one so young. You have made good friends for yourself by your courageous act of yesterday, which, I see, is reported in the morning papers. It remains for you now to justify the excellent opinion they have formed of you. ”

“ Hazard shook her head.
“Poor Jack! What will he say when we tell him?” said Annie. “It will be such a shock to him. He is so hopeful. He told me only this morning that as long as we had next month’s rent in hand the future didn’t worry him. He’d see we got along somehow. Isn’t he just the best and dearest brother in the world?”
“I dread the agent’s visit, for he will surely be here to-day. He is always so prompt. What shall I say to him?” ”

“ What am I paying you for?”
“Hello, Ed! What brought you around?”
“My feet. Did you think it was an automobile?”
“Isn’t he funny?” said Millie.
“You must excuse him, Millie; he isn’t responsible at all times.”
“I s’pose you think that’s amusing,” growled Ed.
“Say, Ed, I want to see you a moment,” said Jack, walking over to a window.
“Well, look at me; I’m on exhibition for the time being,” snickered Potter.
“Oh, rats! Come over here. I want to talk to you. Got any money you want to invest?” he asked as Ed approached.
“Sure—seven cents.”
“Stop your fooling. Got ten dollars? ”

“ You’ve no idea of the money engaged in productive industry, money earned by hard years of labor and economy, money held in trust for widows and orphans, money stolen from banks and corporations, money abstracted by clerks and office boys, is carried into Wall Street, in the vain hope of acquiring a sudden fortune, and there remains. ”

“ I was thinking of buying a few shares myself on margin.”
“Well, I guess Warren will let you have what he has at sixty-two, if you would like to buy it outright. It’ll cost you about three hundred and ten thousand dollars cash,” said Mr. Atherton, with an amused smile.
“I don’t think my bank account would stand for that,” answered Jack, with a grin.
“Seriously, Jack,” said his boss, “I wouldn’t advise you to buy any stock on margins. I don’t want you to catch the fever. It’s dangerous. ”

“ If you can get these shares for fifty dollars and can afford to invest that amount on a one-hundred-to-one shot, as I should call it, why, it’s better than many investments I know of.”
“Thank you, sir. They belong to that old man yonder, who has been ruined on the market. He was rich once, but he caught the Street fever, and Hartz, on Exchange Place, has been his doctor—I should say, broker,” grinned the boy. ”

“ They credit it on my account at twenty-two, and it is now thirty, and they steal a profit to themselves of over eight hundred dollars, and cast me out a beggar. It closed at twenty-two and three-eighths, and opened at twenty-two and five-eighths. It is infamous! But what can I do? I am ruined. I am helpless. I am utterly at the mercy of this man. He is rich with the money he has taken from fools like me, and yet he will not help me.”
Jack listened to his ravings in silent pity and held the door open for him to totter out. ”

“ Jack was very much surprised, not expecting anything of the kind, and for the first time in his life he was at a loss how to suitably express himself.
The very first thing Jack did next morning when he reached the office was to look over the “Lost and Found” column in the “Herald,” but he failed to find anything having reference to the money he had found.
“Hello!” exclaimed Frank Simpson, who sat beside him, reading the ‘World.’ “Say, this is pretty tough!”
“What’s tough?” asked Jack, without looking up.
“Why, here’s a story about a woman who lost a big wad of money yesterday.” ”

“ I should think he’d do something for an old customer who had been so unfortunate.”
“Hartz isn’t built that way,” replied Oliver Bird.
“You don’t think Hartz took an unfair advantage of him right along, do you?” asked Jack.
“Now you’re treading on delicate ground, young man. But I think I can answer your question this way: I dare say he had as much show to win out at Hartz’s as at any other broker’s. No speculator who monkeys with the stock market has an even show for his money. It isn’t the broker’s fault; it’s the game he’s up against. The outside public make no money out of the brokers ”

“ Hartz had something else to do than thinking about that measley little transaction.”
“But I heard him tell the man he had closed him out at twenty-two,” persisted Jack.
“Well,” said the clerk, with a wink, “there are more ways than one of killing a cat. The boss saw a chance of getting rid of an undesirable customer when he noted that the stock had touched twenty-two, though the last quotation, a few minutes later, was twenty-four and three-eighths. ”

“ And Jack, glad to get rid of the attentions of the crowd, followed his guide to the warm regions beneath the engine-room.
“Hello!” exclaimed a grimy-faced stoker. “Been overboard, eh?”
“That’s what he has,” said the deck hand. “Done what’ll put his name in the papers, Jim. Jumped overboard after a little gal that fell in from the rail where she was sitting when that barge run us afoul.”
“Is that so?” cried Jim. “Tip us your flipper, lad; you’ve got the real thing in you, all right.” ”

“ Twice Jack had received a hint from Mr. Bird—the last a strong one. He considered them and then decided to hold on a while longer.
“Say, Jack, what’s the matter with you; you’re as nervous as an old woman,” said Ed as they were on their way home on the afternoon of the day the stock touched 76.
“Am I?” returned the lad, with a queer sort of laugh. “I didn’t notice it.”
“Sure you are. What’s up? You aren’t thinking of running off with Millie Price and getting married, are you?” jokingly. ”

“ You have some money in bank now—enough to buy a nice little place. I am sure it would be much more comfortable to live in our own house and much healthier than to continue here, where the neighborhood is so crowded. Annie and I were talking the matter over before you came in. She’d like to go with you, and I am sure the exercise and fresh air would be good for her.”
“All right, mother,” agreed Jack. “We’ll take Ed along, too.”
“Will you?” said his sister, brightening up.
“Sure. He’ll be glad to go, sis. He thinks there isn’t another girl who can hold a candle to you.” ”

“ Next day Jack was coming along New Street about lunch hour, when he ran into Hartz, the Exchange Place broker.
Hartz was a little, wiry man, with snappy black eyes, and was about as shrewd as you find them down in the financial district.
Ever since the day Jack saved Oliver Bird from taking his own life in the office of the broker, Hartz had taken more or less notice of the boy, which was something unusual for him to do.
As we have already seen, he gave Ed Potter a job entirely on Jack’s recommendation.
“Hello, young man! Who are you running into?” ”

“ You fully deserve your good fortune. That was a lucky deal you made with the old man.”
“Yes, sir. And if I can find him he shall not want for a dollar as long as he lives,” said the boy, earnestly.
“He’s a fine lad,” remarked Mr. Warren as the young messenger left the private office.
“Millie,” said Jack, stepping up to her, “I want you to congratulate me on my lucky deal.”
“I have just sold those five thousand shares of Gopher Gold Mining Company stock to Mr. Warren.” ”

“ The fact that he had a revolver shows that he went to Hartz in a desperate frame of mind. It seems to me, young man,” added Mr. Bishop, with a smile, “that you are determined to keep your name before the public. If you are not interviewed by a reporter inside of thirty minutes I shall be much surprised.”
“Say, Jack, you’re a wonder!” exclaimed Frank Simpson, after the new messenger had narrated to him the affair at Hartz’s office. “I’ve just been reading the account in the ‘Herald’ of how you saved the boss’s niece, Fanny, from drowning in the East River. All the clerks are talking about you. ”

“ Ed worked in a Vandewater Street printing house, and he and Jack always walked down town from the neighborhood of Grand Street together of a morning.
“Haven’t caught on yet, have you, Jack?” inquired Potter.
“No; but I’ve a dozen places here I’ve cut out of the ‘World’ that I’m going to look up.”
“Hope you’ll connect with one. If you knew anything about typesticking I could put you on to a job. There’s a shop on Nassau Street wants a boy to pull proofs, hold copy, and fill in at the case on plain reprint. If you were only up in the business you could get seven or eight dollars a week.” ”

“ He asked me if I had any money. I told him I had fifteen dollars. Then he offered to put me next to something that beat stocks all hollow. I knew what he meant, and fought shy. But he talked me into going around to a certain pool-room with him, just to see how the thing was worked.”
“You needn’t go any further, Ed,” said Jack. “I know what you’re going to say. Denny got you to wager your fifteen dollars on some horse before you left. Isn’t that it?”
“Yes; I put the whole thing on Custard Pie, a long shot, one hundred to one. Denny said he had a tip that the nag was slated to win next day. ”

“ Whereupon Jack related his exciting experiences of the morning and how it had led to his getting the position of messenger in Mr. Atherton’s office.
“Why,” exclaimed his sister, excitedly, “you’ll have your name in the papers, and everybody will be calling you a hero.”
“I hope they won’t lose any sleep over the matter; I know I sha’n’t.”
“Well, the little girl would have been drowned only for you.”
“I guess she would,” admitted Jack. “I didn’t expect to get anything for what I did; but all the same, I’m not kicking because I was presented with a good job. We need the money, sis.” ”

“ Hazard, mournfully.
“Maggie lost her position two weeks ago because there was some trouble about her accounts,” said Annie, slowly, as though an unpleasant suspicion was forcing itself in her mind.
The McFadden girl, who was somewhat airy and pert in her manners, was conspicuous in the neighborhood for the number and variety of her gowns and hats, and the gossips wondered where she got the money to pay for them all. ”

“ I haven’t a cent to pay my room rent or get something to eat,” wailed the old man.
“Well, here’s a half a dollar for you; that’ll see you through till to-morrow.”
“You’re very kind. I’m afraid I sha’n’t live long. I’d like to sell you this stock cheap. There’s five thousand shares, and you can have it for a hundred dollars, or even fifty, if you haven’t so much as that. Some day it will be valuable. It’s selling for ten cents a share to-day; that makes the shares worth five hundred dollars.”
“I’m afraid I can’t buy them,” said Jack, shaking his head.
“It’s a pity,” mumbled Tuggs. ”

“ I haven’t any mash unless it’s yourself,” grinned Jack.
“Haven’t you got a cheek!” laughed the stenographer, blushing. “Well, then, I’ll tell you who it was. It was Fanny Bruce, and she looked just too cute for anything.”
“I’d liked to have seen her, too,” said Jack.
“She’s the loveliest little girl, I think, I ever saw,” said Millie, enthusiastically.
“Hello!” exclaimed Ed Potter, walking in. “What are you two chinning about? Why don’t you get busy? ”

“ I mean to walk over the bridge.”
“You’ll have to leave the house earlier.”
“I guess I will, and get home later; but when a fellow is looking for work, things don’t always come his way. However, I mean to try for all my New York ads first.”
“Oh, that Brooklyn place will be gone long before you cover all these other jobs. It won’t be worth while bothering about it.”
“I’m not letting anything get by me.”
Which showed that Jack Hazard was a persevering boy: and perseverance is one of the greatest factors of success through life. ”

“ That night Jack got three dollars from his friend Ed, and at the same time told him he had got a situation in Wall Street.
Potter was delighted to hear that his chum had secured such a fine job.
“It’s a great sight better than printing,” he remarked.
“I hear the men in our office every day say the trade is going to the dogs on account of the machines.”
“How is that?” asked Jack.
“Well, you see, an operator on a Mergenthaler can stack up forty thousand ems per day and upward, according to the copy and his expertness, while a hand compositor is lucky to average eight thousand. ”