I asked a man of large observation and undoubted
integrity, how many of the professed stock-gamblers made a _permanent_
fortune. He answered, "Not one! not one of those who made this their
only business." For a little while you may plunge in a round of
seeming prosperity; but your money is put into a bag with holes. You
cannot successfully bury a dishonest dollar. You may put it down into
the very heart of the earth; you may heave rocks upon the top of it;
on top of the rocks you may put banks and all moneyed institutions,
but that dishonest dollar beneath will begin to heave and toss and
upturn itself, and keep on until it comes to the resurrection of
damnation.
Then this stock-gambling life is wretchedly unhappy. It makes the
nerves shake, and the brain hot, and the heart sad, and the life
disquieted.
A man in Philadelphia, who seems to be an exception to the rule--that
such men do not permanently prosper--who has well on towards a million
of dollars, and is nearly seventy years of age, may be seen, every
day, going in and out, eaten up of stocks, torn in an inquisition of
stocks, rode by a nightmare of stocks; and, with the earnestness of a
drowning man, he rushes into a broker's shop, crying out: "Did you get
me those shares?" In such an anxious, exciting life there are griefs,
disappointments, anguish, but there is no happiness.
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