The man who holds a roaring lion by
the tail could scarcely be worse off than the speculator in these
troublous times. To let go is immediate loss, to hold on for a certain
time might be redemption, could one but know the exact moment in which it
would be wise to let go. But to hold on until the beast grows more and
more furious, and then to let go and be eaten up alive, is what many men
did in that awful crisis.
If Philip Sheldon had accepted his first loss, and been warned by the
first indication that marked the turning of the tide, he would have been
a considerable loser; but he would not accept his loss, and he would not
be warned by that early indication. He had implicit belief in his own
cleverness; and he fancied if every other bark in that tempest-tossed
ocean foundered and sank, his boat might ride triumphantly across the
harbour-bar, secure by virtue of his science and daring as a navigator.
It was not till he had seen a small fortune melt away in the payment of
contango, that he consented to the inevitable. The mistakes of one year
devoured the fruits of nine years' successful enterprise, and the Philip
Sheldon of this present year was no richer than the man who had stood by
Tom Halliday's bedside and waited the advent of the equal foot that knows
no difference between the threshold of kingly palace or pauper refuge.
Not only did he find himself as poor a man as in that hateful stage of
his existence--to remember which was a dull dead pain even to _him_--but
a man infinitely more heavily burdened.
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