purchase and expressing fully our opinion of the market.

The following morning I sat at my desk, and opening a cable read,
"Market advanced through operations of a few weak French speculators."
Then followed a selling limit. I laid the cable down and took up
the Boston telegram offering the hundred tons.

With the exception of my small interest in that purchase in January,
1880, I had refrained from speculation, and now I was considering
whether or not I should buy those hundred tons. The option had
nearly expired and action must be prompt. Calling a stenographer
I dictated a telegram, "We accept"--and the deed was done.

On arrival of the vessel I sold out at a profit of twenty thousand
dollars.

My profits for the year were sixty-one thousand dollars.

On February fourteenth, as a valentine, there came to "Redstone" our
fourth daughter and the family circle was complete. With two sons
and four daughters, the ban of "race suicide," theory of President
Roosevelt, rests not on us.




CHAPTER XXIII

"A FEW WEAK FRENCH SPECULATORS"