One of our sales for future delivery was a lot of two hundred
thousand pounds. After 'Change it was, with the other transactions,
reported to the firm. When, the following morning, the contract
was sent to the buyer, he returned it, claiming it was a mistake
and that he had not made the purchase. Having reported the sale
the day previous and the market now being a little lower, we did
not like to explain the matter to our principal and let it stand
as a purchase of our own.

Before the time for delivery matured, we resold at a profit of
exactly ten thousand dollars.

By midsummer we had accumulated a large sum of money. In addition
to this capital of our own, our resources through our credit with
banking connections made it easy for us to accept a proposition
from a certain firm to finance for it on very liberal terms an
operation which the firm had undertaken. This was in a commodity
of which we were well informed though not doing business in it.

The operation proved a failure and in October the firm suspended.

We were carrying an enormous quantity of the stuff, and when
liquidation was completed had made a loss of sixty-eight thousand
dollars, of which we never recovered a single dollar.

At the end of the year, after charging off all the losses, amounting
to about one hundred thousand dollars, I had made a net profit of
one hundred and twenty thousand dollars.