L300 invested in Blinker’s Submarine Explosives,
    at a loss of 4 per cent....L1200

        Total loss....L2400

This, I need scarcely say, has at present not only eaten up every halfpenny of cover, but a great deal besides; and I am not sure that I shall not have to come down on my clients to make good the balance.  I cannot account for the result, except from the fact that a new clerk read out the wrong tape; and when I telephoned to my West-End Private Inquiry Agent about these very three Stocks, he appears not to have heard me distinctly, and thought I was asking him about Goschens, the old Three-per-Cents., and Bank Stock, about which, of course, he could only report favourably.  It is an awkward mistake, but, as I point out to all my clients, one must not regard the Dealer as infallible.  These things will occur.  However, I am going to be more careful in future; and I may as well announce now, that on Monday next I am about to open a new Syndicate Combination Pool, with a Stock about which I have made the most thorough and exhaustive inquiries, with the result that I am convinced an enormous fortune will be at the command of anyone who will entrust me with a sufficiently large cheque in the shape of cover to enable me to realise it.

For obvious reasons I keep the name of this Stock at present a dead secret.  Suffice it to say, that the operation in question is connected with an old South-American Gold Mine, about to be reworked under the auspices of a new company who have bought it for a mere song.  When I tell my clients that I have got all my information from the Chairman, who took down under his greatcoat a carpet-bag full of crushed quartz carefully mixed with five ounces of gold nuggets, and emptied this out at the bottom of a disused shaft, and then got a Yankee engineer to report the discovery of ore in “lumps as big as your fist,” and state this in the new prospectus, they will at once see what a solid foundation I have for this new venture, which must inevitably fly upwards by leaps and bounds as soon as the shares are placed upon the market.  Of course, when the truth comes out, there will be a reaction, but my clients may trust me to be on the look-out for that, and, after floating with all their investments to the top of the tide, to get out of the concern with enormous profits before the bubble eventually bursts.  It is by a command of information of this kind that I hope to ensure the confidence and merit the support of my friends and patrons.  Remember Monday next, and bear in mind a cheque for three-and-sixpence covers L5000.  The subjoined is from my correspondence:—­

Sir,—­I have as trustee for five orphan nieces to invest for each of them L3 18s. 9d., left them by a deceased maternal cousin.  How ought I to invest this to the greatest advantage with a due regard to security.  What do you say to Goschens?  Or would you recommend Rio Diavolos Galvanics?  These promise a dividend of 70 per cent., and although they have not paid one for some time, are a particularly cheap stock at the present market price, the scrip of the Five per Cent.  Debenture Stock being purchased by a local butterman at seven pounds for a halfpenny.  A Spanish Nobleman who holds some of this, will let me have it even cheaper.  What would you advise me to do?  Yours, &c.  A TRUSTEE IN A FOG.