Example 2:  There was a terrible accident on another railway, and part of the line broken up.  Vast repairs needed.  Shares fell twenty per cent.

“Out of proportion,” said Hope.  “The sum for repairs will not deduct from the dividends one-tenth of the annual sum represented by the fall, and, in three months, fear of another such disaster will not keep a single man, woman, child, bullock, pig, or coal truck off that line.  Put the pot on.”

Bartley put the pot on, and made fifteen per cent.

Hope said to Bartley: 

“When an English speculator sends his money abroad at all, he goes wild altogether.  He rushes at obscure transactions, and lends to Peru, or Guatemala, or Tierra del Fuego, or some shaky place he knows nothing about.  The insular maniac overlooks the continent of Europe, instead of studying it, and seeking what countries there are safe and others risky.  Now, why overlook Prussia?  It is a country much better governed than England, especially as regards great public enterprises and monopolies.  For instance, the directors of a Prussian railway can not swindle the shareholders by false accounts, and passing off loans for dividends.  Against the frauds of directors, the English shareholder has only a sham security.  He is invited to leave his home, and come two hundred miles to the directors’ home, and vote in person.  He doesn’t do it.  Why should he?  In Prussia the Government protects the shareholder, and inspects the accounts severely.  So much for the superior system of that country.  Now, take a map.  Here is Hamburg, the great port of the Continent, and Berlin, the great Continental centre; and there is one railway only between the two.  What English railway can compare with this?  The shares are at 150.  But they must go to 300 in time unless the Prussian Government allows another railway, and that is not likely, and, if so, you will have two years to back out.  This is the best permanent investment of its class that offers on the face of the globe.”

Bartley invested timidly, but held for years, and the shares went up over 300 before he sold.

“Do not let your mind live in an island if your body does,” was a favorite saying of William Hope; and we recommend it impartially to Britons and Bornese.

On one of Hope’s visits Bartley complained he had nothing to do.  “I can sit here and speculate.  I want to be in something myself; I think I will take a farm just to occupy me and amuse me.”

“It will not amuse you unless you make money by it,” suggested Hope.

“And nobody can do that nowadays.  Farms don’t pay.”

“Ploughing and sowing don’t pay, but brains and money pay wherever found together.”

“What, on a farm?”