He was shown that this would mean smaller profits; but the boy had in mind the loss of his father's fortune, brought about largely by "stock margins," and he did not intend to follow that example.

So, prudently, under the brokerage of his Sunday-school teacher, and guided by the tips of no less a man than the controlling factor of stock-market finance, Edward Bok took his first plunge in Wall Street! Of course the boy's buying and selling tallied precisely with the rise and fall of Western Union stock.

It could scarcely have been otherwise.

Jay Gould had the cards all in his hands; and as he bought and sold, so Edward bought and sold.

The trouble was, the combination did not end there, as Edward might have foreseen had he been older and thus wiser.