And he seemed like a real nice old gentleman, and maybe he had a family to keep. But I would teach him a lesson not to "monkey" with people like me, naturally bright.
But I needn't have felt bad. I did not rob father. Father cleaned me out of all I had in about five seconds.
I went over to the other side of the fairgrounds and sat down. That was all I had to do now--just go, sit down. I couldn't see the mermaid now or get into the grandstand.
Sadly I thought it all over, but I did not get the right answer.
I said the thing every fool does say when he gets bumped and fails to learn the lesson from the bump. I said, "Next time I shall be more careful."
When anybody says that he is due for a return date.
I Bought the Soap Learn? No! Within a month I was on the street a Saturday night when another gentleman drove into town. He stopped on the public square and stood up in his buggy. "Let the prominent citizens gather around me, for I am going to give away dollars."
Immediately all the prominent "suckers" crowded around the buggy.
"Gentlemen, I am introducing this new medicinal soap that cures all diseases humanity is heir to. Now just to introduce and advertise, I am putting these cakes of Wonder Soap in my hat. You see I am wrapping a ten-dollar bill around one cake and throwing it into the hat. Now who will give me five dollars for the privilege of taking a cake of this wonderful soap from my hat--any cake you want, gentlemen!"
And right on top of the pile was the cake with the ten wrapped around it! I jumped over the rest to shove my five (two weeks' farm work) in his hands and grab that bill cake. But the bill disappeared. I never knew where it went. The man whipped up his horse and also disappeared. I never knew where he went.
My "Fool Drawer"
I grew older and people began to notice that I was naturally bright and therefore good picking. They began to let me in on the ground floor. Did anybody ever let you in on the ground floor? I never could stick. Whenever anybody let me in on the ground floor it seemed like I would always slide on thru and land in the cellar.
I used to have a drawer in my desk I called my "fool drawer." I kept my investments in it. I mean, the investments I did not have to lock up. You get the pathos of that--the investments nobody wanted to steal. And whenever I would get unduly inflated I would open that drawer and "view the remains."
I had in that drawer the deed to my Oklahoma corner-lots. Those lots were going to double next week. But they did not double I doubled. They still exist on the blueprint and the Oklahoma metropolis on paper is yet a wide place in the road.
I had in that drawer my deed to my rubber plantation. Did you ever hear of a rubber plantation in Central America? That was mine.
I had there my oil propositions. What a difference, I have learned, between an oil proposition and an oil well! The learning has been very expensive.
I used to wonder how I ever could spend my income. I do not wonder now.
I wonder how I will make it.
I had in that drawer my "Everglade" farm. Did you ever hear of the "Everglades"? I have an alligator ranch there. It is below the frost-line, also below the water-line. I will sell it by the gallon.
I had also a bale of mining stock. I had stock in gold mines and silver mines. Nobody knows how much mining stock I have owned.
Nobody could know while I kept that drawer shut. As I looked over my gold and silver mine stock, I often noticed that it was printed in green. I used to wonder why they printed it in green--wonder if they wanted it to harmonize with me! And I would realize I had so much to live for--the dividends. I have been so near the dividends I could smell them. Only one more assessment, then we will cut the melon! I have heard that all my life and never got a piece of the rind.
Getting "Selected"
Why go farther? I am not half done confessing. Each bump only increased my faith that the next ship would be mine. Good, honest, retired ministers would come periodically and sell me stock in some new enterprise that had millions in it--in its prospectus. I would buy because I knew the minister was honest and believed in it. He was selling it on his reputation. Favorite dodge of the promoter to get the ministers to sell his shares.
I was also greatly interested in companies where I put in one dollar and got back a dollar or two of bonds and a dollar or two of stock. That was doubling and trebling my money over night. An old banker once said to me, "Why don't you invest in something that will pay you five or six per cent. and get it?"
I pitied his lack of vision. Bankers were such "tightwads." They had no imagination! Nothing interested me that did not offer fifty or a hundred per cent.--then. Give me the five per cent. now!
By the time I was thirty-four I was a rich man in worthless paper.
It would have been better for me if I had thrown about all my savings into the bottom of the sea.
Then I got a confidential letter from a friend of our family I had never met. His name was Thomas A. Cleage, and he was in the Rialto Building, St. Louis, Missouri. He wrote me in extreme confidence, "You have been selected."
Were you ever selected? If you were, then you know the thrill that rent my manly bosom as I read that letter from this man who said he was a friend of our family. "You have been selected because you are a prominent citizen and have a large influence in your community.
You are a natural leader and everybody looks up to you."
He knew me! He was the only man who did know me. So I took the cork clear under.
"Because of your tremendous influence you have been selected to go in with us in the inner circle and get a thousand per cent. dividends."
Did you get that? I hope you did. I did not! But I took a night train for St. Louis. I was afraid somebody might beat me there if I waited till next day. I sat up all night in a day coach to save money for Tom, the friend of our family. But I see now I need not have hurried so. They would have waited a month with the sheep-shears ready. Lambie, lambie, lambie, come to St. Louis!