This was my introduction to a New York audience.

Thereafter I spoke now and then.
It was excellent training, for one had to read and study for each appearance.
I had lived long enough in Pittsburgh to acquire the manufacturing, as distinguished from the speculative, spirit.

My knowledge of affairs, derived from my position as telegraph operator, had enabled me to know the few Pittsburgh men or firms which then had dealings upon the New York Stock Exchange, and I watched their careers with deep interest.
To me their operations seemed simply a species of gambling.

I did not then know that the credit of all these men or firms was seriously impaired by the knowledge (which it is almost impossible to conceal) that they were given to speculation.

But the firms were then so few that I could have counted them on the fingers of one hand.