Life — February 13, 1908 — page 8: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

af »w that New York has adopted the police dog, will he be an exception to the general rule in his upward progress? Your Wife and You ‘O BUY stocks on a margin is an ordinarily adventurous sport, not without excitement and: pleasure when, during the course of an ordinary life- time, you have earned the money your- self. ‘To lose your money under these circumst is, however, a dull and un- interesting affair. Having earned it your- sclf, there is no special merit in permit- ting it to pass away and if one is of a cheerful disposition, one quickly recovers. This is a common privilege. But to get out of such an occupation a genuine zest, you should first borrow the money from your wif No one, indeed, but your wife, who dwells with you in the secret recesses of your home, knows or realizes for an in- stant what a master of finance you have suddenly become. It is delightful to have her believe in you so implicitly,as you plain to her how, with a double-riveted caution inherited from a vanishing line of ancestors, you have been waiting for months until things had touched “bed rock.” And then, with a loving, trusting smile, as she hands you over the faded old gilt-edged set of bonds that have been in her family for two genera- tions, your eyes almost fill with tears to think how soon it must be when you will pay her—perhaps tenfold, perhaps a hundredfold, for this beautiful confidence. ON THE FORCE Forthwith you enter into intimate re- lations with a broker, a person whom you have herctofore regarded as being a menace to the State, but whom you now come to view as your most intimate friend; indeed, you can scarcely think of him at all without a lump in your throat. You hand him the good old bonds and request him to buy the “sure thing” you have been watching go slowly down for months, and as much of it as he can, Later on, when the peanut crop is threatened, when the Paris Bourse has convulsions, when that hitherto irre- proachable institution, the Bank of Eng- land, begins to go back on its best friends, when there are rumors of war between Patagonia and Crete—when, in fact, cer- tain things happen that the very ablest, astutest, farest-seeing financiers in the whole country (including, of course, your- self) could not possibly have foreseen, and those good old bonds begin to grow dim and misty in your memory, then the real sport begins. You are plunged at once into all the intricacies, all the vicarious complications, of a double life. Filled with secret shame, you are com pelled to pose as a master of money. If you had your own way about it, — you would not be cheerful. You would, indeed, take a certain amount of comfort in not being so. Even this, however, is de- nied you. For it is really neces- sary to be a little more cheerful all the time than you have been, for there is your wife, who thinks you are making money, and there is your distinct pride in having her keep up this fecling. Fortunately, she is a person somewhat uncurious. You congratulate yourself upon the fact that she believes in you so implicitly, and come at last to look upon this as an asset in itself. Thus, in addi- tion to being the ablest financier of mod- ern times, you become also an accom- plished actor. There is another name for this, but you refrain, out of courtesy for yourself, from using it. is new art, indeed, is the bright spot left. The con- sciousness that you have acquired it, without any previous training, is the one thing left to console you. Until one day, out of a clear sky, your ON DUTY comicbooks.com