Living too Fast by Oliver Optic

I WAS worth forty-five hundred dollars while Bustumups were quoted at fifty. Every day, while they hung at about this figure, I debated with myself the policy of selling, paying my debt, and investing my surplus in some other concern. Perhaps I should have done so, if I had known of a company in which I could place entire confidence. I missed Cormorin very much, for I needed his advice; and I had come to regard him as an oracle in the matter of coppers.

It looked like madness to sacrifice a stock which might go up to eighty or a hundred, as the Ballyhack had, and though my debt worried me, I could not make up my mind to let it go. If I could put ten thousand dollars in my pocket, my fortune would be made, for with this sum I could operate on a large scale. There was no danger of another examination of my cash at present, and I was secure. But Bustumups did not advance as rapidly as I wished. They hung at about fifty. I was told that parties were investigating the condition of the mine, and that as soon as they reported, the stock would go up as rapidly as Ballyhack had done. I was willing to wait patiently for a week or two, while the stock about held its own. Its trifling fluctuations up and down troubled me, but the parties who worked it convinced me that these were only accidental changes.