"To indulge _hopes_ is bad," thought I, "but not to indulge _a_ hope, when one has only it between him and the pit." And I proceeded to plan on the not unwarranted assumption that my coal hope was a present reality. Indeed, what alternative had I? To put it among the future's uncertainties was to put myself among the utterly ruined.

Using as collateral the Coal stocks I had bought outright, I borrowed more money, and with it went still deeper into the Coal venture. The morality of these and many of my other doings in those days will no doubt be severely condemned. By no one more severely than by myself-now that the necessities which then compelled me have passed.