Part 31

Something in his voice made me say, “You’re right; it isn’t. And now what do you really want me to do for you?”

“You’re quick, aren’t you?” he said. “Do you really want to do something for me?”

“Yes,” I told him, “I do. But whether I will or not depends what it is you have in mind.”

“Take me with you into Mr. Ed Harding’s office and tell him to let me talk to him three minutes by the clock. Then leave me alone with him.”

I shook my head and said, “He is a good friend of mine.”

“He’s fifty years old and a stock broker,” said the book agent.

That was perfectly true, so I took him into Ed’s office. I did not hear anything more from or about that book agent. But one evening some weeks later when I was going uptown I ran across him in a Sixth Avenue L train. He raised his hat very politely and I nodded back. He came over and asked me, “How do you do, Mr. Livingston? And how is Mr. Harding?”

“He’s well. Why do you ask?” I felt he was holding back a story.

“I sold him two thousand dollars’ worth of books that day you took me in to see him.”

“He never said a word to me about it,” I said.

“No; that kind doesn’t talk about it.”

“What kind doesn’t talk?”

“The kind that never makes mistakes on account of its being bad business to make them. That kind always knows what he wants and nobody can tell him different. That is the kind that’s educating my children and keeps my wife in good humor. You did me a good turn, Mr. Livingston. I expected it when I gave up the two hundred dollars you were so anxious to present to me.”

“And if Mr. Harding hadn’t given you an order?”

“Oh, but I knew he would. I had found out what kind of man he was. He was a cinch.”

“Yes. But if he hadn’t bought any books?” I persisted.

“I’d have come back to you and sold you something. Good day, Mr. Livingston. I am going to see the mayor.” And he got up as we pulled up at Park Place.

“I hope you sell him ten sets,” I said. His Honor was a Tammany man.

“I’m a Republican, too,” he said, and went out, not hastily, but leisurely, confident that the train would wait. And it did.

I have told you this story in such detail because it concerned a remarkable man who made me buy what I did not wish to buy. He was the first man who did that to me. There never should have been a second, but there was. You can never bank on there being but one remarkable salesman in the world or on complete immunization from the influence of personality.

When Percy Thomas left my office, after I had pleasantly but definitely declined to enter into a working alliance with him, I would have sworn that our business paths would never cross. I was not sure I’d ever see him again. But on the very next day he wrote me a letter thanking me for my offers of help and inviting me to come and see him. I answered that I would. He wrote again. I called.

I got to see a great deal of him. It was always a pleasure for me to listen to him, he knew so much and he expressed his knowledge so interestingly. I think he is the most magnetic man I ever met.

We talked of many things, for he is a widely read man with an amazing grasp of many subjects and a remarkable gift for interesting generalization. The wisdom of his speech is impressive; and as for plausibility, he hasn’t an equal. I have heard many people accuse Percy Thomas of many things, including insincerity, but I sometimes wonder if his remarkable plausibility does not come from the fact that he first convinces himself so thoroughly as to acquire thereby a greatly increased power to convince others.

Of course we talked about market matters at great length. I was not bullish on cotton, but he was. I could not see the bull side at all, but he did. He brought up so many facts and figures that I ought to have been overwhelmed, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t disprove them because I could not deny their authenticity, but they did not shake my belief in what I read for myself. But he kept at it until I no longer felt sure of my own information as gathered from the trade papers and the dailies. That meant I couldn’t set the market with my own eyes. A man cannot be convinced against his own convictions, but he can be talked into a state of uncertainty and indecision, which is even worse, for that means that he cannot trade with confidence and comfort.

I cannot say that I got all mixed up, exactly, but I lost my poise; or rather, I ceased to do my own thinking. I cannot give you in detail the various steps by which I reached the state of mind that was to prove so costly to me. I think it was his assurances of the accuracy of his figures, which were exclusively his, and the undependability of mine, which were not exclusively mine, but public property. He harped on the utter reliability, as proved time and again, of all his ten thousand correspondents throughout the South. In the end I came to read conditions as he himself read them--because we were both reading from the same page of the same book, held by him before my eyes. He has a logical mind. Once I accepted his facts it was a cinch that my own conclusions, derived from his facts, would agree with his own.

When he began his talks with me about the cotton situation I not only was bearish but I was short of the market. Gradually, as I began to accept his facts and figures, I began to fear I had been basing my previous position on misinformation. Of course I could not feel that way and not cover. And once I had covered because Thomas made me think I was wrong, I simply had to go long. It is the way my mind works. You know, I have done nothing in my life but trade in stocks and commodities. I naturally think that if it is wrong to be bearish it must be right to be a bull. And if it is right to be a bull it is imperative to buy. As my old Palm Beach friend said Pat Hearne used to say, “You can’t tell till you bet!” I must prove whether I am right on the market or not; and the proofs are to be read only in my brokers’ statements at the end of the month.

I started in to buy cotton and in a jiffy I had my usual line, about sixty thousand bales. It was the most asinine play of my career. Instead of standing or falling by my own observation and deductions I was merely playing another man’s game. It was eminently fitting that my silly plays should not end with that. I not only bought when I had no business to be bullish but I didn’t accumulate my line in accordance with the promptings of experience. I wasn’t trading right. Having listened, I was lost.

The market was not going my way. I am never afraid or impatient when I am sure of my position. But the market didn’t act the way it should have acted had Thomas been right. Having taken the first wrong step I took the second and the third, and of course it muddled me all up. I allowed myself to be persuaded not only into not taking my loss but into holding up the market. That is a style of play foreign to my nature and contrary to my trading principles and theories. Even as a boy in the bucket shops I had known better. But I was not myself. I was another man--a Thomasized person.