It took nine tailors (1948)

CAME THE REVOLUTION 195 National City Bank and a big profit on it; one of the French brokers advised me to sell. I went to a banker friend of mine and asked his opinion. He said he thought the stock would go to $1,000 a share. It was then selling at about $500. But all the ghosts of my French forebears were whispering over my shoulder, "Get out, Adolphe. The world is going crazy. Get out before it is too late." Then I began to have stomach-aches. I suffered so much that I finally went to the American Hospital in Neuilly for an examination. "I may have to perform a gastroenterostomy," the doctor said. I was frightened stiff. I sent a cablegram to my brother Henry in New York telling him to sell every share of stock I owned. I didn't want to go on that operating table with my money tied up in the stock market. Next day a cable arrived from Henry, a very long cable saying that he absolutely would not sell. He had talked to all the smart fellows and they had said that the market was going much higher. But I was in France thinking like a Frenchman and he was in New York listening to a bunch of optimists. I cabled back: sell EVERYTHING OR I WILL HOLD YOU PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE. Henry sold. Then I called the doctor in and asked him how much the operation was going to cost me. "Is one hundred dollars satisfactory?" he inquired. "One hundred dollars!" I shouted. "Don't give me any hundred-dollar operation. I want the best. Give me a five-hundreddollar operation!" In October I was still recuperating, taking short walks to the brokerage office, where I would sit and watch the prices go up and wonder whether I had been wrong to sell. Then came October 29. Ill never forget it. I was in the board room of Hurst, Lilienthal and Company when stocks were dropping ten, twenty, and fifty points at a crack. I have never seen such a madhouse. Paper millionaires who had suddenly become