already connect it with both Portsmouth and Portland, but it was not a
very direct connection at present. Yet in spite of this, the population
had increased 23 and seven-tenths per cent in five years, and now an
electric railway was in construction that would double the population in
the next five years. This was less than what had happened to other
neighbouring resorts under identical conditions; yet with things as they
now were, the company was earning two per cent on its stock, which was
being put into improvements. The stock was selling at 30, and if a
dividend was paid next year, it would go to par. But Mr. Beverly did not
counsel buying the stock. 'I did not let mother have any,' he said,
'though I took some myself. But the bonds are different. You're getting
the last that will be sold at par. In three days they will be placed
before the public at 102 1/2 and interest.'"

"I was well pleased when I left Mr. Beverly's office. In a few days I was
still more pleased to learn that I could sell my Petunia sixes for 104 if
so wished. But I did not wish it; and Mr. Beverly told me that he should
not sell his mother's unless they went to 110. 'In that case,' said he,
'it might be worth while to capitalise her premium.'"

"I liked the idea of capitalising one's premium. If you had fifty bonds
that cost you par, and sold them at 110, you would then buy at par
fifty-five bonds of some other rising kind, and go on doing this until--I
named no limit for this process; but my delighted mind saw visions of
eighty and a hundred thousand a year--comfort at least, if not affluence
in New York--and I explained to Ethel what the phrase capitalising one's
premium meant. I showed her the Petunias, too, and we read what it said
on the coupons aloud together. Ethel was at first not quite satisfied
with the arrangement of the coupons. 'Thirty dollars on January first,
and thirty on July first,' she said. That seems a long while to wait for