I can fancy few
pieces of good fortune greater than this as happening to any man,
provided, of course, that he is not damaged irretrievably.
So strongly do I feel on this subject that if I had my way I would have a
speculation master attached to every school. The boys would be
encouraged to read the _Money Market Review_, the _Railway News_, and all
the best financial papers, and should establish a stock exchange amongst
themselves in which pence should stand as pounds. Then let them see how
this making haste to get rich moneys out in actual practice. There might
be a prize awarded by the head-master to the most prudent dealer, and the
boys who lost their money time after time should be dismissed. Of course
if any boy proved to have a genius for speculation and made money--well
and good, let him speculate by all means.
If Universities were not the worst teachers in the world I should like to
see professorships of speculation established at Oxford and Cambridge.
When I reflect, however, that the only things worth doing which Oxford
and Cambridge can do well are cooking, cricket, rowing and games, of
which there is no professorship, I fear that the establishment of a
professorial chair would end in teaching young men neither how to
speculate, nor how not to speculate, but would simply turn them out as
bad speculators.
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