Since not one of the participants
possessed a bushel of wheat or a dollar's worth of
stock, legitimate business was of course impossible
from the beginning. It was cold-drawn gambling,
without colour or disguise. Just that which is the
impediment and destruction of all genuine commercial
enterprise, just that we were taught with every luxury
of stage effect. Our simulacrum of a market was ruled
by the real markets outside, so that we might
experience the course and vicissitude of prices. We
must keep books, and our ledgers were overhauled at the
month's end by the principal or his assistants. To add
a spice of verisimilitude, "college paper" (like poker
chips) had an actual marketable value. It was bought
for each pupil by anxious parents and guardians at the
rate of one cent for the dollar. The same pupil, when
his education was complete, resold, at the same figure,
so much as was left him to the college; and even in the
midst of his curriculum, a successful operator would
sometimes realise a proportion of his holding, and
stand a supper on the sly in the neighbouring hamlet.
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