The Adolescent

I started from this consideration: I have a hundred roubles. In Petersburg there are so many auctions, sales, small shops at flea markets, and people in need of things, that it’s impossible, once you’ve bought an object for such-and-such a price, not to sell it for a little more. With the album I made a profit of seven roubles, ninety-five kopecks on a capital expenditure of two roubles, five kopecks. This enormous profit was taken without risk: I saw from his eyes that the buyer wouldn’t back out. Naturally, I understand very well that it was mere chance: but those are the kinds of chances I seek, that’s why I decided to live in the street. Well, granted such chances may even be extremely rare; all the same, my main rule will be not to risk anything, and the second—to be sure to earn at least something each day over and above the minimum spent on my subsistence, so that the accumulation doesn’t stop for a single day.

They’ll tell me: these are all dreams, you don’t know the street, and you’ll be cheated from the first step. But I have will and character, and street science is a science like any other, it yields to persistence, attention, and ability. In high school I was among the first right up to the final grade; I was very good at mathematics. Well, as if experience and street science should be extolled to such an idolizing degree as to predict certain failure! The only ones who say it are always those who have never experimented with anything, never started any life, and went on vegetating with everything provided. “If one gets his nose smashed, another will do the same.” No, I won’t get my nose smashed. I have character, and with my attentiveness, I’ll learn everything. Well, is it possible to imagine that with constant persistence, constant keen-sightedness, and constant reflection and calculation, with boundless activity and running around, you will not attain finally to a knowledge of how to earn an extra twenty kopecks a day? Above all, I decided never to aim at the maximum profit, but always to remain calm. Later on, once I’ve already made a thousand or two, I will, of course, inevitably get out of trading and street dealing. Of course, I still know very little about the stock exchange, shares, banking, and all the rest. But, instead of that, I know, like the back of my hand, that in my own time I’ll learn and master all this exchanging and banking like nobody else, and that this study will come quite easily to me, merely because matters will reach that point. Does it take so much intelligence? Is it some kind of wisdom of Solomon? All I need is character; skill, adroitness, knowledge will come by themselves. So long as I don’t stop “wanting.”

Above all, take no risks, and that is precisely possible only with character. Just recently, when I was already in Petersburg, there was a subscription for railway shares; those who managed to subscribe made a lot. For some time the shares were going up. And then suppose, suddenly, somebody who didn’t manage to subscribe, or just turned greedy, seeing me with the shares in my hand, offered to buy them from me, with a premium of so much percent. Why, I’d certainly sell them to him at once. They’d start laughing at me, of course, saying: if you’d waited, you would have made ten times more. Right, sirs, but my premium is more certain, since it’s already in my pocket, while yours is still flying around. They’ll say you can’t make much that way; excuse me, but there’s your mistake, the mistake of all these Kokorevs, Polyakovs, Gubonins.²⁴ Know the truth: constancy and persistence in making money and, above all, in accumulating it, are stronger than momentary profits, even of a hundred percent!