The Tipster 1901, From "Wall Street Stories" — Edition Insights

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In Category - Historical Psychological Social Fiction

Authors: Lefevre, Edwin, 1871-1943 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2007 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Short stories; New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Wall Street (New York, N.Y.) -- Fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 10,118

Reading time 44 min

Text sections 2

The catalog record for The Tipster 1901, From "Wall Street Stories" — Edition Insights provides practical reading context through 10,118 words, 44 min estimated reading time, and 2 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 18.6 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Short stories,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #23171

Edwin Lefevre's 1901 story traces a Wall Street operator's shift from boastful speculator to professional tipster, using precise dialogue and financial details to expose the psychology of stock-market gambling.

Editorial Edition Score 4.4/5

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Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg23171

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martin was still laughing professionally at the prospective buyer’s funny story when the telephone on his desk buzzed. He said: “Excuse me for a minute, old man,” to the customer--Hopkins, the Connecticut manufacturer.

“Hello; who is this?” he spoke into the transmitter. “Oh, how are you?--Yes--I was out--Is that so?--Too bad--Too bad--Yes; just my luck to be out. I might have known it!--Do you think so?--Well, then, sell the 200 Occidental common--You know best--What about Trolley?--Hold on?--All right; just as you say--I hope so--I don’t like to lose, and--Ha! ha!--I guess so--Good-by.”

“It’s from my brokers,” explained Gilmartin, hanging up the receiver. “I’d have saved five hundred dollars if I had been here at half-past ten. They called me up to advise me to sell out, and the price is off over three points. I could have got out at a profit this morning; but no, sir; not I. I had to be away, trying to buy some camphor.”

Hopkins was impressed. Gilmartin perceived it and went on, with an air of comical wrath which he thought was preferable to indifference: “It isn’t the money I mind so much as the tough luck of it. I didn’t make my trade in camphor after all and I lost in stocks, when if I’d only waited five minutes more in the office I’d have got the message from my brokers and saved my five hundred. Expensive, my time is, eh?” with a woful shake of the head.

“But you’re ahead of the game, aren’t you?” asked the customer, interestedly.

“Well, I guess yes. Just about twelve thousand.”

That was more than Gilmartin had made; but having exaggerated, he immediately felt very kindly disposed toward the Connecticut man.

“Whew!” whistled Hopkins, admiringly. Gilmartin experienced a great tenderness toward him. The lie was made stingless by the customer’s credulity. This brought a smile of subtle relief to Gilmartin’s lips. He was a pleasant-faced, pleasant-voiced man of three-and-thirty. He exhaled health, contentment, neatness, and an easy conscience. Honesty and good-nature shone in his eyes. People liked to shake hands with him. It made his friends talk of his lucky star; and they envied him.

“I bought this yesterday for my wife; took it out of a little deal in Trolley,” he told Hopkins, taking a small jewel-box from one of the desk’s drawers. It contained a diamond ring, somewhat showy, but obviously quite expensive. Hopkins’s semi-envious admiration made Gilmartin add, genially: “What do you say to lunch? I feel I am entitled to a glass of ‘fizz’ to forget my bad luck of this morning.” Then, in an exaggeratedly apologetic tone: “Nobody likes to lose five hundred dollars on an empty stomach!”

“She’ll be delighted, of course,” said Hopkins, thinking of Mrs. Gilmartin. Mrs. Hopkins loved jewelry.

“She’s the nicest little woman that ever lived. Whatever is mine is hers; and what’s hers is her own. Ha! ha! But,” becoming nicely serious, “all that I’ll make out of the stock market I’m going to put away for her, in her name. She can take better care of it than I; and, besides, she’s entitled to it, anyhow, for being so nice to me.”

That is how he told what a good husband he was. He felt so pleased over it that he went on, sincerely regretful: “She’s visiting friends in Pennsylvania or I’d ask you to dine with us.” And they went to a fashionable restaurant together.

Day after day Gilmartin thought persistently that Maiden Lane was too far from Wall Street. There came a week in which he could have made four very handsome “turns” had he but been in the brokers’ office. He was out on business for his firm and when he returned the opportunity had gone, leaving behind it vivid visions of what might have been; also the conviction that time, tide, and the ticker wait for no man. Instead of buying and selling quinine and balsams and essential oils for Maxwell & Kip, drug brokers and importers, he decided to make the buying and selling of stocks and bonds his exclusive business. The hours were easy; the profits would be great. He would make enough to live on. He would not let the Street take away what it had given. That was the great secret: to know when to quit! He would be content with a moderate amount, wisely invested in gilt-edged bonds. And then he would bid the Street good-by forever.

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From the opening telephone call, Lefevre establishes Gilmartin as a man who performs financial acumen for his customers. The dialogue is laced with strategic pauses and half-truths: Gilmartin exaggerates his profits to twelve thousand dollars, then immediately feels “very kindly disposed” toward the credulous listener. The prose mirrors the market’s volatility—short, clipped sentences during trades, expansive boasts afterward. A diamond ring bought with “a little deal in Trolley” serves as a tangible prop of supposed success, yet the narrator undercuts it with the detail that the ring is “somewhat showy.”

The Performance of Confidence

Lefevre renders Gilmartin’s salesmanship through physical and vocal cues. He laughs “professionally” at a customer’s joke, his face exuding “health, contentment, neatness, and an easy conscience.” The narrator immediately punctures this facade: the lie about his profits “brought a smile of subtle relief.” The story’s early scenes hinge on what Gilmartin shows versus what he knows. When he tells Hopkins about missing a broker’s call, the complaint is staged—a calculated display of regret that implies he regularly trades large sums. Lefevre’s diction (“comical wrath,” “woful shake of the head”) signals that the emotion is performed, not felt.

The Grammar of the Tip

The tip itself arrives in a torrent of market jargon: “at 85 everybody will want to buy it… at 95 there will be millions of bull tips.” Lefevre reproduces the cadence of a confident operator, complete with a “final hammering nod, as if driving in a profound truth.” The language is deliberately repetitive and rhythmic, mimicking the hypnotic quality of a sure thing. When the tip succeeds, the narrative shifts to a list of profits—$8,000, $15,100, $2,750—each figure a cold fact that contrasts with the earlier bluster. The story’s structure itself mirrors a trade: buildup, execution, settlement.

The Unraveling of Trust

After the profitable deal, Gilmartin’s associates conveniently forget his role. Smithers boasts, “I did a dandy stroke… I bought a wad of it,” claiming the insight as his own. Lefevre captures the sting of erasure through Gilmartin’s retort: “I’ve got witnesses.” The word “wit-ness-es” is mimicked scornfully, the drawn-out syllables emphasizing the betrayal. The narrator notes that Smithers “really had forgotten”—a psychological detail that exposes how quickly credit evaporates in a culture of self-congratulation. Gilmartin accepts a reduced payment of eight hundred dollars, but the damage to his sense of entitlement is permanent.

The Second Fall and the Tipster’s Birth

Lefevre compresses Gilmartin’s relapse into a few sentences: he loses not only his trading capital but also the $250 he “borrowed” back from his wife. The narrator attributes the loss to “over-timidity at first, only to plunge later”—a precise diagnosis of the gambler’s cycle. The transformation into a professional tipster is presented as a logical conclusion: “To let others speculate for him seemed the only sure way of winning.” The final paragraph introduces his new method: advising ten victims to sell Steel Rod preferred and ten others to buy it. The symmetry of the scheme underscores its cold calculation.

Lefevre’s story is less about the mechanics of Wall Street than about the performance of expertise. Readers should attend to the gaps between what characters say and what the narrator reveals—the “subtle relief” after a lie, the forgotten debt of a tip. The story’s power lies in its restraint: it never moralizes, letting the precise, almost clinical rendering of Gilmartin’s rise and fall speak for itself.

That old Wall Street story stayed with me, not for the tips, but for how quietly it watches a man lose himself in his own cleverness. It made me think of a calmer sort of honesty, the kind found in Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary — Edition Insights. Both books whisper about who we become when we perform for others, long after the audience has left. It feels like a familiar ache.