The House of the Seven Quacks

NOT spent an evening dreaming happily. Being a small duck, he often dreamed big dreams, just so that he could escape his normal every day existence. 

Now at this time Wall Street was booming, with paper millionaires arriving overnight. "Why can't I do that?" pondered NOT. So he dreamed he got into the Stock Market.

Unfortunately, NOT was a bit too literal.  He dreamed of being a successful stock broker. He envisioned selling one of them to his friend Lis. Maybe she would put Doug in it when he was bad.

Unfortunately, his product was not in demand. Nor was it as good as it was in colonial times, as Nathaniel Hawthorne reminded NOT very sourly.

"The problem," exclaimed NOT, "Is that Commodities trading takes some extra knowledge. Why, it's almost like witchcraft, to determine if a stock is going to go up. Or if it's going to go down."

"I need to do more research on witches" he dreamed.

Unfortunately, the museum told him how witches were killed, not how they made a killing on the markets.

NOT contemplated this more in his dream. He remembered reading somewhere about corporate raiders making money on other companies. That's what he needed - he would become a corporate raider. 

Unfortunately, he found out that pantaloons were not proper dress on Wall Street. 

"Phooey!" exclaimed NOT. "I'm just going to go and forget this plan and dream of nice ducks to play with."

And so he did. And his nightmares ceased.

The End.

Photos courtesy of Doug Larrick

Last Updated March 2001