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Forsooth, this O’Leerye doth proclayme with great gravitie and much puffing of cheeke that a man muste never, under no manner of circumstance (save perchance the Kinge himselfe doth command it with a naked sworde), put his good angels into any venture wherein the principall be not guarded as the virgins of Jerusalem, yea, even from the firste farthinge unto the last groat. And yet, in the very next breath, he doth counsell that thou shalt buye low when the multitude weepeth and selleth their very smocks, and selleth high when the fooles dance naked in the market-place with crownes of fooles-cap upon their pates, which thinge is moste wise, save that none knoweth when the weeping beginneth nor when the dancing ceaseth, and thus the whole matter resolveth itself into a perpetuall circling about like a dogge that chaseth his owne taile in the mudde of Thames.
Moreover, he holdeth that diversificacion is the mother of all safetie, and therefore thou must scatter thy shekels as a sower scattereth wheate upon stony ground, thorny ground, fowle-fowle ground, and ground that hath been trodden by oxen until it be as hard as Pharaoh’s heart; and yet if one field be overrun with locusts, the others shall surely follow, for such is the nature of locusts in this our corrupt age, and thus all be lost, and the sower sitteth weeping among the huskes with nothing but a bald crow for company.
And lo, he saith unto the young apprentices: “Give not thy purse to any man who promiseth thee tenfold in a twelvemonth, for he is a knave and a varlet and likely hath French pox besides,” and straightway he turneth about and investeth in some new-fangled gin-mill or clockwork orange or other devilry from the Low Countries, whereupon the multitude crieth “Amen!” and then loseth their all, and Master O’Leerye sitteth upon his pile of gold like a great red toad upon a lily-pad, saying “See? Patience, mine children, patience is the true Philosophers Stone.”
Yea, and he loveth exceedingly to speake of “royalties” and “passive incomes” as though they were the milk of paradise flowing from the dugges of celestial kine, but when pressed upon particulars, he becometh wroth and muttereth of “due diligence” and “term sheets” and “cap tables” which are words of no sense in our Englishe tongue and likely conjured from the black art of Dutch book-keepers or the secret language of the Jews of Amsterdam.