rm them, in
remembrance of the old gambler-slang about faro and roulette); but
their industries, however distinct, are what the political economists
would call those of non-productive consumers. They are active drones,
to speak with paradox, in the great hive of human energy. Like all
gamesters, all men who live by the turning of the dice-box, they have
a devil-may-care demeanor, now and then rather sharply peppered with
wit, though wit not always avoidant of the obscene. For the most part,
they are as ignorant of the large onward push of human thought as if
they were farmers in some remote county of Arkansas. And yet they
affect, at all times, an amusing omniscience. To "know it all" is a
phrase beloved as sarcasm by their nimble vernacular, and though this
(like "Come off!" and "Look here, what are you giving us?") is a form
of speech incessantly on their lips, one is prone sometimes to reflect
how amazing is the meagreness of real knowledge which their "knowing
it all" piteously represents. They are sometimes keen sportsmen, but a
good many scamps, dolts, and cads are that. Their acquaintance with
contemporary literature could be summed up by stating that if you
should ask an average number of their class whether he had read the
last novel of Mr. James, he might pull his moustache (the Wall Street
man usually has a moustache, and often a symmetric and well-tended
one) desiring to learn whether you had reference or no to _G. P. R._
James, of the "two horse-men" celebrity. Their ignorance, however, is
not equal to their self-sufficiency. Almost whenever the average Wall
Street man goes into good society he makes himself more pronounced
there by his assurance than his culture. Of the latter quality he has
so little that the best clubs of which he is a member tolerate rather
than accept him. In most cases he is deplorably curt of speech and
brusque of deportment. Suavity, repose, that kindliness which is the
very marrow and pith of high-breeding, shock you in his manners as
acutely by their absence as if they were rents in his waistcoat or
gapes in his boot-leather. The "bluff," impudence, and swagger of the
Stock Exchange cling to him in society like burrs to the hair of
horse or dog. He would be far more endurable, this socially rampant
and ubiquitous Wall Street man, if he revealed the least shred of
respect for those ideas and faiths on which his hard, cold course of
living has necessarily trampled rough-hooved. He is