etry had so earnestly desired him to come to
his office that morning, but he wanted to know how wheat was selling
before talking to the broker. The room was large, and but for the
lighted gas, burning crudely without globes, would have been dark. All
one wall opposite the door was taken up by a great blackboard covered
with chalked figures in columns, and illuminated by a row of overhead
gas jets burning under a tin reflector. Before this board files of
chairs were placed, and these were occupied by groups of nondescripts,
shabbily dressed men, young and old, with tired eyes and unhealthy
complexions, who smoked and expectorated, or engaged in interminable
conversations.

In front of the blackboard, upon a platform, a young man in
shirt-sleeves, his cuffs caught up by metal clamps, walked up and down.
Screwed to the blackboard itself was a telegraph instrument, and from
time to time, as this buzzed and ticked, the young man chalked up
cabalistic, and almost illegible figures under columns headed by
initials of certain stocks and bonds, or by the words "Pork," "Oats,"
or, larger than all the others, "May Wheat." The air of the room was
stale, close, and heavy with tobacco fumes. The only noises were the
low hum of conversations, the unsteady click of the telegraph key, and
the tapping of the chalk in the marker's fingers.

But no one in the room seemed to pay the least attention to the
blackboard. One quotation replaced another, and the key and the chalk
clicked and tapped incessantly. The occupants of the room, sunk in
their chairs, seemed to give no heed; some even turned their backs;
one, his handkerchief over his knee, adjusted his spectacles, and
opening a newspaper two days old, began to read with peering
deliberation, his lips forming each word. These nondescripts gathered
there, they knew not why. Every day found them in the same place,
always with the same fetid, unlighted cigars, always with the same
frayed newspapers two days old. There they sat, inert, stupid, their
decaying senses hypnotised and soothed by the sound of the distant
rumble of the Pit, that came through the ceiling from the floor of the
Board overhead.

One of these figures, that of a very old man, blear-eyed, decrepit,
dirty, in a battered top hat and faded frock coat, discoloured and
weather-stained at the shoulders, seemed familiar to Jadwin. It
recalled some ancient association, he could not say what. But he was
unable to see the old ma