usual.
Too many lambs had been over-speculating. The wholesale dealers in
securities--and insecurities--held very little of their own wares,
having sold them to the lambs, and wanted them back now--cheaper. The
customers' eyes, as on happier days, were intent on the quotation board.
Their dreams were rudely shattered; the fast horses some had all
but bought joined the steam yachts others almost had chartered. The
beautiful homes they had been building were torn down in the twinkling
of an eye. And the demolisher of dreams and dwellings was the ticker,
that instead of golden jokes was now clicking financial death. They
could not take their eyes from the board before them. Their own ruin,
told in mournful numbers by the little machine, fascinated them. To be
sure, poor Gilmartin said: "I've changed my mind about Newport. I guess
I'll spend the summer on my own _Hotel de Roof!_" And he grinned; but
he grinned alone. Wilson, the dry goods man, who laughed so joyously at
everybody's jokes, was now watching, as if under a hypnotic spell, the
lips of the man who sat on the high stool beside the ticker and called
out the prices to the quotation boy. Now and again Wilson's own lips
made curious grimaces, as if speaking to himself. Brown, the slender,
pale-faced man, was outside in the hall, pacing to and fro. All was
lost, including honor. And he was afraid to look at the ticker, afraid
to hear the prices shouted, yet hoping--for a miracle! Gil-martin came
out from the office, saw Brown and said, with sickly bravado: "I held
out as long as I could. But they got _my_ ducats. A sporting life comes
high, I tell you!" But Brown did not heed him, and Gilmartin pushed the
elevator button impatiently and cursed at the delay. He not only had
lost the "paper" profits he had accumulated during the bull market, but
all his savings of years had crumbled away beneath the strokes of the
ticker that day. It was the same with all. They would not take a small
loss at first, but had held on, in the hope of a recovery that would
"let them out even." And prices had sunk and sunk until the loss was
so great that it seemed only proper to hold on, if need be a year, for
sooner or later prices must come back. But the break "shook them out,"
and prices went just so much lower because so many people had to sell
whether they would or not.

IV

After the slump most of the customers returned to their legitimate
business--sadder, but it is to be fea