ty feet above the
floor, and opposite the gallery is a raised platform, with a long table
and majestic arm-chairs for the president and other officers of the
Board. High on the wall above these elevated dignitaries glitters in
large gold letters the mystic legend, "New York Stock Exchange." On the
left of the platform stands a large blackboard, whereon the fluctuations
in stocks are recorded, and around the sides of the room are displayed
various signs bearing the names of different stocks (like the banners of
the knights in royal chapels), beneath which eager groups collect. At
the lower end of the room, under the Visitors' Gallery, are seats
whereon weary brokers may repose after the brunt of battle. In the
centre of the upper end of the vast apartment is a long oval
cock-pit--if it may be so called--of two or three degrees, with a table
in the lowest circle. It is so arranged as to give the brokers, standing
upon the graded steps, full opportunity to see and to be seen. On the
table, in singular contrast with the spirit of the place, was a large
and beautiful basket of flowers. Anything more painfully incongruous it
would be difficult to imagine. The poor flowers seemed to wear an air of
patient suffering as they wasted their sweetness on that (literally)
howling wilderness.

It was just after ten, and the doors had been open but a few moments
when we entered the gallery, already quite full of ladies and
gentlemen--generally very young gentlemen, anxious to learn from the
glorious example of their elders. The floor below us was fast being
strewn with torn bits of paper, which have to be swept up several times
a day. Eager groups were gathered under the various signs upon the walls
and pillars, apparently playing the Italian game of _morra_, to judge by
the quick gestures of their restless fingers. Some were scribbling
cabalistic signs on little bits of paper, and almost all were howling
like maniacs or wild beasts half starved. The only place I was ever in
at all to be compared with it in volume and variety of noise is the
parrot-room in the London Zoological Gardens. Bedlam and Pandemonium I
have not visited--as yet--and consequently cannot speak from personal
experience. But the parrots in that awful house in Regent's Park are
capable of making more hideous noises in a given moment than any other
wild beasts in the world, except brokers. Here the human animal comes
out triumphantly supreme.

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