e
fourth story of the tall building. He entered a big hall in which
babel with modern improvements and complications reigned.

In the centre of this room was the pit proper. It has nothing of the
Stygian about it. It is a hexagon of shallow steps rising from the
floor, and descending on the inner side.

On these steps was a crowd of super-men with voices of rolled steel.
They called out cabalistic formulae of which the most intelligible to
the layman sounded something like:

"May--eighty-three--quarter."

Cold, high and terrible voices seemed to answer:

"Taken."

Hundreds of voices were doing this, amid a storm of cross shoutings,
and under a cloud of tossing hands, that signalled with fingers or with
papers. Cutting across this whirlpool of noise was the frantic
clicking of telegraph instruments. These tickers were worked by four
emotionless gods sitting high up in a judgment seat over the pit.

They had unerring ears. They caught the separate quotations from the
seething maelstrom of sound beneath them, sifted the completed deal
from the mere speculative offer in uncanny fashion, and with their
unresting fingers ticked the message off on an instrument that carried
it to a platform high up on one of the walls.

On this platform men in shirt-sleeves prowled backwards and
forwards--as the tigers do about feeding time in the Zoo. They, too,
had super-hearing. From little funnels that looked like electric light
shades they caught the tick of the messages, and chalked the figures of
the latest prices as they altered with the dealing on the floor upon a
huge blackboard that made the wall behind them.

At the same time the gods on the rostrum were tapping messages to the
four corners of the world. Even Chicago and Mark Lane altered their
prices as the finger of one of these calm men worked his clicker.

When the Prince entered the room the gong sounded to close the market,
and amid a hearty volume of cheering he was introduced to the pit, and
some of its intricacies were explained to him. The gong sounded again,
the market opened, and a storm of shouting broke over him, men making
and accepting deals over his head.

Intrigued by the excitement, he agreed with the broker who had brought
him in, to accept the experience of making a flutter in grain.

Immediately there were yells, "What is he, Bull or Bear?" and the
Prince, thoroughly perplexed, turned to the broker and asked what type
of financial mamm