ctricity, it
is appalling to think what would become of the business of the country.

Not far from this vast Chamber, where great financial operations are
conducted on the highest principles of honor, and with the strictest
regard to the Marquis of Dusenbury's rules, there is another less
pretentious Chamber, known as "open," a sort of overflow meeting. Those
who have not quite left hope behind can go in here. Here are the tickers
communicating with the Chamber, tended by lads, who transfer the figures
to big blackboards on the wall. In front of these boards sit, from
morning to night, rows, perhaps relays, of men intently or listlessly
watching the figures. Many of them, who seldom make a sign, come here
from habit; they have nowhere else to go. Some of them were once lords in
the great Chamber, who have been, as the phrase is, "cleaned out." There
is a gray-bearded veteran in seedy clothes, with sunken fiery eyes, who
was once many times a millionaire, was a power in the Board, followed by
reporters, had a palace in the Avenue, and drove to his office with
coachman and footman in livery, and his wife headed the list of
charities. Now he spends his old age watching this blackboard, and
considers it a good day that brings him five dollars and his car-fare. At
one end of the low-ceiled apartment are busy clerks behind a counter,
alert and cheerful. If one should go through a side door and down a
passage he might encounter the smell of rum. Smart young men, clad in the
choicest raiment from the misfit counters, with greed stamped on their
astute faces, bustle about, watch the blackboards, and make investments
with each other. Middle-aged men in slouch hats lounge around with hungry
eyes. The place is feverish rather than exciting. A tall fellow, whose
gait and clothes proclaim him English, with a hard face and lack-lustre
eyes, saunters about; his friends at home suppose he is making his
fortune in America. A dapper young gentleman, quite in the mode, and with
the quick air of prosperity, rapidly enters the room and confers with a
clerk at the counter. He has the run of the Chamber, and is from the
great house of Flamm and Slamm. Perhaps he is taking a "flier" on his own
account, perhaps he represents his house in a side transactionthere are
so many ways open to enterprising young men in the city; at any rate, his
entrance is regarded as significant: This is not a hospital for the
broken down and "cleaned out" of the Chamb