d it as a necessary
standpipe to promote and equalize distribution, others consult it as a
sort of Nilometer, to note the rise and fall of the waters and the
probabilities of drought or flood. Everybody knows that it is full of
the most gamy and beautiful fish in the world--namely, the speckled
trout, whose honest occupation it is to devour whatever is thrown into
the pool--a body governed by the strictest laws of political economy in
guarding against over-population, by carrying out the Malthusian idea, in
the habit the big ones have of eating the little ones. But occasionally
this harmonious family, which is animated by one of the most conspicuous
traits of human nature--to which we owe very much of our progress
--namely, the desire to get hold of everything within reach, and is such a
useful object-lesson of the universal law of upward struggle that results
in the survival of the fittest, this harmonious family is disturbed by
the advent of a pickerel, which makes a raid, introduces confusion into
all the calculations of the pool, roils the water, and drives the trout
into their holes.

The presence in the pool of a slimy eel or a blundering bullhead or a
lethargic sucker is bad enough, but the rush in of the pickerel is the
advent of the devil himself. Until he is got rid of, all the delicate
machinery for the calculation of chances is hopelessly disturbed; and no
one could tell what would become of the business of the country if there
were not a considerable number of devoted men engaged in registering its
fluctuations and the change of values, and willing to back their opinions
by investing their own capital or, more often, the capital of others.

This somewhat mixed figure cannot be pursued further without losing its
analogy, becoming fantastic, and violating natural law. For it is matter
of observation that in this arena the pickerel, if he succeeds in
clearing out the pool, suddenly becomes a trout, and is respected as the
biggest and most useful fish in the pond.

What is meant is simply that Murad Ault was fighting for position, and
that for some reason, known to himself, Thomas Mavick stood in his way.
Mr. Mavick had never been under the necessity of making such a contest.
He stepped into a commanding position as the manager if not the owner of
the great fortune of Rodney Henderson. His position was undisputed, for
the Street believed with the world in the magnitude of that fortune,
though there were shrew