. These huge homes of the
corporation and the bank, with entrances as sternly embellished as
palaces of justice, are oppressively significant of business.

As one crosses Broadway and descends to Broad Street, the impression
deepens, stirs, until you realize you are standing in a place of
strength and power, in the very heart of the nation's financial life.
The crowd of curb brokers yelling out quotations before the Stock
Exchange seems merely a casual and ludicrous episode, and the Stock
Exchange itself but a factor in this tremendous neighborhood.

Here is a world force which expresses itself on land and sea, and in
the heaven above; which has built itself an abode that is the wonder
of man; which bids fleets go forth, transports armies, and commands in
foreign senates; which restrains kings in their wrath; which feeds the
peasant on the banks of the Gloire, and clothes the coolie toiling in
the rice fields of Honan.

You stand there, I say, and recognize that you are in the presence of
the creative energy of millions of men and machines building, hauling,
planting, laboring, all over the world; and then you go into your
broker's office and hear slim young gentlemen talk of "playing the
market," and you don't wonder the broker is cynical and careful.

This serious, solid, fundamental character of Wall Street, performing
amid its colossal setting, an important and essential office in the
world's work, must be conscientiously painted in and emphasized in any
portrait, however gay and frolicsome, which attempts to depict its
spirit.

This sense of drama, indeed, this consciousness that tremendous things
are happening while we amuse ourselves, is one of the causes which
make Wall Street so fascinating. You can take it as seriously or as
frivolously as you please. You can operate with all the statistics of
"Poor's Manual" and "The Financial Chronicle" packed into your head,
or you can trade with the gay abandon of M. D'Artagnan breakfasting
under the walls of La Rochelle.

I have said all the world comes here, and the more I reflect upon it,
as a man of twenty years' experience, the less I wonder. The wonder is
that anybody stays away. It is so tempting, so amusing, so
respectable, so reckless or cautious, as you choose.

In appearance, a broker's office is something between a club parlor
and a bank, and it unconsciously represents its business. The room is
spacious and richly carpeted. The great quotation board, w