you imagine a livelier, more
entertaining place of gossip? You can have stocks, horses, commerce,
law, medicine, small talk, art, science, the theater and religion in
fifteen minute _causeries_, every day if you like. You have the
_milieu_ of every club in New York and the Waldorf cafe massed in one
elegant composition in more than one broker's parlor.

I once knew a clever fellow who dined out every evening. He always had
the latest scandal, the newest story, the straightest tip and the last
word from Washington. He knew all about stocks, grain, races,
theaters, society, clubs, athletics. He could advise you about ocean
steamers, table d'hote places, country hotels, Berlin pensions, young
ladies' schools, where to buy Ayrshire bacon and who had a yacht to
sell. And he acquired this vast and useful assortment of knowledge
simply by spending his afternoons, from noon to three, at different
Wall Street offices.

The brokers cordially welcome such a visitor. Now and again they carry
a hundred shares of stock for him. He is a kind of private news
agency. The dull office gets ready to laugh when _he_ comes in; and
his tips, whispered merely out of friendship, of course, to the
customers, add many a credit entry to Commission Account. It may be
said, without any hysterical exaggeration, that he represents the
worst of Wall Street; and that the worst of Wall Street is very bad.
But among his virtues are a merry mind and an abiding faith that a
"board member" is the most distinguished of associates.

The broker, indeed, if he is not always that most elevated of human
spectacles, a Christian gentleman, is a highly pictorial and
interesting person. He is the creature of his business, and is half
host and half business man. His habitual chatty intercourse with all
kinds of men of means gives him the easy nonchalance of the town, and
the nervous strain he is constantly under to protect himself and his
clients against those impulses of greed and fear so fostered by Wall
Street, creates that keen, rapid concentration for which he is so
remarkable.

Where everybody is liable to lose his wits any instant, it is
necessary those in authority should be cool. This constant state of
high tension, these perpetual changes from extreme concentration to
frivolity, produce, in the end, the Wall Street manners, and the
desire for exciting, highly colored amusements.

Every day in Wall Street is a completed day. It is a cash business.
Your