there is often nothing by which they could be legally compelled to fulfil it. They are prone to look on the humorous side of life, which undoubtedly does much to lessen the strain upon the nervous system involved in their exciting pursuit; and in the Board-room on a sluggish market they never lose an opportunity to drive dull care away by practical jokes on each other for which, whenever observed in the act, they are fined by the presiding officer and by breaking out in the middle of the formal call of stocks, or at any other time when least expected, in a grand chorus, that of the "Old Hundred," "Hallelujah" and "John Brown" being the favorites.

On the day before Christmas every year there is a carnival of mirth, laughter and instrumental music in the Board-room, the instruments employed being toy-drums, trumpets, fish-horns and such like, and the volume of business is greatly reduced in consequence. Every autumn white hats are confiscated after a certain date, due but informal notice of which is given. On the appointed day all the white hats that appear in the Board-room are, if possible, crushed over the wearers' eyes, or seized and thrown high in the air, only to be kicked or thrown again till they are no longer to be recognised as such by their shape. All this is done with the utmost good humor, and what would be impertinence elsewhere is only good fellowship

there.

Wall Street hours during the war were from nine in the morning till six in the afternoon, and the work of the day was for a time afterwards prolonged at the Evening Exchange until within an hour or two of midnight; but on the 24th of August, 1865, the Stock Exchange prohibited its members from attending that pest-house of speculation, and the Open Board did likewise, after which salutary action the Evening Exchange became a thing of the past. This night-haunt had its origin in the congregation that thronged the Fifth Avenue Hotel every evening in the early stages of the war, when the uncertainties attending the struggle stimulated the love of gambling inherent in the human heart, and spread depravity among a multitude of adventurers. It was then that clergymen and barkeepers, tailors and grocers, barbers and bakers, doctors and lawyers, actors and editors, learned professors and unlettered letter-carriers, professional gamblers and professional corn-cutters, and a host of gentlemen and vagabonds-a motley crowd of the good, bad and indifferent, who had a little or much money as the case might be-sallied forth into Wall Street, and aspiring to, fortune, threw their dice on the green tables of the Stock Exchange and the Gold Room. Very soon the halls of the hotel became overcrowded, and the proprietors expostulated. A deep cellar underneath it was rented by a man who charged twenty-five cents each for admission; and this detestable den, which might well be likened to the "Black Hole of Calcutta," was frequented by nearly the whole "street" until they sickened under the foul air of the place. A bar had been extemporised there, and the consumption of ardent spirits by the restless spirits visiting the place was sufficiently immense to have furnished a temperance orator with material for a new and terrible philippic against drunkenness. A large room at the corner of Broadway and Twenty-Third Street was then opened for

the purpose, and a greater rush than before set in to attend these night-sessions, attended by absurdly large receipts for admission. Here too a bar-room flourished, and men were stimulated by liquor to make transactions they often regretted the next morning. Then the lessee of this room erected a marble building in Twenty-Fourth Street, and the nightly game was played there in like manner. Subscriptions were paid for seats, and the proprietor was on the point of organising the affair into a joint-stock company when it was happily abolished, and the most respectable members of the Stock Exchange to this denouement exclaimed: "Allah be praised!" The wives and children of stock-brokers rejoiced, and a horde of gamblers lost their accustomed evening excitement. The Evening Exchange did injustice to the Stock Exchange, and gave it a reputation for vices undeserved by very many of its members, while degrading speculation into the worst form of gambling. It was a disgrace to Wall Street, and something like a reproach to our civilisation, dissipation being its accompaniment and fraud its not uncommon sequel. All this has been changed, and now the hours of both the Stock Exchange and Gold Room are from ten to three, and the stock and gold quotations are being constantly flashed during that time by telegraph to the office of every broker in the street provided with the necessary indicators, for which a small weekly charge is made in addition to the original cost of the instruments. This saves a great deal of the old-time running to and from the Board Room for prices, and hundreds far away from Wall Street have their offices or their houses, or both, fitted up with these machines.

In conclusion, I advise those of the outside public who are anxious to suddenly enrich themselves in Wall Street by a lucky turn of the wheel of fortune, to keep out of it as speculators, if they value their money, and have any legitimate business that yields them a sufficiency to live on. The low ambition to be rich is one of the fruitful causes of crime and immorality, and it was never so much a curse to society as in the present age.

"In lust of lucre lurk the basest wiles,

The deepest, darkest passions of mankind."

Instead of striving to be good and to lead noble and honorable lives, too many men nowadays are willing to be knaves, if they can only have wealth to squander in fast and ostentatious living. Men holding positions of trust embezzle the funds committed to their care, in order to speculate, hoping thereby to gain the object of their desire, or commit forgeries to accomplish it, as Edward B. Ketchum did. For the crimes of those who have defrauded the Government, the trust companies, the banks, and others who employed them, to make a desperate throw of dice on the Stock Exchange, Wall Street is too indiscriminately blamed. There must be a market for securities in a country abounding in them as this does, and wherever that market is there will be speculation. Because a man commits suicide by throwing himself into the river, people should not, and do not, blame the river for being within his reach; nor because an incendiary sets fire to his store with a lucifer-match, do they blame the match for enabling

him to commit the crime of arson. The fault lies in the extravagance of the time, leading to artificial wants, beyond the means of the many to gratify, and fostering false pride and a low moral tone, predisposing to dishonesty and paving the way to the penitentiary. There are, doubtless, many scoundrels speculating in Wall Street; but there is no good reason why a respectable man should not speculate there with his own money in as honorable a manner, and with as much credit to himself, as he would transact any other business elsewhere. The experience of ninety-nine "outsiders" out of every hundred who have speculated on margins in Wall Street is, however, that they have been losers in the end. A broker has nine chances where a customer has one, and commissions alone eat away a good deal of what in a speculative broker's own case would be profit. Moreover, customers lose on the interest account, and brokers make; and a commission business once established is a sure source of income, provided accounts are well watched so as to keep the margins good. Speculation in stocks is to most men engaged in other business demoralising, by making them discontented with the slow returns of commercial or professional life, although there are some who can resist this tendency; and all but brokers and professional operators had, therefore, better leave speculative securities severely alone, excepting where they have money to invest and know enough to buy stocks when they are cheap, and, being able to pay for them, take them out of the street. There are already too many brokers and too many speculators preying upon each other in Wall Street; and although non-producers have their uses as well as producers, the former have been far too numerous for their own or their country's good, not only there, but in all the large cities of the United States, since the inflation of the currency gave an impulse to speculation, whose fruits we have seen in a multitude of unattractive forms.

The Gold Room and Black Friday; the most notable stock "corners," from the first one engineered—namely, Morris Canal in 1835; the notorious and scandalous operations of Fisk and Gould; the Schuyler and other great frauds; the prominent speculators, besides those alluded to, from the advent of Jacob Barker; and the memorable panics that have occurred, including the crisis of 1873, merit extended notice in a description of Wall Street: but a magazine article has limits; and when a traveller can only take a carpet-bag with him on his journey, he has, of necessity, to leave out a good deal more of his baggage than he puts into it; and so it is in the case of these reflections on The Ways of Wall Street.

KINAHAN CORNWALLIS.

WE

PHANTOM VIOLETS.

E walked through the mellow October ways, Triumphant with crimson, royal with gold, Untrodden by us since far-off days,

When other flowers bloomed out of the mold:

Roses and violets — odorous things,

Only the summer's and only the spring's;

Hopes they had bloomed for had made themselves wings;
-Fair flowers, fair fancies, both stories were told.

Hermione, at a violet-bed,

You stooped, at a waft of subtle perfume.

As you searched through the leaves, "How strange!" you said; "A phantom odor, but no hint of bloom.

The bright blue blossoms have perished away,
But linger in spirit around their clay,

The ghost of the flowers haunting them. Nay,
Decide, if you can, if the perfume shed,
Or color and form be the flower alway."

I laid my face on the dark, downy leaves,

And I shut my eyes, and I nothing missed. Gone were the golden October's full sheaves,

And returned were the green May-fields wind-kissed; Gone was the wisdom learned slowly of pain,

Returned was the careless folly again;

Gone were the heart-ache, the effort, the strain,

And returned was the hope that laughed through the mist!

And "There is no parting," I said, "My dear;
And there is no death, and there is no grave,
And there is no absence. You are as near,
When between us lieth mountain or wave,
As now when I feel the touch of your hand
And look in your eyes.
In a distant land,
Absent yet present, I still should stand

Close at your side, and nothing should miss.

"Nay-coming back from that distance and change,
To the real you, with the eyes, the hair,
Your actual presence would jar and seem strange;
So dear had the thought of you been, so fair;

So comforted had I been all the while

By the haunting voice, the haunting smile,
That followed me, clung to me everywhere.'

"How transcendental!" I hear you exclaim.

I will not dispute it; and, after all,
I ask naught better than, speaking your name,
To have you presently answer my call.

But yet for the rest

at our strange new birth-
No doubt it will waken our spirit-mirth

We should have questioned, dull spirits of earth,
The contact of soul to be closest of all!

K. R. L.

T

CONCERNING THE BLOWING OF HORNS.

HERE was once a worthy man who used to repeat what purported to be a quotation from the Koran. It was after this fashion: "Whoso hath an horn, and bloweth it not, verily, the horn of that same shall never be blown." To be candid, I will say that after diligent perusal of the book of the camel-driver of Mecca, I have failed to discover this so-called quotation. It is not, however, to be presumed that the Koran is a compendium which exhausts the well of wisdom; and this utterance with regard to horn-blowing does not need the endorsement of Mohammed to make it pass current as truth. Its verity is patent, and is exemplified before our eyes, and particularly in our ears, every day. To make a slight emendation of a somewhat familiar adage, "The trumpet is mightier than the sword." or, in other words, the noise that a man makes about doing any work obtains more credit than the energy expended in performing it. Let a regiment of veterans who have borne their banners through the terrors of a hundred fights, and grasped victory after victory from vastly superior numbers, pass through the crowded streets of a city on their way to new triumphs: what most attracts the attention of the masses who rush to meet the warriors? Why, the band which plays at the head of the column, of course. The men who have struggled and bled on countless fields march by almost unheeded, while the public gaze is riveted upon and the public ear is wide open to the blare of the trumpet and the rataplan of the drum. Thackeray, in his "Chronicle of the Drum," makes the narrator of that stirring poem say of his respected progenitor :

"In Germany, Flanders, and Holland,
What foemen resisted us then?

No; my grandsire was ever victorious,

My grandsire and Monsieur Turenne."