“Second, I believe I shall accept the Masons’ invitation, after all, and spend next week in Pungville.
“Third, behold in me a woman who knows when she is beaten!
“Last, my afternoon’s experiences have made me as hungry as a bear. Uncle William, I am preparing to eat four of those big, baked potatoes in front of you, and, Aunt Mary, please let Cassandra bring in a large pitcher of cream!”
WALL STREET
By Robert Stewart
Sir Richard Steele, in describing the Spectator Club, remarks of the Templer that “most of his thoughts are fit for conversation, as few of them are derived from business.” Nevertheless, almost any man should be able to philosophize more or less pleasantly and instructively over his calling, and if statesmen, soldiers, lawyers and medical gentlemen write autobiographies and describe the various debates, campaigns, litigations and horrible operations they have been engaged in, why should not an old stockbroker chat about his business, and give a little “inside information,” perhaps, about that Street whose ways are supposed to be so tortuous?
Go into the Waldorf any afternoon you please, and see which has the more attentive audience, Mr. Justice Truax discussing cases, or Mr. Jakey Field tipping his friends on sugar. Watch the women at a tea and see how their eyes brighten when young Bull, of the Stock Exchange, comes in. Bull has a surer road to smiles and favor than all the flowers and compliments in New York—he has a straight tip from John Gates.
Business not fit for conversation! Ask Mr. Morgan if anybody fidgets when he talks? Has any clergyman as eager a congregation as the audience Mr. Clews preaches to from the platform in front of his quotation board every morning at eleven o’clock?