PROFITS of small comforts—the great ones are so hard to get.
The Corner in Change
BY WILLIAM A. JOHNSTON
“MUST be something doing,” said the night-clerk to the room-clerk, nodding in the direction of a middle-aged man who was being piloted toward the elevator by a bell-boy. “That’s Martin, the banker, going up to see the Senator. There’s three others ahead of him. The Senator was expecting them, too, for he told me when they came in to have them shown up to his sitting-room at once.”
“Who are the others?” asked the room-clerk, raising his eyes from his ledger to look after the departing form of the man who—next to Russell Sage—was reputed to have command of the largest amount of ready money of any man in the United States.
“Well,” replied the night-clerk, taking advantage of the dulness of a rainy night in the spring to engage in more extended conversation than the exigencies of his calling usually permitted, “the first one to arrive was Congressman Woods. He’s stopping over at the Waldorf. This is only his second term in the House, but they say he is practically leader of his party. Not ten minutes after him was Higgins, who used to be comptroller, or something of the sort. He’s made a pile of money in the Street in the last few years. They say that last corner in wheat netted him about two million. I wouldn’t care if I stood close enough to him to get a tip once in awhile on the way things were going. There would be more in it than following the horses, although that ain’t saying much, judging by the run of bad luck I have had lately. Just before Martin came in Tom Connors went upstairs.”
“Tom’s rather out of his latitude, ain’t he?” said the room-clerk. “It ain’t often he gets in with such big fellows, is it?”