"Oh, get out," protested the broker; then suddenly--the gambling
instinct that a lifetime passed in that place had cultivated in
him--exclaimed:
"All right. Flip a coin. But give me your word you'll stay by it. Heads
you come in; tails you don't. Will you give me your word?"
"Oh, I don't know about that," replied Jadwin, amused at the
foolishness of the whole proceeding. But as he balanced the half-dollar
on his thumb-nail, he was all at once absolutely assured that it would
fall heads. He flipped it in the air, and even as he watched it spin,
said to himself, "It will come heads. It could not possibly be anything
else. I know it will be heads."
And as a matter of course the coin fell heads.
"All right," he said, "I'll come in."
"For a million bushels?"
"Yes--for a million. How much in margins will you want?"
Gretry figured a moment on the back of an envelope.
"Fifty thousand dollars," he announced at length.
Jadwin wrote the check on a corner of the broker's desk, and held it a
moment before him.
"Good-bye," he said, apostrophising the bit of paper. "Good-bye. I
ne'er shall look upon your like again."
Gretry did not laugh.
"Huh!" he grunted. "You'll look upon a hatful of them before the month
is out."
That same morning Landry Court found himself in the corridor on the
ground floor of the Board of Trade about nine o'clock. He had just come
out of the office of Gretry, Converse & Co., where he and the other Pit
traders for the house had been receiving their orders for the day.
As he was buying a couple of apples at the news stand at the end of the
corridor, Semple and a young Jew named Hirsch, Pit traders for small
firms in La Salle Street, joined him.
"Hello, Court, what do you know?"
"Hello, Barry Semple! Hello, Hirsch!" Landry offered the halves of his
second apple, and the three stood there a moment, near the foot of the
stairs, talking and eating their apples from the points of their
penknives.
"I feel sort of seedy this morning," Semple observed between mouthfuls.
"Was up late last night at a stag. A friend of mine just got back from
Europe, and some of the boys were giving him a little dinner. He was
all over the shop, this friend of mine; spent most of his time in
Constantinople; had some kind of newspaper business there. It seems
that it's a pretty crazy proposition, Turkey and the Sultan and all
that. He said that there was nearly a row over the 'Higgins-Pasha'
incident, and that the British agent put it pretty straight to the
Sultan's secretary. My friend said Constantinople put him in mind of a
lot of opera bouffe scenery that had got spilled out in the mud. Say,
Court, he said the streets were dirtier than the Chicago streets."
"Oh, come now," said Hirsch.
"Fact! And the dogs! He told us he knows now where all the yellow dogs
go to when they die."
"But say," remarked Hirsch, "what is that about the Higgins-Pasha
business? I thought that was over long ago."
"Oh, it is," answered Semple easily. He looked at his watch. "I guess
it's about time to go up, pretty near half-past nine."
The three mounted the stairs, mingling with the groups of floor traders
who, in steadily increasing numbers, had begun to move in the same
direction. But on the way Hirsch was stopped by his brother.
"Hey, I got that box of cigars for you."
Hirsch paused. "Oh! All right," he said, then he added: "Say, how about
that Higgins-Pasha affair? You remember that row between England and
Turkey. They tell me the British agent in Constantinople put it pretty
straight to the Sultan the other day."
The other was interested. "He did, hey?" he said. "The market hasn't
felt it, though. Guess there's nothing to it. But there's Kelly yonder.
He'd know. He's pretty thick with Porteous' men. Might ask him."
"You ask him and let me know. I got to go on the floor. It's nearly
time for the gong."
Hirsch's brother found Kelly in the centre of a group of settlement
clerks.
"Say, boy," he began, "you ought to know. They tell me there may be
trouble between England and Turkey over the Higgins-Pasha incident, and
that the British Foreign Office has threatened the Sultan with an
ultimatum. I can see the market if that's so."
"Nothing in it," retorted Kelly. "But I'll find out--to make sure, by
jingo."
Meanwhile Landry had gained the top of the stairs, and turning to the
right, passed through a great doorway, and came out upon the floor of
the Board of Trade.
It was a vast enclosure, lighted on either side by great windows of
coloured glass, the roof supported by thin iron pillars elaborately
decorated. To the left were the bulletin blackboards, and beyond these,
in the northwest angle of the floor, a great railed-in space where the
Western Union Telegraph was installed. To the right, on the other side
of the room, a row of tables, laden with neatly arranged paper bags
half full of samples of grains, stretched along the east wall from the
doorway of the public room at one end to the telephone room at the
other.
The centre of the floor was occupied by the pits. To the left and to
the front of Landry the provision pit, to the right the corn pit, while
further on at the north extremity of the floor, and nearly under the
visitors' gallery, much larger than the other two, and flanked by the
wicket of the official recorder, was the wheat pit itself.
Directly opposite the visitors' gallery, high upon the south wall a
great dial was affixed, and on the dial a marking hand that indicated
the current price of wheat, fluctuating with the changes made in the
Pit. Just now it stood at ninety-three and three-eighths, the closing
quotation of the preceding day.
As yet all the pits were empty. It was some fifteen minutes after nine.
Landry checked his hat and coat at the coat room near the north
entrance, and slipped into an old tennis jacket of striped blue
flannel. Then, hatless, his hands in his pockets, he leisurely crossed
the floor, and sat down in one of the chairs that were ranged in files
upon the floor in front of the telegraph enclosure. He scrutinised
again the despatches and orders that he held in his hands; then, having
fixed them in his memory, tore them into very small bits, looking
vaguely about the room, developing his plan of campaign for the morning.
In a sense Landry Court had a double personality. Away from the
neighbourhood and influence of La Salle Street, he was
"rattle-brained," absent-minded, impractical, and easily excited, the
last fellow in the world to be trusted with any business
responsibility. But the thunder of the streets around the Board of
Trade, and, above all, the movement and atmosphere of the floor itself
awoke within him a very different Landry Court; a whole new set of
nerves came into being with the tap of the nine-thirty gong, a whole
new system of brain machinery began to move with the first figure
called in the Pit. And from that instant until the close of the
session, no floor trader, no broker's clerk nor scalper was more alert,
more shrewd, or kept his head more surely than the same young fellow
who confused his social engagements for the evening of the same day.
The Landry Court the Dearborn girls knew was a far different young man
from him who now leaned his elbows on the arms of the chair upon the
floor of the Board, and, his eyes narrowing, his lips tightening, began
to speculate upon what was to be the temper of the Pit that morning.
Meanwhile the floor was beginning to fill up. Over in the railed-in
space, where the hundreds of telegraph instruments were in place, the
operators were arriving in twos and threes. They hung their hats and
ulsters upon the pegs in the wall back of them, and in linen coats, or
in their shirt-sleeves, went to their seats, or, sitting upon their
tables, called back and forth to each other, joshing, cracking jokes.
Some few addressed themselves directly to work, and here and there the
intermittent clicking of a key began, like a diligent cricket busking
himself in advance of its mates.
From the corridors on the ground floor up through the south doors came
the pit traders in increasing groups. The noise of footsteps began to
echo from the high vaulting of the roof. A messenger boy crossed the
floor chanting an unintelligible name.
The groups of traders gradually converged upon the corn and wheat pits,
and on the steps of the latter, their arms crossed upon their knees,
two men, one wearing a silk skull cap all awry, conversed earnestly in
low tones.
Winston, a great, broad-shouldered bass-voiced fellow of some
thirty-five years, who was associated with Landry in executing the
orders of the Gretry-Converse house, came up to him, and, omitting any
salutation, remarked, deliberately, slowly:
"What's all this about this trouble between Turkey and England?"
But before Landry could reply a third trader for the Gretry Company
joined the two. This was a young fellow named Rusbridge, lean,
black-haired, a constant excitement glinting in his deep-set eyes.
"Say," he exclaimed, "there's something in that, there's something in
that!"
"Where did you hear it?" demanded Landry.
"Oh--everywhere." Rusbridge made a vague gesture with one arm. "Hirsch
seemed to know all about it. It appears that there's talk of mobilising
the Mediterranean squadron. Darned if I know."
"Might ask that 'Inter-Ocean' reporter. He'd be likely to know. I've
seen him 'round here this morning, or you might telephone the
Associated Press," suggested Landry. "The office never said a word to
me."
"Oh, the 'Associated.' They know a lot always, don't they?" jeered
Winston. "Yes, I rung 'em up. They 'couldn't confirm the rumour.'
That's always the way. You can spend half a million a year in leased
wires and special service and subscriptions to news agencies, and you
get the first smell of news like this right here on the floor. Remember
that time when the Northwestern millers sold a hundred and fifty
thousand barrels at one lick? The floor was talking of it three hours
before the news slips were sent 'round, or a single wire was in.
Suppose we had waited for the Associated people or the Commercial
people then?"
"It's that Higgins-Pasha incident, I'll bet," observed Rusbridge, his
eyes snapping.
"I heard something about that this morning," returned Landry. "But only
that it was--"
"There! What did I tell you?" interrupted Rusbridge. "I said it was
everywhere. There's no smoke without some fire. And I wouldn't be a bit
surprised if we get cables before noon that the British War Office had
sent an ultimatum."
And very naturally a few minutes later Winston, at that time standing
on the steps of the corn pit, heard from a certain broker, who had it
from a friend who had just received a despatch from some one "in the
know," that the British Secretary of State for War had forwarded an
ultimatum to the Porte, and that diplomatic relations between Turkey
and England were about to be suspended.
All in a moment the entire Floor seemed to be talking of nothing else,
and on the outskirts of every group one could overhear the words:
"Seizure of custom house," "ultimatum," "Eastern question,"
"Higgins-Pasha incident." It was the rumour of the day, and before very
long the pit traders began to receive a multitude of despatches
countermanding selling orders, and directing them not to close out
trades under certain very advanced quotations. The brokers began wiring
their principals that the market promised to open strong and bullish.
But by now it was near to half-past nine. From the Western Union desks
the clicking of the throng of instruments rose into the air in an
incessant staccato stridulation. The messenger boys ran back and forth
at top speed, dodging in and out among the knots of clerks and traders,
colliding with one another, and without interruption intoning the names
of those for whom they had despatches. The throng of traders
concentrated upon the pits, and at every moment the deep-toned hum of
the murmur of many voices swelled like the rising of a tide.
And at this moment, as Landry stood on the rim of the wheat pit,
looking towards the telephone booth under the visitors' gallery, he saw
the osseous, stoop-shouldered figure of Mr. Cressler--who, though he
never speculated, appeared regularly upon the Board every
morning--making his way towards one of the windows in the front of the
building. His pocket was full of wheat, taken from a bag on one of the
sample tables. Opening the window, he scattered the grain upon the
sill, and stood for a long moment absorbed and interested in the
dazzling flutter of the wings of innumerable pigeons who came to settle
upon the ledge, pecking the grain with little, nervous, fastidious taps
of their yellow beaks.
Landry cast a glance at the clock beneath the dial on the wall behind
him. It was twenty-five minutes after nine. He stood in his accustomed
place on the north side of the Wheat Pit, upon the topmost stair. The
Pit was full. Below him and on either side of him were the brokers,
scalpers, and traders--Hirsch, Semple, Kelly, Winston, and Rusbridge.
The redoubtable Leaycraft, who, bidding for himself, was supposed to
hold the longest line of May wheat of any one man in the Pit, the
insignificant Grossmann, a Jew who wore a flannel shirt, and to whose
outcries no one ever paid the least attention. Fairchild, Paterson, and
Goodlock, the inseparable trio who represented the Porteous gang,
silent men, middle-aged, who had but to speak in order to buy or sell a
million bushels on the spot. And others, and still others, veterans of
sixty-five, recruits just out of their teens, men who--some of them--in
the past had for a moment dominated the entire Pit, but who now were
content to play the part of "eighth-chasers," buying and selling on the
same day, content with a profit of ten dollars. Others who might at
that very moment be nursing plans which in a week's time would make
them millionaires; still others who, under a mask of nonchalance,
strove to hide the chagrin of yesterday's defeat. And they were there,
ready, inordinately alert, ears turned to the faintest sound, eyes
searching for the vaguest trace of meaning in those of their rivals,
nervous, keyed to the highest tension, ready to thrust deep into the
slightest opening, to spring, mercilessly, upon the smallest undefended
spot. Grossmann, the little Jew of the grimy flannel shirt, perspired
in the stress of the suspense, all but powerless to maintain silence
till the signal should be given, drawing trembling fingers across his
mouth. Winston, brawny, solid, unperturbed, his hands behind his back,
waited immovably planted on his feet with all the gravity of a statue,
his eyes preternaturally watchful, keeping Kelly--whom he had divined
had some "funny business" on hand--perpetually in sight. The Porteous
trio--Fairchild, Paterson, and Goodlock--as if unalarmed, unassailable,
all but turned their backs to the Pit, laughing among themselves.
The official reporter climbed to his perch in the little cage on the
edge of the Pit, shutting the door after him. By now the chanting of
the messenger boys was an uninterrupted chorus. From all sides of the
building, and in every direction they crossed and recrossed each other,
always running, their hands full of yellow envelopes. From the
telephone alcoves came the prolonged, musical rasp of the call bells.
In the Western Union booths the keys of the multitude of instruments
raged incessantly. Bare-headed young men hurried up to one another,
conferred an instant comparing despatches, then separated, darting away
at top speed. Men called to each other half-way across the building.
Over by the bulletin boards clerks and agents made careful memoranda of
primary receipts, and noted down the amount of wheat on passage, the
exports and the imports.
And all these sounds, the chatter of the telegraph, the intoning of the
messenger boys, the shouts and cries of clerks and traders, the shuffle
and trampling of hundreds of feet, the whirring of telephone signals
rose into the troubled air, and mingled overhead to form a vast note,
prolonged, sustained, that reverberated from vault to vault of the airy
roof, and issued from every doorway, every opened window in one long
roll of uninterrupted thunder. In the Wheat Pit the bids, no longer
obedient of restraint, began one by one to burst out, like the first
isolated shots of a skirmish line. Grossmann had flung out an arm
crying:
"'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and an eighth," while Kelly and
Semple had almost simultaneously shouted, "'Give seven-eighths for May!"
The official reporter had been leaning far over to catch the first
quotations, one eye upon the clock at the end of the room. The hour and
minute hands were at right angles.
Then suddenly, cutting squarely athwart the vague crescendo of the
floor came the single incisive stroke of a great gong. Instantly a
tumult was unchained. Arms were flung upward in strenuous gestures, and
from above the crowding heads in the Wheat Pit a multitude of hands,
eager, the fingers extended, leaped into the air. All articulate
expression was lost in the single explosion of sound as the traders
surged downwards to the centre of the Pit, grabbing each other,
struggling towards each other, tramping, stamping, charging through
with might and main. Promptly the hand on the great dial above the
clock stirred and trembled, and as though driven by the tempest breath
of the Pit moved upward through the degrees of its circle. It paused,
wavered, stopped at length, and on the instant the hundreds of
telegraph keys scattered throughout the building began clicking off the
news to the whole country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from
Mackinac to Mexico, that the Chicago market had made a slight advance
and that May wheat, which had closed the day before at ninety-three and
three-eighths, had opened that morning at ninety-four and a half.
But the advance brought out no profit-taking sales. The redoubtable
Leaycraft and the Porteous trio, Fairchild, Paterson, and Goodlock,
shook their heads when the Pit offered ninety-four for parts of their
holdings. The price held firm. Goodlock even began to offer
ninety-four. At every suspicion of a flurry Grossmann, always with the
same gesture as though hurling a javelin, always with the same
lamentable wail of distress, cried out:
"'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and a fourth."
He held his five fingers spread to indicate the number of "contracts,"
or lots of five thousand bushels, which he wished to sell, each finger
representing one "contract."
And it was at this moment that selling orders began suddenly to pour in
upon the Gretry-Converse traders. Even other houses--Teller and West,
Burbank & Co., Mattieson and Knight--received their share. The movement
was inexplicable, puzzling. With a powerful Bull clique dominating the
trading and every prospect of a strong market, who was it who ventured
to sell short?
Landry among others found himself commissioned to sell. His orders were
to unload three hundred thousand bushels on any advance over and above
ninety-four. He kept his eye on Leaycraft, certain that he would force
up the figure. But, as it happened, it was not Leaycraft but the
Porteous trio who made the advance. Standing in the centre of the Pit,
Patterson suddenly flung up his hand and drew it towards him, clutching
the air--the conventional gesture of the buyer.
"'Give an eighth for May."
Landry was at him in a second. Twenty voices shouted "sold," and as
many traders sprang towards him with outstretched arms. Landry,
however, was before them, and his rush carried Paterson half way across
the middle space of the Pit.
"Sold, sold."
Paterson nodded, and as Landry noted down the transaction the hand on
the dial advanced again, and again held firm.
But after this the activity of the Pit fell away. The trading
languished. By degrees the tension of the opening was relaxed. Landry,
however, had refrained from selling more than ten "contracts" to
Paterson. He had a feeling that another advance would come later on.
Rapidly he made his plans. He would sell another fifty thousand bushels
if the price went to ninety-four and a half, and would then "feel" the
market, letting go small lots here and there, to test its strength,
then, the instant he felt the market strong enough, throw a full
hundred thousand upon it with a rush before it had time to break. He
could feel--almost at his very finger tips--how this market moved, how
it strengthened, how it weakened. He knew just when to nurse it, to
humor it, to let it settle, and when to crowd it, when to hustle it,
when it would stand rough handling.
Grossmann still uttered his plaint from time to time, but no one so
much as pretended to listen. The Porteous trio and Leaycraft kept the
price steady at ninety-four and an eighth, but showed no inclination to
force it higher. For a full five minutes not a trade was recorded. The
Pit waited for the Report on the Visible Supply.
And it was during this lull in the morning's business that the idiocy
of the English ultimatum to the Porte melted away. As inexplicably and
as suddenly as the rumour had started, it now disappeared. Everyone,
simultaneously, seemed to ridicule it. England declare war on Turkey!
Where was the joke? Who was the damn fool to have started that old,
worn-out war scare? But, for all that, there was no reaction from the
advance. It seemed to be understood that either Leaycraft or the
Porteous crowd stood ready to support the market; and in place of the
ultimatum story a feeling began to gain ground that the expected report
would indicate a falling off in the "visible," and that it was quite on
the cards that the market might even advance another point.
As the interest in the immediate situation declined, the crowd in the
Pit grew less dense. Portions of it were deserted; even Grossmann,
discouraged, retired to a bench under the visitors' gallery. And a
spirit of horse-play, sheer foolishness, strangely inconsistent with
the hot-eyed excitement of the few moments after the opening invaded
the remaining groups. Leaycraft, the formidable, as well as Paterson of
the Porteous gang, and even the solemn Winston, found an apparently
inexhaustible diversion in folding their telegrams into pointed
javelins and sending them sailing across the room, watching the course
of the missiles with profound gravity. A visitor in the gallery--no
doubt a Western farmer on a holiday--having put his feet upon the rail,
the entire Pit began to groan "boots, boots, boots."
A little later a certain broker came scurrying across the floor from
the direction of the telephone room. Panting, he flung himself up the
steps of the Pit, forced his way among the traders with vigorous
workings of his elbows, and shouted a bid.
"He's sick," shouted Hirsch. "Look out, he's sick. He's going to have a
fit." He grabbed the broker by both arms and hustled him into the
centre of the Pit. The others caught up the cry, a score of hands
pushed the newcomer from man to man. The Pit traders clutched him,
pulled his necktie loose, knocked off his hat, vociferating all the
while at top voice, "He's sick! He's sick!"
Other brokers and traders came up, and Grossmann, mistaking the
commotion for a flurry, ran into the Pit, his eyes wide, waving his arm
and wailing:
"'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and a quarter."
But the victim, good-natured, readjusted his battered hat, and again
repeated his bid.
"Ah, go to bed," protested Hirsch.
"He's the man who struck Billy Paterson."
"Say, a horse bit him. Look out for him, he's going to have a duck-fit."
The incident appeared to be the inspiration for a new "josh" that had a
great success, and a group of traders organized themselves into an
"anti-cravat committee," and made the rounds of the Pit, twitching the
carefully tied scarfs of the unwary out of place. Grossman, indignant
at "t'ose monkey-doodle pizeness," withdrew from the centre of the Pit.
But while he stood in front of Leaycraft, his back turned, muttering
his disgust, the latter, while carrying on a grave conversation with
his neighbour, carefully stuck a file of paper javelins all around the
Jew's hat band, and then--still without mirth and still continuing to
talk--set them on fire.
Landry imagined by now that ninety-four and an eighth was as high a
figure as he could reasonably expect that morning, and so began to
"work off" his selling orders. Little by little he sold the wheat
"short," till all but one large lot was gone.
Then all at once, and for no discoverable immediate reason, wheat, amid
an explosion of shouts and vociferations, jumped to ninety-four and a
quarter, and before the Pit could take breath, had advanced another
eighth, broken to one-quarter, then jumped to the five-eighths mark.
It was the Report on the Visible Supply beyond question, and though it
had not yet been posted, this sudden flurry was a sign that it was not
only near at hand, but would be bullish.
A few moments later it was bulletined in the gallery beneath the dial,
and proved a tremendous surprise to nearly every man upon the floor. No
one had imagined the supply was so ample, so all-sufficient to meet the
demand. Promptly the Pit responded. Wheat began to pour in heavily.
Hirsch, Kelly, Grossmann, Leaycraft, the stolid Winston, and the
excitable Rusbridge were hard at it. The price began to give. Suddenly
it broke sharply. The hand on the great dial dropped to ninety-three
and seven-eighths.
Landry was beside himself. He had not foreseen this break. There was no
reckoning on that cursed "visible," and he still had 50,000 bushels to
dispose of. There was no telling now how low the price might sink. He
must act quickly, radically. He fought his way towards the Porteous
crowd, reached over the shoulder of the little Jew Grossmann, who stood
in his way, and thrust his hand almost into Paterson's face, shouting:
"'Sell fifty May at seven-eighths."
It was the last one of his unaccountable selling orders of the early
morning.
The other shook his head.
"'Sell fifty May at three-quarters."
Suddenly some instinct warned Landry that another break was coming. It
was in the very air around him. He could almost physically feel the
pressure of renewed avalanches of wheat crowding down the price.
Desperate, he grabbed Paterson by the shoulder.
"'Sell fifty May at five-eighths."
"Take it," vociferated the other, as though answering a challenge.
And in the heart of this confusion, in this downward rush of the price,
Luck, the golden goddess, passed with the flirt and flash of glittering
wings, and hardly before the ticker in Gretry's office had signalled
the decline, the memorandum of the trade was down upon Landry's card
and Curtis Jadwin stood pledged to deliver, before noon on the last day
of May, one million bushels of wheat into the hands of the
representatives of the great Bulls of the Board of Trade.
But by now the real business of the morning was over. The Pit knew it.
Grossmann, obstinate, hypnotized as it were by one idea, still stood in
his accustomed place on the upper edge of the Pit, and from time to
time, with the same despairing gesture, emitted his doleful outcry of
"'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and three-quarters."
Nobody listened. The traders stood around in expectant attitudes,
looking into one another's faces, waiting for what they could not
exactly say; loath to leave the Pit lest something should "turn up" the
moment their backs were turned.
By degrees the clamour died away, ceased, began again irregularly, then
abruptly stilled. Here and there a bid was called, an offer made, like
the intermittent crack of small arms after the stopping of the
cannonade.
"'Sell five May at one-eighth."
"'Sell twenty at one-quarter."
"'Give one-eighth for May."
For an instant the shoutings were renewed. Then suddenly the gong
struck. The traders began slowly to leave the Pit. One of the floor
officers, an old fellow in uniform and vizored cap, appeared, gently
shouldering towards the door the groups wherein the bidding and
offering were still languidly going on. His voice full of
remonstration, he repeated continually:
"Time's up, gentlemen. Go on now and get your lunch. Lunch time now. Go
on now, or I'll have to report you. Time's up."
The tide set toward the doorways. In the gallery the few visitors rose,
putting on coats and wraps. Over by the check counter, to the right of
the south entrance to the floor, a throng of brokers and traders
jostled each other, reaching over one another's shoulders for hats and
ulsters. In steadily increasing numbers they poured out of the north
and south entrances, on their way to turn in their trading cards to the
offices.
Little by little the floor emptied. The provision and grain pits were
deserted, and as the clamour of the place lapsed away the telegraph
instruments began to make themselves heard once more, together with the
chanting of the messenger boys.
Swept clean in the morning, the floor itself, seen now through the
thinning groups, was littered from end to end with scattered
grain--oats, wheat, corn, and barley, with wisps of hay, peanut shells,
apple parings, and orange peel, with torn newspapers, odds and ends of
memoranda, crushed paper darts, and above all with a countless
multitude of yellow telegraph forms, thousands upon thousands, crumpled
and muddied under the trampling of innumerable feet. It was the debris
of the battle-field, the abandoned impedimenta and broken weapons of
contending armies, the detritus of conflict, torn, broken, and rent,
that at the end of each day's combat encumbered the field.
At last even the click of the last of telegraph keys died down.
Shouldering themselves into their overcoats, the operators departed,
calling back and forth to one another, making "dates," and cracking
jokes. Washerwomen appeared with steaming pails, porters pushing great
brooms before them began gathering the refuse of the floor into heaps.
Between the wheat and corn pits a band of young fellows, some of them
absolute boys, appeared. These were the settlement clerks. They carried
long account books. It was their duty to get the trades of the day into
a "ring"--to trace the course of a lot of wheat which had changed hands
perhaps a score of times during the trading--and their calls of "Wheat
sold to Teller and West," "May wheat sold to Burbank & Co.," "May oats
sold to Matthewson and Knight," "Wheat sold to Gretry, Converse & Co.,"
began to echo from wall to wall of the almost deserted room.
A cat, grey and striped, and wearing a dog collar of nickel and red
leather, issued from the coat-room and picked her way across the floor.
Evidently she was in a mood of the most ingratiating friendliness, and
as one after another of the departing traders spoke to her, raised her
tail in the air and arched her back against the legs of the empty
chairs. The janitor put in an appearance, lowering the tall colored
windows with a long rod. A noise of hammering and the scrape of saws
began to issue from a corner where a couple of carpenters tinkered
about one of the sample tables.
Then at last even the settlement clerks took themselves off. At once
there was a great silence, broken only by the harsh rasp of the
carpenters' saws and the voice of the janitor exchanging jokes with the
washerwomen. The sound of footsteps in distant quarters re-echoed as if
in a church.
The washerwomen invaded the floor, spreading soapy and steaming water
before them. Over by the sample tables a negro porter in shirt-sleeves
swept entire bushels of spilled wheat, crushed, broken, and sodden,
into his dust pans.
The day's campaign was over. It was past two o'clock. On the great dial
against the eastern wall the indicator stood--sentinel fashion--at
ninety-three. Not till the following morning would the whirlpool, the
great central force that spun the Niagara of wheat in its grip, thunder
and bellow again.
Later on even the washerwomen, even the porter and janitor, departed.
An unbroken silence, the peacefulness of an untroubled calm, settled
over the place. The rays of the afternoon sun flooded through the west
windows in long parallel shafts full of floating golden motes. There
was no sound; nothing stirred. The floor of the Board of Trade was
deserted. Alone, on the edge of the abandoned Wheat Pit, in a spot
where the sunlight fell warmest--an atom of life, lost in the immensity
of the empty floor--the grey cat made her toilet, diligently licking
the fur on the inside of her thigh, one leg, as if dislocated, thrust
into the air above her head.