incandescence, and the huge electric signs beginning to glare above the theatre entrances. By the time I reached the Waldorf, that high abode of Yankee royalty, the kinks and curlicues were so far ironed from my nerves and brain that I had little doubt of my ability to take a fall out of Fate in whatever sort of collar-and-elbow tussle she might designate. In this mood I swung into the huge hotel through the carriage entrance on Thirty-fourth Street, eager to forget myself amid the rapt concourse of dollar worshippers, preening themselves against the plush, onyx, and gildings of the Astor caravansary. I seemed to see in the mirrors, on the walls, on the buttons of the lackeys' livery, in the patterns of the rugs, inscribed on the tessellated floors and painted on the lofty ceilings, dazzling and glittering, the universal crest of the twisted S with its two upright bars.
Dollars, dollars, dollars.
Through the office I pushed, my path disputed by the hosts of Crœsus in ambush for market information. Colonels and generals of the almighty-dollar army were on either flank of me, and the air was thick with the echo and the rumor of millions. At last I found myself in the high and splendid room, with its tall windows elaborately curtained with velvet, its floor space studded with small tables, where after four o'clock any afternoon, the year round, you will find the active Wall Street contingent busily discussing the day's doings and plotting good or evil for the morrow. There they all were, that eventful evening, in parties of seven or eight clustered at the little tables, and as I entered a vigorous hail caught my ear and again I found myself surrounded.
"Sit down a minute, Lawson," said ex-Congressman Jefferson M. Levy—"Jeff Levy" in Wall Street—"and tell us about Amalgamated. I suppose there's not a chance to get what one wants unless one subscribes for five or ten times more than one needs, but if you say that's straight, I'll put in another subscription for ——."