In the group were sitting "Harry" Weil, who time and again has tied tin cans to Wall Street's tail; big, bluff, honest "Billy" Oliver, whose "I'll take ten thousand more" is as familiar to Stock Exchange members as the sound of the gong; and little "Jakey" Field, most audacious and resourceful of floor operators, graduated but a few years ago from the ranks of Wall Street's errand boys—"Jakey" Field, who is able single-handed to turn a "bear" market in a rout by "bidding 'em up all round the room five thousand at a crack"—which means he dares buy one hundred thousand shares off the reel in a demoralized market when every one is selling, thus standing to make or lose a million or two on his judgment.
They listened, breathless, while I poured out the story of the terrific rush of Amalgamated subscribers. Another group hailed me and I recounted the same story. So it went all over the busy assemblage—"dollars, dollars, dollars," how to get them, how to get them quick. The money talk ebbed and flowed; the chink of dollars echoed in the rattle of china, in the tinkling of glasses, in the laughs and salutations, in the shuffle of feet. It was the one word, the single theme, the alpha and omega of all these men of talent and virility who accorded me recognition as one of themselves and assumed that I, too, was crucified to the two bars on the snaky S; the whole thing was so interesting that I lost sight of the terrible seriousness of it, and I chuckled as one does when one sits on the cool grass under the apple-trees in summer and watches myriads of ants hustling and jostling and bumping over each other to get away with what to humans is but a tiny grain of dirt.
As I arose to go at last, the head waiter came forward and led me into a corner, where his assistant and the chef awaited me. All with tremendous earnestness asked, "Is it safe, Mr. Lawson, for us to put our savings in Amalgamated?" They took my breath away by telling me they proposed to subscribe for one thousand, five hundred, and two hundred shares each, $100,000, $50,000, and $20,000 worth, if I but said the word.