grouping or attempt at concise characterization. Its advan tages for a universal mart are incredible.

It is Lombardstreet, Threadneedle-street, Old Broad-street, Wapping, the Docks, Thames-street and the Inns of Court, combined. In it is the Custom-House as well as the Exchange. It is a good dog-market, cow-market, and bird-market. If you want a pair of horses, and any description of new or secondhand carriage, wait a little and they will be paraded before you. You will find there the best fruit, and the finest flowers in their season. If you would have a donkey, a Shetland pony, a Newfoundland dog, a good milch cow and calf, a Berkshire pig, a terrier, white mice, a monkey or paroquets, they are to be had in Wall-street. It is a strange spot. On Sunday or early in the morning during the week it is like the street of a deserted city. About ten o'clock it begins to show signs of extraordinary animation. Through the day the turmoil increases, people run to and fro, and literally "stagger like drunken men." Toward three o'clock the street appears undergoing a series of desperate throes. Men rush madly past each other with bank-books in their hands, uncurrent money, notes, drafts, checks, specie. Occasionally you may see an individual on the steps of a building, evidently waiting for something, with an air of forced calmness. From time to time he turns his eye anxiously to the great dial-plate which is displayed from the church, and then up and down the street. The minute-hand has worked five into the last quarter. In ten more minutes it will be three o'clock. Occasionally an acquaintance passes; the man attempts as he bows to smile pleasantly; he can't do it, he only makes a grimace. What is he waiting for?

That individual has a note to pay, or a check to make good before three. He has worked hard, but the fates have been against him. One friend is out of town, a second is short, the third can't use his paper: he has sent to the last possible place. Look! the young man is coming. Yes? No? He runs eagerly up, thrusts the welcome little slip, a check for the desired amount, into the hands of the now agitated principal; it is rapidly endorsed, and on flies the youth to the bank.

Our hero relieved-he has probably borrowed the money for a day only, and has to renew the attack the next morning-now prepares to leave his office, he lights a cigar, invites the first friend he meets to take a drink with him, and strolls leisurely up Broadway as unconcernedly as if he had not a care in the world. Perhaps he does not come off so luckily; perhaps his young man reports to him, while standing gloomily on the steps, that it is "no go;" then the fatal hand which points toward three, travels fast. He considers a moment; he sees it can't be done; he waits till he hears the chimes ring out the full hour, and then his "mind is easy." Your shrewd money-lender understands this perfectly. He knows how unsafe it is to let his victim pass the point unrelieved; for, once having gone to protest, he becomes demoralized, and in consequence indifferent. So, just before the hour, the money is generally "found."

I find I have unconsciously departed from my proposed plan, which is, to allow the reader to become acquainted with the particulars of Wall-street life, by what he can learn of it from my personal history. This I will now resume, and ask pardon for the digression.

CHAPTER II.

PERSONAL.

I HAD buried my wife, and removed with my three children up-town, and settled into a cheap habit of living. I had no credit at the grocer's, nor with the baker, butcher or milk-man. I did not ask any. I was known only as an elderly gentleman, who bought very sparingly, and paid away his money as if he had but little of it. My daughter Alice and I understood each other perfectly. She was my only companion--for while the two younger children were a great solace and happiness, they were not old enough for society for me.

When you undertake, reader, to pay as you go, and never to purchase a penny's worth on credit, you will become economical in spite of yourself. Carefully indeed did I dispense the little sum which still remained to me, and which with the most careful husbanding of resources, grew ominously less.

The time had arrived when I must decide what to undertake for a living-how to support my children. I have referred to the influence of family connection under such circumstances to sustain a broken-down man of business and provide him a means of support. There was no one to raise a finger for me. "Well," I exclaimed to myself, walking up and down the little parlor, "is there really any thing left

of you? House and home and fortune gone. O Parkinson! you are a poor devil, with nobody to get up an insurance company for you to be the president of. Let me see; without a fine house, a fine carriage, fine horses and money, what do you amount to? That's the question. You have lived and worked hard many years, and failed. What have you to show for it? Lawrence, your classmate, is not worth a dollar in the world; yet what consideration he commands. He has done something. What have you done besides selling goods and looking carefully to the main chance?"

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Well, what is the cause of this heart-ache? Is it in consequence of living more meanly, faring on poorer food, keeping up no establishment? True, this may cause certain others to regard you in a different light, but why should you deem yourself thereby insignificant? If really, O Parkinson! your position was all there was of you, and in leaving it you became per se a nobody, having in times past done nothing and achieved nothing to entitle you to selfrecognition and to recognition from the world, beyond the disbursing of so much money per annum--but is it so ?"Then returned the question, what had I really done beyond selling goods, etc.? Do we inquire, I asked myself, if certain persons who fill prominent places of honor and trustfulness are rich or not? Yet, to become rich had been too much the question with me.

How had I neglected my life!

The great thing now was, not to lose my self-respect; not to seem contemptible in my own eyes. Had I not the same brain, and heart, and soul as ever? Were I dismissed from

this world, these alone would stead me. Standing on the other side of the river, I was perhaps superior to Russell. Now, then, could I endure until the appointed time?

Merchants, business men of New York, hearken! I do not accuse you of loving money too well, of being avaricious, covetous, miserly or grasping, but you devote your entire energies too much to your occupation. You make it the end and aim of your life instead of a means to comfort and happiness. You work too hard; you enjoy too little; you lose yourself in your employment. You rise early, breakfast; taking time scarcely to greet your children, you hasten to your place of business. Perhaps you only return in the evening after the little ones have gone to rest; or if to a late dinner, it amounts to the same thing. You manage to read the newspapers going and returning, and you read nothing else. On Sunday you endure a wretched, dyspeptic day; mind and body suddenly and entirely relaxed, the reaction is too great; you do not know what to do. You attend church; you stroll home; you yawn, smoke a cigar, make a call; play a little with the children, who are not more than half acquainted with you, and go to bed. You rise next morning and find it "blue Monday," and it takes you till Tuesday to get right. Why? Because you so overtask yourself that a day's relaxation makes you sick! Perhaps you accumulate a fortune, and you feel that you are entitled to repose and relaxation, but you dare not retire from business for fear you will become imbecile or lunatic! and your fears are well grounded. You have so fitted yourself into the harness that you can never get out of it. You are worse off than a poor man, for he is permitted to pre