The Deluge | Page 5

it. Now for some fun with your subjects and your fellow
sovereigns."
A little premature, that preening!

III
CAME A WOMAN
In my suite in the Textile Building, just off the big main room with its
blackboards and tickers, I had a small office in which I spent a good
deal of time during Stock Exchange hours. It was there that Sam
Ellersly found me the next day but one after my talk with Roebuck.
"I want you to sell that Steel Common, Matt," said he.
"It'll go several points higher," said I. "Better let me hold it and use my

judgment on selling."
"I need money--right away," was his answer.
"That's all right," said I. "Let me give you an order for what you need."
"Thank you, thank you," said he, so promptly that I knew I had done
what he had been hoping for, probably counting on.
I give this incident to show what our relations were. He was a young
fellow of good family, to whom I had taken a liking. He was a lazy dog,
and as out of place in business as a cat in a choir. I had been keeping
him going for four years at that time, by giving him tips on stocks and
protecting him against loss. This purely out of good nature and liking;
for I hadn't the remotest idea he could ever be of use to me beyond
helping to liven things up at a dinner or late supper, or down in the
country, or on the yacht. In fact, his principal use to me was that he
knew how to "beat the box" well enough to shake fairly good music out
of it--and I am so fond of music that I can fill in with my imagination
when the performer isn't too bad.
They have charged that I deliberately ruined him. Ruined! The first
time I gave him a tip--and that was the second or third time I ever saw
him--he burst into tears and said: "You've saved my life, Blacklock. I'll
never tell you how much this windfall means to me now." Nor did I
with deep and dark design keep him along on the ragged edge. He kept
himself there. How could I build up such a man with his hundred ways
of wasting money, including throwing it away on his own opinions of
stocks--for he would gamble on his own account in the bucket-shops,
though I had shown him that the Wall Street game is played always
with marked cards, and that the only hope of winning is to get the
confidence of the card-markers, unless you are big enough to become a
card-marker yourself.
As soon as he got the money from my teller that day, he was rushing
away. I followed him to the door--that part of my suite opened out on
the sidewalk, for the convenience of my crowds of customers. "I'm just
going to lunch," said I. "Come with me."
He looked uneasily toward a smart little one-horse brougham at the
curb. "Sorry--but I can't," said he. "I've my sister with me. She brought
me down in her trap."
"That's all right," said I; "bring her along. We'll go to the Savarin." And
I locked his arm in mine and started toward the brougham.

[Illustration]
He was turning all kinds of colors, and was acting in a way that puzzled
me--then. Despite all my years in New York I was ignorant of the
elaborate social distinctions that had grown up in its Fifth Avenue
quarter. I knew, of course, that there was a fashionable society and that
some of the most conspicuous of those in it seemed unable to get used
to the idea of being rich and were in a state of great agitation over their
own importance. Important they might be, but not to me. I knew
nothing of their careful gradations of snobbism--the people to know
socially, the people to know in a business way, the people to know in
ways religious and philanthropic, the people to know for the fun to be
got out of them, the people to pride oneself on not knowing at all; the
nervousness, the hysteria about preserving these disgusting gradations.
All this, I say, was an undreamed-of mystery to me who gave and took
liking in the sensible, self-respecting American fashion. So I didn't
understand why Sam, as I almost dragged him along, was stammering:
"Thank you--but--I--she--the fact is, we really must get up-town."
By this time I was where I could look into the brougham. A glance--I
can see much at a glance, as can any man who spends every day of
every year in an all-day fight for his purse and his life, with the blows
coming from all sides. I can