I am quite sure if the Roues' Club in
Piccadilly could get itself removed to a house just here, those wicked old
men would spend their days glued to the windows. Well, we passed Washington
Square, which has a look of Russell or Bedford Squares, part of it, and
beyond that I can't remember the names of the streets; it all was so
crowded and intent and wonderful,--people racing and chasing after wealth,
I suppose.
Finally we got to Wall Street and the Stock Exchange. And Wall Street is
quite a little narrow, ordinary street, almost as mean as our Threadneedle
or Lombard Streets! The Stock Exchange is the most beautiful building! I
don't suppose you have ever been in one, Mamma, and I certainly shall never
want to see another. Imagine a colossal room as high as a church, with a
Greek roof and a gallery at one end, and down below countless human
beings--men at highest tension dealing with stocks and shares, in a noise
of hell which in groups here and there rose to a scream of exaltation or a
roar of disappointment. How anyone could keep nerves or hearing sense,
after a week of it, one cannot imagine. No wonder American men have nervous
prostration, and are so often a little deaf. The floor was strewn with bits
of paper, that they had used to make calculations on, and they had a lovely
kind of game of snowballing with it now and then--I suppose to vary the
monotony of shouting and screaming.
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