him again,--FINE Harrison,' cries the Vice-President,
repeating the word without cessation until the broker's wrath has been
appeased, and he returns to his chair with the disagreeable reflection
that a heavy score is against him for the semi-annual settlement-day.
Every repetition of that fatal monosyllable was a fresh mark of fifty
cents or a dollar against his name. Generally, however, the Government
brokers are more orderly than their neighbors in the Regular Board.
Indeed, the whole proceedings are more decorous and respectful, the
bidding, half the time, being carried on in a low conversational tone.
At second call there is a brief excitement, but when 'things are dull'
throughout the street, this room peculiarly reflects the external
influences.

"Very different it is, however, on days when some special cause provokes
great fluctuations. Then the members spring from their seats, arms,
hands, excitable faces, rapid vociferations, all come in play, and the
element of pantomime performs its part in assisting the human voice as
naturally as among the Italians of Syracuse. To the uninitiated the
biddings here are as unintelligible as elsewhere, sounding to ordinary
ears like the gibberish of Victor Hugo's Compachinos. But the
comparative quietude of this Board renders it easier to follow the course
of the market, to detect the shades of difference in the running offers,
and generally to get a clearer conception of this part of the machinery
of stock brokerage."

In former times brokers were subjected to great expense in keeping a host
of runners and messengers to bring them news of the transactions at the
Exchanges. The introduction of the Stock Telegraph has made a great and
beneficial change in this respect. In every broker's office, and in the
principal hotels and restaurants of the city, there is an automatic
recording instrument connected by telegraphic wires with an instrument in
the Stock and Gold Exchanges. The operator in these exchanges indicates
the quotations of stocks and gold on his own instrument, and these
quotations are repeated by the instruments in the offices throughout the
city. These office instruments print the quotations in plain Roman
letters and figures on a ribbon of paper, so that any one can read and
understand them. Thus one man does the work formerly required of several
hundred, and no time is lost in conveying the information. The broker in
his office is informed of the tran