horses, each one of whom he can call by name; a hundred
and fifty dogs; and a building for training his animals larger than
Madison Square Garden." These eloquent lines will prove to you more
clearly than pages of argument the native heroism of the man. He was
scarce out of his cradle when he began to amass vast sums of money, and
he is now, after many years of adventure, a king upon Wall Street. He
represents the melodrama of wealth. He seems to live in an atmosphere
of mysterious disguises, secret letters, and masked faces. His famous
contest with Mr H. H. Rogers, "the wonderful Rogers, the master among
pirates, whom you have to salute even when he has the point of his
cutlass at the small of your back and you're walking the plank at his
order," was conducted, on Mr Lawson's part, in the spirited style of
the old Adelphi. "Mr Rogers' eyes snapped just once," we are told, on
a famous occasion; but Mr Lawson was not intimidated. "I held myself
together," he says proudly, "with closed hands and clinched teeth."
Indeed, these two warriors have never met without much snapping of eyes
and closing of hands and clinching of teeth. Why they snapped and closed
and clinched is uncertain. To follow their operations is impossible for
an outsider, but Mr Lawson always succeeds in convincing you that on the
pretence of money-making he is attacking some lofty enterprise. He would
persuade you that he is a knight-errant of purity. "Tremendous
issues" are always at stake. The heroes of Wall Street are engaged in
never-ending "battles." They are "fighting" for causes, the splendour of
which is not dimmed in Mr Lawson's lurid prose. They have Americanised
the language of ancient chivalry, until it fits the operations of the
modern market. They talk of honour and of "taking each other's word,"
as though they had never stooped to dollars in their lives. But of one
thing you may be sure--they are always "on hand when a new melon is cut
and the juice runs out."

Like the knights of old, they toil not neither do they spin. They make
nothing, they produce nothing, they invent nothing. They merely gamble
with the savings of others, and find the business infinitely profitable.
Yet they, too, must cultivate the language of sentiment. Though the
world is spared the incubus of their philanthropy, they must pretend, in
phrase at least, that they are doing good, and their satisfaction proves
that nothing so swiftly and tranquilly lulls the conscience