ive millions or any part.
We had a paper-weight at the transmitter (to speed it up), and by one
o'clock reached the right quotation. The excitement was prodigious. New
Street, as well as Broad Street, was jammed with excited people. I sat
on the top of the Western Union telegraph booth to watch the surging,
crazy crowd. One man came to the booth, grabbed a pencil, and attempted
to write a message to Boston. The first stroke went clear off the blank;
he was so excited that he had the operator write the message for him.
Amid great excitement Speyer, the banker, went crazy and it took five
men to hold him; and everybody lost their head. The Western Union
operator came to me and said: 'Shake, Edison, we are O. K. We haven't
got a cent.' I felt very happy because we were poor. These occasions are
very enjoyable to a poor man; but they occur rarely."

There is a calm sense of detachment about this description that has
been possessed by the narrator even in the most anxious moments of his
career. He was determined to see all that could be seen, and, quitting
his perch on the telegraph booth, sought the more secluded headquarters
of the pool forces. "A friend of mine was an operator who worked in the
office of Belden & Company, 60 Broadway, which were headquarters for
Fisk. Mr. Gould was up-town in the Erie offices in the Grand Opera
House. The firm on Broad Street, Smith, Gould & Martin, was the other
branch. All were connected with wires. Gould seemed to be in charge,
Fisk being the executive down-town. Fisk wore a velvet corduroy coat
and a very peculiar vest. He was very chipper, and seemed to be
light-hearted and happy. Sitting around the room were about a dozen
fine-looking men. All had the complexion of cadavers. There was a basket
of champagne. Hundreds of boys were rushing in paying checks, all checks
being payable to Belden & Company. When James Brown, of Brown Brothers
& Company, broke the corner by selling five million gold, all payments
were repudiated by Smith, Gould & Martin; but they continued to receive
checks at Belden & Company's for some time, until the Street got wind of
the game. There was some kind of conspiracy with the Government people
which I could not make out, but I heard messages that opened my eyes as
to the ramifications of Wall Street. Gold fell to 132, and it took us
all night to get the indicator back to that quotation. All night long
the streets were full of people. Every broker's office was b