nvy for his luck made his soul thrill
joyously. Among his new friends in Wall Street also he found much to
enjoy. The other customers--some of them very wealthy men--listened to
his views regarding the market as attentively as he, later, felt it his
polite duty to listen to theirs. The brokers themselves treated him as
a "good fellow." They cajoled him into trading often--every one hundred
shares he bought or sold meant $12.50 to them--and when he won, they
praised his unerring discernment. When he lost they soothed him by
scolding him for his recklessness--just as a mother will treat her
three-year-old's fall as a great joke in order to deceive the child into
laughing at its misfortune. It was an average office with an average
clientele.

From ten to three they stood before the quotation board and watched a
quick-witted boy chalk the price changes, which one or another of the
customers read aloud from the tape as it came from the ticker. The
higher stocks went the more numerous the customers became, being allured
in great flocks to the Street by the tales of their friends, who had
profited greatly by the rise. All were winning, for all were buying
stocks in a bull market. They resembled each other marvelously, these
men who differed so greatly in cast of features and complexion and age.
Life to all of them was full of joy. The very ticker sounded mirthful;
its clicking told of golden jokes. And Gilmartin and the other customers
laughed heartily at the mildest of stories without even waiting for the
point of the joke. At times their fingers clutched the air happily, as
if they actually felt the good money the ticker was presenting to them.
They were all neophytes at the great game--lambkins who were bleating
blithely to inform the world what clever and formidable wolves they
were. Some of them had sustained occasional losses; but these were
trifling compared with their winnings.

When the slump came all were heavily committed to the bull side. It was
a bad slump. It was so unexpected--by the lambs--that all of them said,
very gravely, it came like a thunderclap out of a clear sky. While it
lasted, that is, while the shearing of the flock was proceeding, it
was very uncomfortable. Those same joyous, winning stock-gamblers,
with beaming faces, of the week before, were fear-clutched, losing
stock-gamblers, with livid faces, on what they afterward called the day
of the panic. It really was only a slump; rather sharper than