country who wants to come before you as bad as Jim Fisk,
Jr. I have thirty or forty thousand wives and children to feed with
the money disbursed from our office. We have no money to pay them, and
I know what has brought them to this condition."

Another extract from Fisk's testimony gives a graphic view of his
condition when the crash came: "I went down to the neighborhood of
Wall Street Friday morning. When I got back to our office you can
imagine I was in no enviable state of mind, and the moment I got up
street that afternoon I started right round to old Corbin's to rake him
out. I went into the room, and sent word that Mr. Fisk wanted to see
him in the dining-room. I was too mad to say anything civil, and when
he came into the room, said I, 'Do you know what you have done here,
you and your people?' He began to wring his hands, and 'Oh,' he says,
'this is a horrible position. Are you ruined?' I said I didn't know
whether I was or not; and I asked him again if he knew what had
happened. He had been crying, and said he had just heard; that he had
been sure everything was all right; but that something had occurred
entirely different from what he had anticipated. Said I, 'That don't
amount to anything. We know that gold ought not to be at thirty-one,
and that it would not be but for such performances as you have had this
last week; you know ---- well it would not if you had not failed.' I
knew that somebody had run a saw right into us, and said I, 'This whole
---- thing has turned out just as I told you it would.' I considered
the whole party a pack of cowards; and I expected that, when we came
to clear our hands, they would sock it right into us. I said to him,
'I don't know whether you have lied or not, and I don't know what ought
to be done with you.'

"He was on the other side of the table, weeping and wailing, and I was
gnashing my teeth. 'Now,' he says, 'you must quiet yourself.' I told
him I didn't want to be quiet; I had no desire to ever be quiet again.
He says, 'But, my dear sir, you will lose your reason.' Says I,
'Speyers has already lost his reason; reason has gone out of everybody
but me.'"

My part and my interest in the events of Black Friday came to an end
with an effort to ascertain the authorship of an anonymous
communication, written in red ink, that I received the 6th day of
October. It was postmarked at New York, the 5th of October, 1869.
(A reduced facsimile of the communica