le of it doing all he might to encourage the storm.
As the stock world went to its sleepless bed on Tuesday night, it knew
about the Presidential defiance of Germany. That news was enough to keep
the stock world shivering till morning. When it arose and read the
_Daily Tory_, its chills were multiplied by two. As if trouble with
Germany were not sufficient invitation to general ruin, here came the
Hanway report driving a knife to the heart of Northern Consolidated! At
sight of that, the stock world's last hope abandoned it, and the work of
slaughter commenced. The old gray buccaneer grinned with happiness that
awful morning as he looked across the field of coming war.

Andrew Jackson, being half Scotch and half Irish, was wont before a
battle to think and plan with the prudent sagacity of a Bailey Jarvie.
Once the battle began, he ceased to be Scotch and became wholly Irish;
he quit thinking and devoted himself desperately to execution. The old
gray buccaneer of stocks was like Andrew Jackson. His plan, thoroughly
cautious and Scotch, had been laid to sell and sell and sell Northern
Consolidated until the stock was beaten down to twenty. He would sell
savagely, relentlessly, sell with his eyes shut, until the twenty point
was reached. And if necessary, he would sell four hundred thousand
shares.

The old gray buccaneer, under the conditions existing, did not think it
would require a sale of four hundred thousand shares before the market
broke to the figure he had fixed his heart upon. The general
conflagration raging must of necessity smoke out thousands and thousands
of innocent Northern Consolidated shares. These, blind and frenzied,
would rush plungingly into the flames like horses at a fire. The old
gray buccaneer felt sure that while he was selling four hundred thousand
shares, full two hundred thousand, mayhap three hundred thousand, shares
in addition would be offered. What stock could support itself against
such a flood as that? When the bottom was reached, and the time was
ripe, the pool would gather in the harvest. It was a beautiful plan; the
more beautiful because of its simplicity!

Instantly on the morning of that black Wednesday the sale of Northern
Consolidated began. Thousands of shares in two thousand, five thousand,
and even ten thousand lots were thrown upon the market by the old gray
buccaneer. In the roar and tumult of that disastrous day, what would
have been in calmer moments a spectacle of ast