they said.  It was clear to me that the house of Duncan, Sherman & Co. was not fast in the discount line.  I then looked in at Drew & Robinson’s.  Thinking I had come to buy steamboats, a little, shriveled up old man led the way into a dark back office, saying he could give me but five minutes to make known my business.  Anxious to facilitate matters, I produced the note, saying that he of course knew the signer by reputation, and would like to discount it out of compliment to him.  A sight at the name, and it seemed as if he was about looking the glasses out of his spectacles.  Then he went straight into a passion, ordering me to leave the premises or he would call a policeman.  Not to swerve from the truth, I may say here, that I thought it very fortunate in getting into the Street without being kicked there.  All Wall Street, it seemed to me, was in a state of anxiety.  Every man looked as if he were besieged by his neighbor, or had had a breach made in him by some sudden revolution, and was in search of a physician to save his bleeding bowels.  Here and there I met a man looking as if he had just rushed into the street to proclaim the baseness and treachery of a newly discovered foe, who, with a thousand anxious thoughts, had carried away the last remnant of his fortune.

“I found I had been laboring under a political delusion.  Indeed, I felt like one in a desert without means of alleviating his misery, and turned to make my way out of Wall Street and declare myself its eternal enemy, so ungrateful was the reception it had given me.  And as I was proceeding through the mass of rapidly moving figures that surged along the sidewalk, my eye caught the sign of Van Vlete, Read, & Drexel.  The name struck me as being consonant with generosity, so I looked in, and was accosted by a tall, lean man, with a dusky complexion, and a face radiant of intelligence.  He stood behind a massive, semicircular counter, piled with bank notes and gold; and having readily engaged me in conversation, which he had the facility of doing without being interrupted in his business, I found him a man who could talk faster and much more sensibly than any revival preacher outside of Rhode Island.  And to this he added the rare quality of being courteous, which was remarkable in a Wall Street dealer in money.  Having discovered my business, he smiled and shook his head, evidently at what he was pleased to consider my freshness.

“The captain’s paper, he said, might be set down as floating security, the value of which was so prospective, depending as it did upon his future good behavior as well as the fortunes of his party, that he did not feel inclined to purchase any very large amount of it.  However, as he liked to be considered as a man of good parts, and as I had a prospect of getting a foreign mission, he would advance ten dollars on the five hundred, taking the risk of such change as years might produce in the fortunes of the great captain, which even the moon seemed to favor.  Having declined this generous offer, we parted excellent friends.”