Edwin Lefevre

“ Tommy felt that there was a quick-moving and utterly reliable intelligence within that cranium. It brought to him a sense of relief. In some unexplained way he was sure that he need not bother to pick and choose his own words in talking to Thompson. Whatever a man said, and even what he did not say, would be caught, not spectacularly or over-alertly, but unerringly, without effort, by this plump but efficient president. It stimulated Tommy's mind and made it work quickly, and also inclined him to frankness without exactly inducing an overwhelming desire to confide. ”

“ Fancy a man who suddenly announces—and proves it conclusively—that he has an unknown number of millions of bushels of excellent wheat; imagine the effect not only on unfortunate bull gamblers on the Board of Trade, but also on thousands of hard-working farmers. But the young man’s case was far worse. It was not alone his possession of much money; it was his having the gold itself! Money is only money, but gold is more: it is the measure of value. To disturb that was to disturb finance, commerce, and industry. The working-world would cease to labour, cease to breathe. ”

“ Grace Goodchild felt the stare of twenty pairs of eyes of differing degrees of brightness, but of the same degree of unbelief. They irritated her by flattering her. No woman can concentrate when watched by other women. Grace, therefore, was compelled to live up to the rôle which society had assigned to her, whether she liked it or not.
When you tell a man he is wise and ask for advice, he looks as wise as he can and answers ambiguously. When you tell a woman you don't believe her she indignantly tells you the truth. ”

“ What a place Dayton would be evenings!
In the Subway on his way to Colonel Willetts's office Tommy's mood left him. The New York he saw about him, with its alien faces—all kinds of faces and all alien—was not the place for him to work in. And his own particular New York was very small—a city with a score of inhabitants. His real life could never merge with the life of the strange and dislikable New York he saw in the streets and in the shops and in the office buildings. He could not work here, where every man was concerned with himself and no one else, and so plainly showed it in his face. ”

“ Anybody can buy stocks or can sell them. But not every one can sell stocks and at the same time convey the impression that he is buying them, and that prices therefore must inevitably go much higher. It requires boldness and consummate judgment, knowledge of technical stock-market conditions, infinite ingenuity and mental agility, absolute familiarity with human nature, a careful study of the curious psychological phenomena of gambling and long experience with the Wall Street public and with the wonderful imagination of the American people ”

“ It would be well to sell some to those wise rich men who wish to buy them; for the public is not buying stocks. Only the rich can buy—and suffer, it may be, eh, Mr. Grinnell?”
“I shall be glad to join you in such an operation, Mr. Herzog.”
“Thank you, sir; thank you. You leave it to me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well. It is possible you are rich; but it is certain your are wise, Mr. Grinnell. First, we shall buy bonds for you. That is the investment operation. For one hundred millions we may buy one hundred and twenty millions par value, of the best bonds in the world. ”

“ The harder the fight, the better! Fight the world, life, hell, Thompson, everything, and everybody, the more the better. He would die fighting, with his soul full of rage. The great reward was the end of all trouble!
When a man commits suicide in a really glorious way he grows calm. How can petty annoyances disturb a heroic corpse? Tommy grew calm. He would have to leave Dayton, but Dayton had taught him just one thing—that beyond all question there was some place in the world where Thomas Francis Leigh would prove his value! ”

“ Hendrik Rutgers, man of destiny, rose to speak. He never even glanced at the reporters. He said, very earnestly, to his tattered cohorts:
"Comrades! Ours is beyond question the only labor union in the United States, and, for all I know, in the entire world, that is not monopolistic in its tendencies. We are individualists because advertising is not a science nor a trade, but an art, and we are artists. When the advertisers' greed saw the artists' hunger, the result was that!" ”

“ The air was almost unbreathable for the innumerable “tips” to buy or sell securities and insecurities of all kinds. The brokers, the customers, the clerks, the Exchange door-keepers, all Wall Street read the morning papers, not to ascertain the news, but to pick such items as would, should, or might, have some effect on stock values. There was no god but the ticker, and the brokers were its prophets! ”

“ He was a pleasant-faced, pleasant-voiced young fellow, Treadwell thought. He was a good-hearted, jocular old fellow, unlike what he had imagined the leader of the stock market would be, Carey thought.
“Yes,” went on the colonel, “I remember your father very well. I never forget my up-the-State friends, and I am always glad to see their sons. When I ran for Congress, Bill Carey wrote red-hot editorials in my favor, and I was beaten by a large and enthusiastic majority. I haven’t seen your father in twenty-odd years—not since he went wrong and took to politics.” ”

“ I mean to be a very rich man, Mr. Dawson. Of course, I could live comfortably on the income of forty or fifty millions; but I am going to do more than live comfortably. Man owes certain duties to his fellow-men which are neglected too often. Why,” enthusiastically, “the possession of unlimited wealth in worthy hands would mean the realization of the beautiful dreams of those unselfish men whom you, doubtless, call Utopians, and Socialists, and visionaries. They are the men who believe that mankind, at heart, is good. They are the men who will revolutionize the world!” ”

“ They saw the usual Fifth Avenue crowd. They saw the full-fed, clock-hating faces of professional idlers; the drawn features of the busy money-maker with his perennial anxieties; the suddenly immobilized grimaces of millionaires intended to conceal the fear of God knew what; the contemptuous countenances of waiters from fashionable restaurants, who, like ordained priests, knew America at its worst, but, unlike priests, could not pity; healthy American boys with clean faces and the eyes of animals. ”

“ Tommy felt completely at his ease. “Well,” he began, and paused in order to visualize the shop and the men and their daily duties, “you tell your men what they must do to keep their jobs. Their product must always be the same, day after day. At college they tell a man what he must do in order that he himself may become the product of his own work. A man here is a cog in a machine. At college he is both a cog and a complete machine.” Tommy looked doubtfully at Mr. Thompson, who said:
“You are right—and very wrong. In the men themselves, Tommy, what is the difference?” ”

“ He shook hands with each man—a strong grip as though he were about to go on a journey from which he might never return—and in his heart of hearts there was a new doubt of the wisdom of going to Wall Street. ”