178 WALL STREET AND THE WILDS 



The price of gold had been run up to a point 

 where it was impossible to hold it and ruin was 

 in sight. Fisk's best suggestion to force mercan- 

 tile and other shorts to cover was to advertise 

 names and amounts in the morning journals with 

 the warning that the price would be at once put 

 to two hundred unless all the shorts covered. 

 There was sense enough in the gang to suppress 

 that manifesto of folly, for Gould had a scheme 

 of sheer diabolism brooding in his more subtle 

 mind. 



Black Friday is burned into my memory as is 

 the fourteenth of April, 1861, when the news 

 came of the fall of Sumter. As I entered the 

 Gold Room on that 24th of September, 1869, 

 my hands trembled and my heart seemed to 

 turn to water. Yet I had no commitments 

 which could harm me, for in fear of the unknown 

 I had closed everv short contract and could carry 

 the gold I held through any possible break, while 

 a big advance would mightily help my balance. 

 There were pallid faces around me and hands 

 that trembled like mine, for the mental atmos- 



