326 WALL STREET AND THE WILDS 



paid rent for often we occupied our table for 

 hours. It required a serious call from the office 

 to withdraw me from the fascinations of his 

 humorous characterizations of the men most in 

 the lime-light of the street and his caustic com- 

 ments on the ethics of his own profession as 

 handed down to him from the publication office. 

 He was a dreamer of dreams and in one of our 

 symposiums which lasted until going-home time 

 he began with the hopes and history of ancient 

 alchemists, which I supplemented as well as I 

 could with the accomplishments of modern chem- 

 ists in analogous lines and between us we worked 

 out a theory that later sent me off on a tangent of 

 chemical experiments from which I only with- 

 drew after feeling the suction of the whirlpool 

 that has drawn to destruction all followers of the 

 phantom of the philosopher's stone in any of its 

 protean forms. 



The crystallization of carbon was our thought, 

 although our theory was not sustained by the con- 

 ditions surrounding the diamond mines of the 

 world. Our conclusion was that in marsh gas we 



