quite a little narrow, ordinary street, almost as mean as our Threadneedle
or Lombard Streets! The Stock Exchange is the most beautiful building! I
don't suppose you have ever been in one, Mamma, and I certainly shall never
want to see another. Imagine a colossal room as high as a church, with a
Greek roof and a gallery at one end, and down below countless human
beings--men at highest tension dealing with stocks and shares, in a noise
of hell which in groups here and there rose to a scream of exaltation or a
roar of disappointment. How anyone could keep nerves or hearing sense,
after a week of it, one cannot imagine. No wonder American men have nervous
prostration, and are so often a little deaf. The floor was strewn with bits
of paper, that they had used to make calculations on, and they had a lovely
kind of game of snowballing with it now and then--I suppose to vary the
monotony of shouting and screaming. The young ones would pelt each other.
It must have been a nice change.--Then there were a lot of partitions with
glass panels at the end of the room, and into these they kept rushing like
rabbits into their holes, to send telegrams about the prices, I suppose.
And all the while in a balcony half way up one of the great blank empty
walls, a dear old white bearded gentleman sat and gazed in a benevolent way
at the shrieking crowd below.

They told us he was there to keep order! But no one appeared to care a pin
for his presence, and as he did not seem to mind, either, what row they
made, we rather wondered what the occasions could be when he would exert
his authority! Presently he went away to lunch, and as no one else took his
place, they were able to make as much noise as they liked, though it did
not seem any greater than before.

Can you imagine, Mamma, spending days in a place like that? No wonder when
they get up town they don't want to talk. But Mrs. Van Brounker-Courtfield
says everyone is too restless to stay quietly at home in the evenings, and