The next day Sugar opened with a wild rush: "25,000 shares from 140 to
152." That is the way it came on the tape, which meant that the crowd
around the Sugar-pole was a mob and that the transactions were so heavy,
quick, and tangled that no one could tell to a certainty just what the
first or opening price was; but after the first lull, after the gong,
there were officially reported transactions aggregating 25,000 shares and
at prices varying from 140 to 152. I was over on the floor to see the
scramble, for it was noised about long before ten o'clock that Sugar would
open wild, and then, too, I wanted to be handy if Bob should need any
quick advice.

A minute before the gong struck, there were three hundred men jammed
around the Sugar-pole; men with set, determined faces; men with their
coats buttoned tight and shoulders thrown back for the rush to which, by
comparison, that of a football team is child's play. Every man in that
crowd was a picked man, picked for what was coming. Each felt that upon
his individual powers to keep a clear head, to shout loudest, to forget
nothing, to keep his feet, and to stay as near the centre of the crowd as
possible, depended his "floor honour," perhaps his fortune, or, what was
more to him, his client's fortune. Nearly every man of them was a college
graduate who had won his spurs at athletics or a seasoned floor man whose
training had been even more severe than that of the college campus. When
it is known before the opening of the Exchange that there are to be
"things doing" in a certain stock, it is the rule to send only the picked
floor men into the crowd. There may be a fortune to make or to lose in a
minute or a sliver of a minute. For instance, the man who that morning was
able to snatch the first 5,000 shares sold at 140 could have resold them a
few minutes afterward at 152 and secured $60,000 profit. And the man who
was sent into the crowd by his client to sell 5,000 shares at the