It was about nine o'clock; the weather was mild, the sun shone. La
Salle Street swarmed with the multitudinous life that seethed about
the doors of the innumerable offices of brokers and commission men
of the neighbourhood. To the right, in the peristyle of the Illinois
Trust Building, groups of clerks, of messengers, of brokers, of
clients, and of depositors formed and broke incessantly. To the
left, where the facade of the Board of Trade blocked the street, the
activity was astonishing, and in and out of the swing doors of its
entrance streamed an incessant tide of coming and going. All the
life of the neighbourhood seemed to centre at this point--the
entrance of the Board of Trade. Two currents that trended swiftly
through La Salle and Jackson streets, and that fed, or were fed by,
other tributaries that poured in through Fifth Avenue and through
Clarke and Dearborn streets, met at this point--one setting in, the
other out. The nearer the currents the greater their speed.
Men--mere flotsam in the flood--as they turned into La Salle Street
from Adams or from Monroe, or even from as far as Madison, seemed to
accelerate their pace as they approached. At the Illinois Trust the
walk became a stride, at the Rookery the stride was almost a trot.
But at the corner of Jackson Street, the Board of Trade now merely
the width of the street away, the trot became a run, and young men
and boys, under the pretence of escaping the trucks and wagons of
the cobbles, dashed across at a veritable gallop, flung themselves
panting into the entrance of the Board, were engulfed in the turmoil
of the spot, and disappeared with a sudden fillip into the gloom of
the interior.

Often Jadwin had noted the scene, and, unimaginative though he was,
had long since conceived the notion of some great, some resistless