to lash them into a tempest of passion. They depicted the aristocrats
around them rolling in wealth, wrung from their necessities--laughing at
their sufferings while rioting in luxury--nay, hoarding up the very bread
without which they must starve, in order to realize a few dollars more on
a barrel of flour. Loud oaths and deep muttered curses followed these
appeals, and the excited multitude became agitated with passion. One of
the speakers closed his bitter harangue with "Fellow-citizens, Mr. Eli
Hart has now 53,000 barrels of flour in his store; let us go and offer him
eight dollars a barrel for it, and if he will not take it--" It was not
difficult to know how he meant to close the sentence; but just then, a
friend shrewder than he, seeing the legal consequences to themselves of an
open proposition to resort to violence, touched him on the shoulder, when
in a lower tone of voice he concluded: "_we shall depart in peace_."
In the excitement of the moment, he had evidently forgotten the guarded
language he intended to use, and was about to utter that which would have
consigned him to a prisoner's cell, but checked himself in time. He was
willing others should suffer the consequence of violating the law, to
which his appeals urged them; but his love for the poor did not prompt him
to share their fate.

It was bitterly cold, and it was a wonder that the crowd had listened
patiently so long. The proposition to go to Hart's store with a demand for
flour, was instantly seized, and those around the speaker started off with
a shout, and streaming down Broadway, poured in one dark living stream
along Cortlandt Street into Washington Street. The clerks in the store
heard the turmoil, and suspecting the object of the rioters, rushed to the
doors and windows, and began to close and bolt them. There were three
large iron doors opening on the sidewalk, and they had succeeded in
bolting and barring all but one, when the mob arrived. Forcing their way
through this middle door, the latter seized the barrels, and began to roll