millions contingent on success. Yielding to frantic requests, President
Grant, who returned to Washington, caused Secretary Boutwell, of the
Treasury, to throw $4,000,000 of gold into the market. Relief was
instantaneous, the corner was broken, but the harm had been done.
Edison's remarks shed a vivid side-light on this extraordinary episode:
"On Black Friday," he says, "we had a very exciting time with the
indicators. The Gould and Fisk crowd had cornered gold, and had run the
quotations up faster than the indicator could follow. The indicator was
composed of several wheels; on the circumference of each wheel were the
numerals; and one wheel had fractions. It worked in the same way as an
ordinary counter; one wheel made ten revolutions, and at the tenth
it advanced the adjacent wheel; and this in its turn having gone ten
revolutions, advanced the next wheel, and so on. On the morning of
Black Friday the indicator was quoting 150 premium, whereas the bids by
Gould's agents in the Gold Room were 165 for five millions or any part.
We had a paper-weight at the transmitter (to speed it up), and by one
o'clock reached the right quotation. The excitement was prodigious. New
Street, as well as Broad Street, was jammed with excited people. I sat
on the top of the Western Union telegraph booth to watch the surging,
crazy crowd. One man came to the booth, grabbed a pencil, and attempted
to write a message to Boston. The first stroke went clear off the blank;
he was so excited that he had the operator write the message for him.
Amid great excitement Speyer, the banker, went crazy and it took five
men to hold him; and everybody lost their head. The Western Union
operator came to me and said: 'Shake, Edison, we are O. K. We haven't
got a cent.' I felt very happy because we were poor. These occasions are
very enjoyable to a poor man; but they occur rarely."

There is a calm sense of detachment about this description that has
been possessed by the narrator even in the most anxious moments of his