"Then it is a very foolish question," said he. "Now, here are a
class of men whom we may daily meet on 'Change. Yet what poet in
the hall is more a fool of fancy than the sagest of them?"

He pointed to a number of persons, who, manifest as the fact was,
would have deemed it an insult to be told that they stood in the
Hall of Fantasy. Their visages were traced into wrinkles and
furrows, each of which seemed the record of some actual experience
in life. Their eyes had the shrewd, calculating glance which
detects so quickly and so surely all that it concerns a man of
business to know about the characters and purposes of his fellow-
men. Judging them as they stood, they might be honored and trusted
members of the Chamber of Commerce, who had found the genuine secret
of wealth and whose sagacity gave them the command of fortune.

There was a character of detail and matter of fact in their talk
which concealed the extravagance of its purport, insomuch that the
wildest schemes had the aspect of everyday realities. Thus the
listener was not startled at the idea of cities to be built, as if
by magic, in the heart of pathless forests; and of streets to be
laid out where now the sea was tossing; and of mighty rivers to be
stayed in their courses in order to turn the machinery of a cotton-
mill. It was only by an effort, and scarcely then, that the mind
convinced itself that such speculations were as much matter of
fantasy as the old dream of Eldorado, or as Mammon's Cave, or any
other vision of gold ever conjured up by the imagination of needy
poet or romantic adventurer.

"Upon my word," said I, "it is dangerous to listen to such dreamers
as these. Their madness is contagious."