Within doors there were cool bank parlors and insurance offices, with long rows of comely clerks writing in those Russia red books which Thomas Tray loved—­or wetting their fingers on little sponges in little glass dishes and counting whole fortunes in bank-notes—­or perched high on office-stools eating apples—­while Presidents and Directors, with shiny bald pates and bewigged heads, some heroically with permanent spectacles and others coyly and weakly with eye-glasses held in the hand, sat perusing the papers, telling the news, and gossiping about engagements, and marriages, and family rumors, and secrets with the air of practical men of the world, with no nonsense, no fanaticism, no fol-de-rol of any kind about them, but who profoundly believed the Burt theory that wives and daughters were a more sacred kind of property than sheep pastures, or even than the most satisfactory bond and mortgage.

They talked politics, these banking and insurance gentlemen, with vigor and warmth.  “What on earth does, this General Jackson mean, Sir?  Is he going to lay the axe at the very roots of our national prosperity?  What the deuce does a frontier soldier know about banking?”

They talked about Morgan who had been found in Lake Ontario; and the younger clerks took their turn at it, and furiously denied among themselves that Washington was a Mason.  The younger clerks held every Mason responsible for the reported murder.  Then they turned pale lest their neighbors were Masons, and might cause them to be found drowned off the Battery.  The older men shook their heads.

Murders—­did you speak of murders, Mr. Van Boozenberg?  Why, this is a dreadful business in Salem!  Old Mr. White murdered in his bed!  The most awful thing on record.  Terrible stories are told, Sir, about respectable people!  It’s getting to be dangerous to be rich.  What are we coming to?  What can you expect, Sir, with Fanny Wright disseminating her infidel sentiments, and the work-people buying The Friend of Equal Human Rights?  Equal human fiddle-sticks, Mr. Van Boozenberg!

To which remarks from the mouths of many Directors that eminent officer nodded his head, and looked so wise that it was very remarkable so many foolish transactions took place under his administration.

And in all the streets of the great city, in all the lofty workshops and yards and factories, huge hammers smote and clashed, and men, naked to the waist, reeking in dingy interiors, bent like gnomes at their tasks, while saws creaked, wheels turned, planes and mallets, and chisels shoved and cut and struck; and down in damp cellars sallow ghastly men and women wove rag-carpets, and twisted baskets in the midst of litters of puny, pale children, with bleared eyes, and sore heads, and dirty faces, tumbling, playing, shouting, whimpering—­scampering after the pigs that came rooting and nosing in the liquid filth that simmered and stank to heaven in the gutters at the top of the stairs; and the houses