The swarms ebb and flow about these little stands—­bees, not bringing any honey, but attracted to the hive where it is rumored most honey is to be had.  By habit some always stand or sit about a particular hive, waiting for the show of comb.  By-and-by there is a stir; the crowd thickens; one beardless youth shouts out the figure “one-half”; another howls, “three-eighths.”  The first one nods.  It is done.  The electric wire running up the stand quivers and takes the figure, passes it to all the other wires, transmits it to every office and hotel in the city, to all the “tickers” in ten thousand chambers and “bucketshops” and offices in the republic.  Suddenly on the bulletin-boards in New Orleans, Chicago, San Francisco, Podunk, Liverpool, appear the mysterious “three-eighths,” electrifying the watchers of these boards, who begin to jabber and gesticulate and “transact business.”  It is wonderful.

What induced the beardless young man to make this “investment” in “three-eighths”—­who can tell?  Perhaps he had heard, as he came into the room, that the Secretary of the Treasury was going to make a call of Fives; perhaps he had heard that Bismarck had said that the French blood was too thin and needed a little more iron; perhaps he had heard that a norther in Texas had killed a herd of cattle, or that two grasshoppers had been seen in the neighborhood of Fargo, or that Jay Hawker had been observed that morning hurrying to his brokers with a scowl on his face and his hat pulled over his eyes.  The young man sold what he did not have, and the other young man bought what he will never get.

This is business of the higher and almost immaterial sort, and has an element of faith in it, and, as one may say, belief in the unseen, whence it is characterized by an expression—­“dealing in futures.”  It is not gambling, for there are no “chips” used, and there is no roulette-table in sight, and there are no piles of money or piles of anything else.  It is not a lottery, for there is no wheel at which impartial men preside to insure honest drawings, and there are no predestined blanks and prizes, and the man who buys and the man who sells can do something, either in the newspapers or elsewhere, to affect the worth of the investment, whereas in a lottery everything depends upon the turn of the blind wheel.  It is not necessary, however, to attempt a defense of the Chamber.  It is one of the recognized ways of becoming important and powerful in this world.  The privilege of the floor—­a seat, as it is called—­in this temple of the god Chance to be Rich is worth more than a seat in the Cabinet.  It is not only true that a fortune may be made here in a day or lost here in a day, but that a nod and a wink here enable people all over the land to ruin others or ruin themselves with celerity.  The relation of the Chamber to the business of the country is therefore evident.  If an earthquake should suddenly sink this temple and all its votaries into the bowels of the earth, with all its nervousness and all its electricity, it is appalling to think what would become of the business of the country.