“If he is in Chicago,” replied the Wall Street magnate, “you can have our dinner served in the room as usual. It will not disturb him, certainly, even if he should know of it, and he is not likely to know of it unless you tell him. I have dined in that room with my friends at least once a week during the last twenty years, and, not supposing you would ever rent it for other purposes, I have already invited them to meet me there this evening. I don’t like to change, in fact, I won’t change, and if you will not accommodate me I will take my patronage elsewhere.” After some hesitation, the clerk agreed to have dinner served in the room desired, and at seven o’clock that evening Mr. Arnold Claybank, with his guests, Mr. Isaiah Wolf and Mr. John Gray, assembled to discuss both the menu and the subject of their gathering. Not until the last course was removed, the Burgundy on the table, the cigars lighted, and the waiter excused from further attendance, did the great capitalists approach the real object of their meeting. Mr. Claybank observed that they might need writing materials, and, stepping to Morning’s desk, he seated himself thereat, and pulled what he supposed to be a bell cord that would summon a waiter. No waiter appeared in answer to the supposed summons, and Claybank, taking a notebook and pencil from his pocket, remarked that they would serve his purpose. These three gentlemen had dined well, and should have been in a pleasant frame of mind toward the world, for good dinners are, or ought to be, humanizing in their tendencies. Yet there are natures which will remain unaffected even by terrapins, Maryland style, and roasted canvas-back duck, assimilated with the aid of Lafitte and Pommery Sec., and no tigers crouching in the jungle were ever more merciless and conscienceless in their rapacity than these three black-coated capitalists. Mr. Arnold Claybank was the leading spirit of the conclave. His wealth was popularly estimated at $100,000,000. He had inherited none of it. At thirty-five years of age he was a dry goods merchant in an interior city in Ohio, possessed of less than $100,000. During his frequent visits to New York to purchase goods he was in the habit of “taking a flyer” in the stock market. These flyers proved so continuously successful, and added so largely to his capital, that in a few years he closed out his dry goods business, removed permanently to the metropolis, bought a seat in the stock board, and soon became known as one of the boldest and shrewdest operators in the street.