The stock operations alone would stagger the credulity even of the initiated, who should keep an accurate account of the amount changing hands from day to-day, and sum the whole at the expiration of the year. Many millions’ worth of this species of property would be found to have been bought and sold, making some richer and some poorer, and leaving some, but, doubtless, very few, about the same in purse at the end of the year, as they were at the beginning. If a person, standing on the steps of the exchange, were endowed with the faculty of reading the heart of every man that passed him, what numbers of agitated bosoms, what hopes, what fears, what emotions of vexation, sorrow, anger, and despair, would come under review; particularly after a panic among the speculators, and a consequent fall of stock! There are a few fortunate individuals, who owe to Wall street all they possess—having speculated and staked high under the benign influence of Fortune, while that goddess was in a kindly humor; but there are hundreds, nay, thousands, who have seen their wealth melt away there, like snow in a sunny nook on an April morn. “Make or break—neck or no joint,” are the mottoes there; for when a man once gets into the spirit of speculating, as this species of gambling is mildly termed, he is not apt to back out till he has made a fortune, or lost what he possessed—won the horse, or lost the saddle. The reader will see, in the course of this essay, to which of these categories I belong; for I, too, have been afflicted with the prevailing mania for stock-jobbing, and have shared in the hopes and fears, joy and sorrow, which are produced by the uncertainty of such operations, and the momentous consequences which often follow in their train. It is my purpose to give a short sketch of my doings in that line of business, (now so much in vogue,) for the amusement of those who never go into Wall street, and the benefit of such adventurous spirits as may be disposed to try their fortune at the same table. It may not be known to the majority of my readers, that the prices of stocks, in New York, are very much influenced by the weather; indeed, I have sometimes thought that their value, as a marketable commodity, depended more on the state of the atmosphere than on their intrinsic worth. I have known a snow-storm cause a sudden fall of two to five per cent.; and an April shower, though it lasted but an hour, more or less, have the same effect to the extent of one or two per cent. I have myself suffered in my speculations by a change of weather; and the only fortunate hit I ever made, I ascribe entirely to the opportune clearing up of a long storm.