It is really surprising what effect the weather has upon the minds of stock-operators. Apparently, those enterprising fellows are as susceptible to the influence of the atmosphere, as poets; though in every thing else, it must be confessed, they are as different from the _genus irritabile vatum_, as Horace calls them, as the orange-water on a lady’s toilet is from the plain, unperfumed Croton in which she laves her hands. On a bright, sunny day their countenances wear a cheerful expression, their bosoms throb with joyful expectations of an advance or fall in prices, as may happen to suit their purpose; and, in a word, they feel richer and better, and are prepared to renew their operations with increased spirit. Hence the expression so often seen in the “Money Articles” of our daily papers, “there was a better feeling at both boards to-day;” and this stereotyped phrase has become equivalent to the announcement that the weather has become exceedingly fine. In cloudy weather, on the contrary, particularly if it rains, their faces are generally augmented longitudinally to a very considerable extent; and so true an interpreter is a broker’s face of the state of the heavens, that one might safely depend on it for information without looking at the sky. I regard a speculator’s countenance as far more reliable than a weathercock, because I have known the latter to deceive me by pointing westward, when, according to the weather, it should have stood in the opposite stormy quarter. But the face of a stock-operator of New York was never known to play tricks of this kind, within the far-reaching memory of that most respectable, and often referred-to individual, the Oldest Inhabitant. No man ever saw a smile on his phiz, except when the sun shone. There are some shrewd men in New York, who perfectly understand these “skyey influences,” and regulate their speculative movements accordingly—buying in a storm, especially if it be a long and severe one, and selling out whenever the succeeding clear weather has produced a favorable reaction in prices. One rich individual, living up town, the moment he rises in the morning, opens his window and looks at the vane on a neighboring steeple—the only part of the church, by the way, he cares a fig about—and if the wind happen to blow from a rainy point, he hastens down town, and orders his broker to dive deep into some of the “fancies.” If, however, the day be clear, he stays at home, his broker being already instructed to sell out some previous purchase, as soon as the weather should warrant.