Never was more blatant humbug aired than that about our "brilliant" Wall Street financiers. Their "brilliancy" is merely a repulsive egotism in one of its worst forms,--that of cupidity. They are like misers with longer, quicker, and more sinewy fingers than other misers, in the gathering together of dollars. Their shrewdness may be exceptional, but a quality which consists half in accurate guessing and half in bullying defiance is hardly worthy of the name. As for their "nerve" and "coolness," these are not endowments that in such connection can be admired or praised. For surely the gambler who cannot face bravely those very slings and arrows of variant if not always outrageous fortune which form the chief indices of his dingy profession, cuts a mean enough figure in the cult of it. "Jim" Fisk had traits like these, but who now applauds them? As well admire the courage of a house-breaker in scaling a garden-wall at midnight, or his exquisite tact in selecting a bed-chamber well-stored with jewels and money. The so-called "great men" of Wall Street are foes of society--foes merciless and malign. Their "generalship," their "Napoleonic" attributes are terms coined by people of their own damaging class, people with low motives, with even brutish morals. It is time that this age of ours, so rich in theoretic if impracticable humanitarianisms, forebore to flatter the spirits which work against it in its efforts toward higher and wiser achievement. The anarchists hanged in Chicago were men of mistaken purpose and fatuous belief. But at least they were conceivably sincere, however dangerous to peace and order. These czars and tycoons of finance, on the other hand, are scoffers at the integrity of the commonweal, and have for their Lares and Penates hideous little gods carved by their own misanthropy from the harsh granite of self-worship. Every new conspiracy to amass millions through wrecking railroads, through pouring vast sums upon the stock market, through causing as vast sums to disappear from public use, stains them blacker with the proof of their horrible inhumanity. Even death does not always end their monstrous rapine, for when they pay what is called the debt of nature they too often fling, in their wills, a posthumous sneer at that still larger debt owed to their fellow-creatures, and make some eldest son their principal heir. Charity may get a few niggardly thousands from them, and handsome bequests usually go to their younger children; yet the bulk of the big gambler's treasure passes intact to one who will most probably guard with avid custody the alleged prestige of its possession.