Our single and signal contribution to the callings of the world has been the apotheosis of the stock-broker. For the last twenty-five years, the well-to-do father and mother and their sons, in our large cities, have been under the spell of a craze for the brokerage business. The consciousness that the refinements of modern living cannot adequately be supplied in a large city to a family whose income does not approximate ten thousand dollars a year, is a cogent argument in favor of trying to grow rich rapidly, and both the promising young man and the general utility man welcomed the new calling with open arms. Impelled by the notion that here was a vocation which required no special knowledge or attainments, and very little capital, which was pleasant, gentlemanly, and not unduly confining, and which promised large returns almost in the twinkling of an eye, hundreds and thousands of young men became brokers--chiefly stock-brokers, but also cotton-brokers, note-brokers, real-estate-brokers, insurance-brokers, and brokers in nearly everything. The field was undoubtedly a rich one for those who first entered it. There was a need for the broker, and he was speedily recognized as a valuable addition to the machinery of trade. Many huge fortunes were made, and we have learned to associate the word broker with the possession of large means, an imposing house on a fashionable street, and diverse docked and stylish horses. Of course, the king of all brokers has been the stock-broker, for to him was given the opportunity to buy and sell securities on his own account, though he held himself out to his customers as merely a poor thing who worked for a commission. No wonder that the young man, just out of college, listened open-mouthed to the tales of how many thousands of dollars a year so and so, who had been graduated only five years before, was making, and resolved to try his luck with the same Aladdin’s lamp. Nor was it strange that the sight of men scarcely out of their teens, driving down town in fur coats, in their own equipages, with the benison of successful capitalists in their salutations, settled the question of choice for the youth who was wavering or did not know what he wished to do.