If it is nine-thirty or a quarter to ten you may see here and there in the preoccupied throng groups of three bearing wealth,--in each case two men with a box carried between them and a third walking close behind with one hand resting lightly upon something in his outer pocket. These are the trusted clerks of big banking and brokerage houses. They go each morning to fetch the strong box from one of the great Wall Street safety deposit vaults. At four o’clock they take it back for the night. The third man walking behind is probably unnecessary. If the box were not too heavy one man unarmed might bear it safely to and fro. Banditry,--that is to say, taking by force,--is here unknown. There is a legend to account for this fact. It is that the police keep a dead line around the money district which thieves dare not cross. Every crook in the world is supposed to know and respect the sacred taboo. It may be so, more or less. One need not believe it whole. A much more probable explanation is what any highwayman knows. He might make off with a dozen of those strong boxes and then be no richer than he was before. They contain no money at all, but stocks and bonds, numbered and registered, which represent wealth reduced to an impalpable, theft-proof form. A railroad may lie in one of those boxes. But if you ran away with the box you would have neither the railroad nor anything you could turn into cash. The lost stock and bond certificates would be cancelled and new ones issued in their place; and after that anyone who tried to sell one of the stolen certificates would be instantly arrested. I walked a little way into Wall Street, somewhat in awe of it, almost expecting to be noticed and challenged for trespassing. The atmosphere was strange and inhospitable and the language unknown. Two men were quarreling excitedly, one standing on the edge of the sidewalk, the other down on the pavement. One seemed to be denouncing the government for letting the country go bankrupt. “It is busted,” he shrieked. “The United States Treasury is busted.” The other at the same time spoke of the color, the shape, the bowels and religion of men who were exporting gold to Europe. I could make nothing of it whatever. Nobody else so much as glanced at them in passing. Everybody seemed absent, oblivious and self-involved. When two acquaintances met, or collided, there was a start of recognition between them, as if they had first to recall themselves from afar. Incessantly from within a great red brick building came a sound of b-o-o-ing, cavernous and despairing. This place was the Stock Exchange and the noise was that which brokers and speculators make when prices are falling.