The great Republic might have survived even such horrors as these had it not been for the out-breaking of another craze more terrible far than an army with gattling guns, I refer to the most destructive of all scourges, the mania for stock-gambling. The crafty, unscrupulous managers of bucket-shops, stock-exchanges, and brokerages filled the columns of the press with manufactured accounts of vast fortunes made in an hour by imaginary investors of small sums, and at once multitudes of farmers, mechanics, and even teachers abandoned their honest pursuits to squander their hard earnings in the vain attempts to "buck the tiger," and "beard the lion in his den." The inevitable result followed: the lion and the lamb lay down together, with the lamb inside the lion, thousands of formerly well-to-do people were pauperized. Thousands of farms were abandoned, hundreds of factories were deserted, while the fiendish, cheating boss-gambler sharks were gorged to repletion with their infamous plunder; then followed a frenzy of hatred on the part of the masses against the classes: city treasuries were depleted to feed the starving with free soup, the cities were crowded with the desperate, hungry multitudes who had lost their all, and bloody riots capped the climax of a hell on earth. From the cupola of the State House in Boston, a little group of citizens gazed upon a scene which would daunt the stoutest heart; these five men standing motionless and speechless under the gilded dome are of widely differing stations in life, as far apart as the poles in culture, education, and creed, but their faces wore the same expressions of profound sadness mingled with stern determination. The tall man on the right is the Governor of the State of Massachusetts, a millionaire, a classic face showing his aristocratic lineage in every feature, a scholarly, furrowed brow, dressed with scrupulous care, and looking at the frightful scenes with the dauntless eye of an eagle. He is the chosen leader of the Republican party which for many years has controlled the destinies of the "Old Bay State." Next stands a man in every way in strong contrast to his refined companion, a short, stout, ruddy-faced son of Ireland, but now Mayor of the city of Boston, a Democrat of Democrats, carelessly dressed, a political boss, who under ordinary circumstances would never have affiliated with his lordly neighbor.