Members of the Stock Exchange are more or less familiar with Baron Munchausen and Mother Goose--for if rumor be credited both these characters live in Wall Street--so they accept with good humor the epic touch of playwright and novelist who thus take poetic liberties with them and their profession. But the iron enters into their souls when you term them non-producers and parasites, and long into the night they will debate it with heat, bringing down the lath and plaster on their detractors with the heavy artillery of all the orthodox economists, and painting in gloomy colors the picture of a commercial world without its great Exchanges. At such times they become very earnest, and the listener, who perhaps never thought of it before, comes away at least partially persuaded that society as it is constituted to-day will have to undergo a very decided transformation before it can get along without the machinery of which these maligned persons are so important a part. It has stood the test of time; it has come to stay; its fundamental idea, economy and utility in trade, began with the Agora of ancient Greece and the Forum of Rome. If there is something apocryphal, then, in the tradition that derides the profession, here at least is evidence of its early origin, its growth, and its power of endurance. In any case, membership in the Stock Exchange is to-day the ambition of good citizens everywhere, and affords to many a father a solution of the question at once difficult and important, “What shall we do with our sons?” There are arguments against such a career, of course, just as there are against all roads that lead anywhere this side Utopia, but nevertheless, a man with capital, average intelligence, and good health, daily contributing by his labor to the silent forces that ebb and flow within these walls, can do well on ’Change without sacrificing anything that makes for self-respect and without diminishing in any degree his value as a useful member of the community. Moreover, he is free from things sedentary and is brought into daily contact with men and affairs that broaden and instruct him. He becomes a thinking and observing person, one whose mind never becomes atrophied for want of material on which to feed. He must be equipped with patience and philosophy to enable him to endure, without losing his nerve, the long periods of dulness that are a sorry part of the business, but he will not complain of wasted days if he learns to know that waste time, like waste material, may be converted into valuable by-products; that just as manufacturers are vigilant in turning their scrap-heaps into commercial utilities, so, in his daily economy the Stock Exchange member may, if he has the right stuff in him, turn the ashes, slag, and refuse of the hour into things of practical value. Once he has learned to do this, the novitiate has surmounted the most serious obstacle in his profession.