There was old Y----, who used to talk to his customers sitting near his office window, which faced Battery Park. He was a shifty professor of finance who never was known to hold the same opinion of the stock market two days running. “This market,” he said one day, “is going away up, crops are good, money is easy, railroads are rolling in wealth, and--look over there”--pointing to a line of immigrants walking through the park from the landing place--“the brawn and sinew of old Europe coming over here to develop our resources.” The very next day the market had what is called a “healthy reaction.” Quite unmindful of his consoling prophecies of yesterday, old Y---- looked at the tape and said, “This market is going away down. Crops are poor, money is tight, railroads are in a bad way, and--look over there”--pointing to another procession of immigrants--“the scum of Europe coming over here to rob our American laborers.” If that portion of the public which buys and sells stocks often has its little joke at the expense of brokers, so also brokers in their turn frequently have cause to laugh at their clients. “Cheer up,” was the message sent over the wire by a hopeful broker to a despondent client; “cheer up, the market can only go two ways.” “Yes,” was the reply, “but it has so damn many ways of going those two ways.” During the rubber boom of 1910 on the London Stock Exchange, a broker wired to a client in Ireland, “Rise in bank rate considered likely,” to which he received a prompt reply, “Buy me five hundred.” A telegram came over a private line one day last summer from a customer in Montreal. It was a deadly dull period, when, owing to the indifference of the public, stockbrokers were not making expenses. “What are you chaps doing over there?” said the telegram. “Why don’t you start something?” to which the floor member replied, “Read St. Luke 7:32.”[99] This must have been the same member who, when customers were few and far between, hastily ’phoned his office partner, “Put all our customers into copper,” to which his partner replied with grim resignation, “He won’t be down to-day.”