Naturally, in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the Stock Exchange tastes are catholic and run to wide extremes. One of the members is a student of Russian literature in all its phases; he can tell you of its folklore, its peasantism, its liberal thought and its ethical ideals of society; Dostoyevski is his hobby and Melshin the poet. Beside him stands a man who has mastered the culinary art; the joy of his life is to prepare with his own hands, for the palates of his fastidious guests, dainty dishes and wonderful sauces that make an invitation to his table something worth having. One of the members is an animated concordance of Shelley, whom he studies with almost fanatical zeal; another is a disciple of Heine, whom he adores. There stands a man who went into the heart of Africa as no white man had ever done--through Somaliland into Abyssinia, thence to Lake Rudolph to hunt elephants, south to Victoria Nyanza, and finally, after hunting all the wild game of the district, on foot to the West Coast. Near by is a traveler fresh from Mukden, the scene of the world’s greatest battle; he can tell you, too, some curious and little-known details of the awful engagement at 203-Metre Hill. Our Civil War has its survivors in a dozen Board members of to-day. One of them was shot twice at Shiloh and lived to fight the Sioux; another was a captain under Burnside at Antietam, charged the bridge at the head of all that was left of his company, and was rewarded for conspicuous gallantry; another was shot through the lungs at the second battle of Bull Run and lived through the carnage at Gettysburg; another was thrice wounded at Gettysburg and again in the Wilderness. Here are some who charged up Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill in Cuba, and there are men who served in the navy throughout that war. Officers of high rank in the National Guard and the Naval Reserve, members of important public bodies, such as the Municipal Art Commission, the Palisades Commission, the Public School Board and the various hospital boards; mayors and other officers of suburban communities, sheriffs and deputy-sheriffs, presidents of clubs, wardens and vestrymen of churches, men beloved for their philanthropies, Oxford men, Cambridge men, Heidelberg men, graduates of all the American universities--with these and very many more like them, one is brought into intimate daily contact.