“Mr. Gould’s feelings can easily be imagined. He knew that Fisk’s reckless management would bring the government upon his shoulders, and he knew that unless he could sell his gold before the order came from Washington he would be a ruined man. He knew, too, that Fisk’s contracts must inevitably be repudiated. This Thursday evening he sat at his desk in the Erie offices at the opera house, while Fisk and Fisk’s brokers chattered about him. ‘I was transacting my railroad business. I had my own views about the market and my own fish to fry. I was all alone, so to speak, in what I did, and I did not let any of those people know exactly how I stood. I got no ideas from anything that was said there. I had been selling gold from 35 up all the time, and I did not know till the next morning that there would probably come an order about twelve o’clock to sell gold.’ He had not told Fisk a word in regard to Corbin’s retreat nor his own orders to sell. “When the next day came, Gould and Fisk went together to Broad street and took possession of the private back office of a principal broker, ‘without asking the privilege of doing so,’ as the broker observes in his evidence. The first news brought to Gould was a disaster. The government had sent three men from Washington to examine the bank which Gould owned, and the bank sent word to Mr. Gould that it feared to certify for him as usual, and was itself in danger of a panic, caused by the presence of officers, which created distrust of the bank. It barely managed to save itself. Gould took the information silently, and his firm redoubled sales of gold. His partner, Smith, gave the orders to one broker after another--‘Sell ten millions!’ ‘The order was given as quick as a flash, and away he went,’ says one of these men. ‘I sold only eight millions.’ ‘Sell, sell, sell! do nothing but sell!--only don’t sell to Fisk’s brokers,’ were the orders which Smith himself acknowledges. In the gold-room Fisk’s brokers were shouting their rising bids, and the packed crowd grew frantic with rage and terror as each successive rise showed their increasing losses. The wide streets outside were thronged with excited people; the telegraph offices were overwhelmed with messages ordering sales or purchases of gold or stocks; and the whole nation was watching eagerly to see what the result of this convulsion was to be. All trade was stopped, and even the President felt that it was time to raise his hand. No one who has not seen the New York gold-room can understand the spectacle it presented; now a perfect pandemonium, now silent as the grave. Fisk, in his dark back office across the street, with his coat off, swaggered up and down, ‘a big cane in his hand,’ and called himself the Napoleon of Wall street. He really believed that he directed the movement, and while the street outside imagined that he and Gould were one family, and that his purchases were made for the clique, Gould was silently