Wall Street Stories
by Edwin Lefèvre
Category: New York (State)

It seemed to Fullerton F. Colwell, of the famous Stock-Exchange house of Wilson & Graves, that he had done his full duty by his friend Harry Hunt. He was a director in a half score of companies—financial débutantes which his firm had “brought out” and over whose stock-market destinies he presided. His partners left a great deal to him, and even the clerks in the office ungrudgingly acknowledged that Mr. Colwell was “the hardest worked man in the place, barring none”—an admission that means much to those who know it is always the downtrodden clerks who do all the work and their employers who take all the profit and credit. Possibly the important young men who did all the work in Wilson & Graves’ office bore witness to Mr. Colwell’s industry so cheerfully, because Mr. Colwell was ever inquiring, very courteously, and, above all, sympathetically, into the amount of work each man had to perform, and suggesting, the next moment, that the laborious amount in question was indisputably excessive. Also, it was he who raised salaries; wherefore he was the most charming as well as the busiest man there. Of his partners, John G. Wilson was a consumptive, forever going from one health resort to another, devoting his millions to the purchase of railroad tickets in the hope of out-racing Death. George B. Graves was a dyspeptic, nervous, irritable, and, to boot, penurious; a man whose chief recommendation at the time Wilson formed the firm had been his cheerful willingness to do all the dirty work. Frederick R. Denton was busy in the “Board Room”—the Stock Exchange—all day, executing orders, keeping watch over the market behavior of the stocks with which the firm was identified, and from time to time hearing things not meant for his ears, being the truth regarding Wilson & Graves. But Fullerton F. Colwell had to do everything—in the stock market and in the office. He conducted the manipulation of the Wilson & Graves stocks, took charge of the un-nefarious part of the numerous pools formed by the firm’s customers—Mr. Graves attending to the other details—and had a hand in the actual management of various corporations. Also, he conferred with a dozen people daily—chiefly “big people,” in Wall Street parlance—who were about to “put through” stock-market “deals.” He had devoted his time, which was worth thousands, and his brain, which was worth millions, to disentangling his careless friend’s affairs, and when it was all over and every claim adjusted, and he had refused the executor’s fees to which he was entitled, it was found that poor Harry Hunt’s estate not only was free from debt, but consisted of $38,000 in cash, deposited in the Trolleyman’s Trust Company, subject to Mrs. Hunt’s order, and drawing interest at the rate of 2½ per cent per annum. He had done his work wonderfully well, and, in addition to the cash, the widow owned an unencumbered house Harry had given her in his lifetime.