The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1867-01-11
From the Chicago Tribune
The Gold Room"-The Operations and
Operators There.

operators There.
New York is the commercial focus of
the confident, and the Gold Room is the
focus of New York. In little court
yard surrounded by four walls, and closed
in with roof, having circuitous pas
sage way from Broad street, may be wit
messed, at any hour of the day, and six
days in the week, scene which has not
its likeness in earth or heaven. Whether
its parallel can be found in hell will not
undertaken to say. Perhaps it can, but
this much. | consider certain, that the
New York Gold Room is to-day the great
est curiosity in the world. 1t beggars
description. In attempting to give the
reader some impression of it, begin by
saying that it can neither be penned or
painted, and that when it is finally closed
by return to specie payments, posteri.
ty will have lost most vivid illustration
e ~ L:i..i~o - - L-~,.- -..:-l
Imagine rat pit in full blast, with
twenty or thirty men ranged around the
rat tragedy, each with canine under his
arm, all yelling and bowling at once, and
you have as good omparison as can be
found in the outside world, of the aspect
of the gold room, as it strikes the behold.
er on his first entrance. Three things
seem to be in demand-lungs, note books,
and pencils. Wow wow wow-wow, yah.
yah-yah- yah, from twenty or thirty throats,
around the pit, all at once, and kept 60
ing from morning till night, from Mon
day till SATURDAYS what presents itself
to the ear of the beholders The voices
of the gentry around the circle are for the
most part tamori, and now and then tal-
setto and 6asso.
The furniture of the room is extremely
simple. 1t consists of two iron ratings
and an "indicator." Tue FIRST railing is
circle, about four feet high and ten feet
in diameter, placed exactly in the centre
of the room. 10 the interior, which rep
resents the space devoted to rat killing in
similar establishments, is a marble Cupid
throwing up a jet of pure Croton. The
artistic conception is not good Instead
of Cupid throwing pearly fountain
into the air, there should have been
hungry Midas, turning everything to gold,
and starving to death for inability to eat
his own currency. The other railing is a
semi.circle twenty or thirty feet from cen.
trail one. This outer rail fences off the
"lame ducks' and "dead beats" men who
have once been famous at the rat pit, but
have since been "cleaned out" Being
unable to settle their differences" they
are not allowed to come inside.
Nevertheless, these "lame ducks" and
"dead beats" cannot keep away from the
place. Day after day they come and
range themselves along their iron grating
and looking at the rat-pit with the strong
est expression of intelligent vacancy and
longing despair that can be found this
side of purgatory. They seem to be q
part of the furniture of the room. While
was there l did not sec one of them
move or speak, and when they winked it
was with much the same spirit that an
owl at at midday lowers the film over bis
eyes and boists 1t again. The "indicator,'
which is the third piece of furniture in
the room, Cor the fourth, if we count tho
''doad BEATS is piece of mechanism to
show the changes in the market. 1t is
something like an old fashioned New
England clock, seven or eight feet high,
with an open space at the top disclosing
three figures aud n fraction, as 14l3 at
which the market stood when ! entered.
The figures being movable, a slight man.
ipulation will manifest any change in the
market.
The Gold Board is oeaseless janglo, q
whirlpool of voices, without order, with
out umpire, referee, or stakeholder. Yet
as it spurs on, millions upon millions are
bought and sold, the pricss Of all goods,
wares, merchandise, produce, bonds
stocks, and property generally throughout
the country are marked up or down, ODE.
diently to the memorable "indicator" in
the Gold Room. How these men can un'
derstand each other, aud avoid making