The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-02-21

combinations involving millions. IL ls 10
them the daily intoxication TO which they
have accustomed their nervous system. With
hold il. and they cannot live. To wealth they
grow Indifferent. At first the end, it soon
becomes the means Love of power and sem
sation drives them on when mere avarice has
long been sated. The energy, the foresight,
the resolution, the daring that might have in
stituted great reforms and moulded empires
| are spent in the pursuit of superfiuous riches.
Many of the present rulers of Wall street
| have been in very different callings. They
have been cattle-drivers, ferrymen, shoe
makers, peddlers, and horse Jockeys. They
have extraordinary ability of certain kind,
understand human nature, and believe in the
commercial advantage Of unscrupulousness.
The financial magnates are more adventu-
rous now than they ever were before. Each
month seems to render them more reckless
and unprincipled, more dishonest actually
Jacob Little used to make country people
stare by the magnitude of his operations and
the suddenness of his combinations; but he
never forfeited his reputation for financial
integrity, and never dreamed of doing what
| is now done in Wall street almost daily with
| out compunction or criticism.
Speculation in the banking quarter means
making money by any means that will not
lead to the penitentiary. By success they are
preserved from the necessity of offending in
the common way, and are able to dictate terms
to fortune. Early failure would have changed
the entire current of their lives.
Yet how few of the financial adventurers
| have any permanent success Those who we're
powers and radiating influences ten or tweve
| years ago have sunk out of sight and are for
gotten now. Hardly a great name on the
Stock Exchange to-day had been heard of
twenty years ago; and the monetary kings OF
the present will be uncrowned and throneless
| 1 n. l. H. .N,,...- l..e,
| passed. They rise and fall with the rapidity
| of revolutionary heroes in Mexico or South
America and, once down, the most sensitive
echo does not murmur that they have ever
| been. They are used as pawns by the great
| PLAYERS who let them stand or move them
| about for while; then exchange them as the
game grows interesting, or sweep them ruth
lessly from the board.
They learn nothing by experience. Each
one fancies himself wiser than his predeces-
sors; trusts his thought and his destiny more,
| and yet is ruined in exactly the same way.
Some subtle law of temperament deters them
from following uniform courses for any
length of time. They seem to become VIC
Tins of what might be called great moral
surprises They lie down honest in intention,
and bent upon duty. They awake in the
morning, or out of a midnight dream, in the
midst of spiritual revolution, and the rebels
Ol lll6lI COuSIlJullOu Dedb uOWu bu6 RudIuS VI
their strongest purpose.
Their hopefulness is always beyond their
executive capacity, and their intense desires
| strangle their conscientiousness. However
much they may be in the dark to-day, they
| fondly believe they will be in the full tide of
radiance tomorrow. They are not wholly
| dishonest by any means they simply, have
an elastic code of morals, and stretch or con-
tract it to suit their passing interest
tl,o,, &c
| any class of men who set their future upon
the cast of die, who largely hope, largely
play, and largely lose.
There is something to admire, after all, in
the adventurer; for he is cut by a broad pat
| tern. He does not whine nor fret because he
throws double aces instead of double skies.
He does not make wry faces when he finds
the cordial, SO tempting at first, very bitter
at the dregs. There is usually cheerful
stoicism in his philosophy, and he is really
strongest in adversely; for the buoyancy of
spirit that runs into wild schemes, while the
sun shines, lends no little grace to misfortune
after the night has fallen.
The adventuresses have narrower field, as
all women do, for their operations; but no
one can say they do not work it well. They
have but two objective points-men and
money; and one of them is always obtained
through the other.
Iuere are no uOT kluBS here lOr our
modern adventuresses to tamper with and
control; but there are men who, though the
strongest and the shrewdest, can be made to
dance TO woman's will, if she will but sing q
new and seductive tune.
European adventuresses have but few op-
portunities in this country. Unsupported by
relatives, friends, or fortune, they are always
suspected; and coming here only in quest Of
money, they sink to grade too low to admit
of anything deserving the name of adventure.
Feminine Americans have little natural
aptitude for the career, shameful for men,
hideous for women. They rarely accept or
seek it; it is forced upon them by circum-
stance. But, once entering upon it, they fol-
low it with an ardor and bring to it degree
of tact that only France has heretofore shown.
Something goes wrong with woman's heart
usually before her ethics are at fault. Let
her meet her destiny, as the romancers style
it, in the shape of tenderness, sympathy, and
loyalty, and there will be no smouldering
volcanoes in her life, no unacted tragedies
surging through her SOUL
The great city invites adventuresses from
every town and village between
the Northern lakes and the Gulf, the
Atlantic and the Pacific. In this
crowded wilderness, in this confusion
of individuals, it says, you can so lose your
self that the man who starves for you cannot
hunt you down. If you have shame or woe
to hide, or memories to Danish, leap into the
currents of Broadway, and its waves will con-
ceal you, and its tumult will drown the voice
of self-accusation.
An adventures is not difficult of detection
to clear vision; but eyes are used in thil
world for almost everything but seeing She
{ varies her form; but in the place where he
: heart was before some man broke it (as she