Any one who stood on Wall Street, or in the gallery of
the Stock Exchange last Thursday and Friday and Saturday (1873), and
saw the mad terror, we might almost say the brute terror like that
by which a horse is devoured who has a pair of broken shafts hanging
to his heels, or a dog flying from a tin saucepan attached to his
tail, with which great crowds of men rushed to and fro, trying to
get rid of their property, almost begging people to take it from
them at any price, could hardly avoid feeling that a new plague had
been sent among men; that there was an impalpable, invisible force
in the air, robbing them of their wits, of which philosophy had not
as yet dreamt. No dog was ever so much alarmed by the clatter of the
saucepan as hundreds seemed to be by the possession of really
valuable and dividend-paying securities; and no horse was ever more
reckless in extricating himself from the _debris_ of a broken
carriage than these swarms of acute and shrewd traders in divesting
themselves of their possessions.
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