opened, the news came in over the wire from our financial man on
Broad Street: "'The System' has forced James Bruce, partner of
Kerr Parker, the dead banker; to sell his railroad, steamship,
and rubber holdings to it. On this condition it promises
unlimited support to the market."

"Forced!" muttered the managing editor, as he waited on the
office phone to get the composing-room, so as to hurry up the few
lines in red ink on the first page and beat our rivals on the
streets with the first extras. "Why, he's been working to bring
that about for the past two weeks. What that System doesn't
control isn't worth having--it edits the news before our men get
it, and as for grist for the divorce courts, and tragedies,
well--Hello, Jenkins, yes, a special extra. Change the big
heads--copy is on the way up--rush it."

"So you think this Parker case is a mess?" I asked.

"I know it. That's a pretty swift bunch of females that have been
speculating at Kerr Parker & Co.'s. I understand there's one
Titian-haired young lady--who, by the way, has at least one
husband who hasn't yet been divorced--who is a sort of
ringleader, though she rarely goes personally to her brokers'
offices. She's one of those uptown plungers, and the story is
that she has a whole string of scalps of alleged Sunday-school
superintendents at her belt. She can make Bruce do pretty nearly
anything, they say. He's the latest conquest. I got the story on
pretty good authority, but until I verified the names, dates, and
places, of course I wouldn't dare print a line of it. The story
goes that her husband is a hanger-on of the System, and that