constitute his habitation. He shrinks from meeting his old friends,
well knowing that not one of them will recognize him, except to insult
him with a scornful stare. Families are constantly disappearing from
the social circles in which they have shone for a greater or less time.
They vanish almost in an instant, and are never seen again. You may
meet them at some brilliant ball in the evening. Pass their residence
the next day, and you will see a bill announcing the early sale of the
mansion and furniture. The worldly effects of the family are all in the
hands of the creditors of the "head," and the family themselves are
either in a more modest home in the country, or in a tenement house.
You can scarcely walk twenty blocks on Fifth Avenue, without seeing one
of these bills, telling its mournful story of fallen greatness.

The best and safest way to be rich in New York, as elsewhere, is for a
man to confine himself to his legitimate business. Few men acquire
wealth suddenly. Ninety-nine fail where one succeeds. The bane of New
York commercial life, however, is that people have not the patience to
wait for fortune. Every one wants to be rich in a hurry, and as no
regular business will accomplish this, here or elsewhere, speculation
is resorted to. The sharpers and tricksters who infest Wall Street,
know this weakness of New York merchants. They take the pains to inform
themselves as to the character, means, and credulity of merchants, and
then use every art to draw them into speculations, in which the tempter
is enriched and the tempted ruined. In nine cases out of ten a merchant
is utterly ignorant of the nature of the speculation he engages in. He
is not capable of forming a reasonable opinion as to its propriety, or
chance of success, because the whole transaction is so rapid that he
has no chance to study it. He leaves a business in which he has
acquired valuable knowledge and experience, and trusts himself to the
mercy of a man he knows little or nothing of, and undertakes an