plications for injunctions and receiverships were a game that two could play at, and long experience had taught these close observers the very great value of the initiative in law. Accordingly, some two hours before the Belmont application was made they had sought out no less a person than Mr. Justice Barnard, caught him, as it were, either in his bed or at his breakfast, whereupon he had held a lit de justice, and made divers astonishing orders. A petition was presented in the name of one McIntosh, a salaried officer of the Erie Road, who claimed also to be a shareholder. It set forth the danger of injunctions and of the appointment of a receiver, the great injury likely to result therefrom, etc. After due consideration on the part of Judge Barnard, an injunction was issued, staying and restraining all suits, and actually appointing Jay Gould receiver, to hold and disburse the funds of the company in accordance with the resolutions of the Board of Directors. and the Executive Committee. This, certainly, was a very brilliant flank movement, and testified not less emphatically to Gould's genius than to Barnard's law, and to the efficacy of the new combination between Tammany Hall and the Erie Railway. Since the passage of the bill "to legalize counterfeit money," in April and the present November, new light had burst upon the judicial mind, and as the news of one injunction and a vague rumor of the other crept through Wall Street that day, it was no wonder that operators stood aghast and that Erie fluctuated wildly from 50 to 61 and back to 48.

The Erie directors, however, did not rest satisfied with the position which they had won through Judge Barnard's order. That simply placed them, as it were, in a strong defensive attitude. They were not the men to stop there: they aspired to nothing less than a vigorous offensive. With a superb audacity, which excites admiration, the new trustee immediately filed a supplementary petition. Therein it was duly set forth that doubts had been raised as to the legality of the recent issue of some two hundred thousand shares of stock, and that only about this amount was to be had in America; the trustee therefore petitioned for authority to use the funds of the corporation to purchase and cancel the whole of this amount at any price less than the par value, without regard to

the rate at which it had been issued. The desired authority was conferred by Mr. Justice Barnard as soon as asked. Human assurance could go no further. The petitioners had issued these shares in the bear interest at 40, and had run down the value of Erie to 35; they had then turned round, and were now empowered to buy back that very stock in the bull interest, and in the name of the corporation, at par. A law of the State distinctly forbade corporations from operating in their own stock; but this law was disregarded, as if it had been only an injunction. An injunction forbade the treasurer from making any disposition of the funds of the company, and this injunction was respected no more than the law. These trustees had sold the property of their wards at 40; they were now prepared to use the money of their wards to buy the same property back at 80, and a judge had been found ready to confer on them the power to do so. Drew could not withstand such tactics, and indeed the annals of Wall Street furnished no precedent or parallel. They might have furnished one, but the opportunity had been lost. Had Robert Schuyler not lived fifteen years too soon,—had he, instead of flying his country and dying broken-hearted in exile, boldly attempted a change of front when his fraudulent issues had filled Wall Street with panic, and had he sought to use the funds of his company for a masterly upward movement in his own manufactured stock, then, though in those uncultivated and illiberal days he might have failed, and even have passed from the presence of an indignant jury into the keeping of a surly jailer, at least he would have evinced a mind in advance of his day, and could have comforted himself with the assurance that he was the first of a line of great men, and that the time was not far distant when his name and his fame would be cherished among the most brilliant recollections of Wall Street.

When this last, undreamed-of act was made public on Wednesday at noon, it was apparent that the crisis was not far off. Daniel Drew was cornered. Erie was scarce and selling at 47, and would not become plenty until the arrival of the English steamer on Monday; and so, at 47, Mr. Drew flung himself into the breach to save his endangered credit, and, under his purchases, the stock rapidly rose, until at five o'clock on

Wednesday afternoon it reached 57. Contrary to expectation, the "corner" had not yet culminated. It became evident the next morning that before two o'clock that day the issue would be decided. Drew fought desperately. The Brokers' Board was wild with excitement. High words passed; collisions took place; the bears were savage, and the bulls pitiless. Erie touched 62, and there was a difference of sixteen per cent between cash stock and stock sold to be delivered in three days, when the steamer would be in, and a difference of ten per cent between stock to be delivered on the spot and that to be delivered at the usual time, which was a quarter after two o'clock. Millions were handled like thousands; fabulous rates of interrest were paid; rumors of legal proceedings were flying about, and forays of the Erie chiefs on the Vanderbilt roads were confidently predicted. New York Central suddenly shot up under these influences seven per cent, and Vanderbilt seemed about to enter the field. The interest of the stock market centred in the combatants and on these two great corporations. All other stocks were quiet and neglected, while the giants were fighting it out. The battle was too fierce to last long. At a quarter before three o'clock the struggle would be over. Yet now, at the very last moment, the prize which trembled before them eluded the grasp of the Erie ring. Their opponent was not saved, but they shared his disaster. Their combination had turned on the fact, disclosed to them by the Erie books, that some three hundred thousand shares of its stock had been issued in the ten-share certificates which alone are transmitted to London. This amount they supposed to be out of the country; the balance they could account for as beyond the reach of Drew. Suddenly, as two o'clock approached, and Erie was trembling in the sixties, all Broadway - every tailor and bootmaker and cigar vendor of New York-seemed pouring into Broad Street, and each new-comer held eagerly before him one or more of those ten-share certificates which should have been in London. Not only this, but the pockets of the agents of foreign bankers seemed bursting with them. Bedlam had suddenly broken loose in Wall Street. It was absolutely necessary for the conspirators to absorb this stock, to keep it from the hands of Drew. This they attempted to do, and manfully stood

their ground, fighting against time. Suddenly, when the hour had almost come,when five minutes more would have landed them in safety,-through one of those strange incidents which occur in Wall Street, and which cannot be explained, they seemed smitten with panic. It is said their bank refused to certify their checks for the sudden increased amount; the sellers insisted on having certified checks, and, in the delay caused by this unforeseen difficulty, the precious five minutes elapsed, and the crisis had passed. The fruits of their plot had escaped them. Drew made good his contracts at 57, the stock at once fell heavily to 42, and a dull quiet succeeded to the excitement of the morning.

The Wall Street conflict was over, and some one had reaped a harvest. Who was it? It was not Drew, for his losses, apart from a ruined prestige, were estimated at nearly a million and a half of dollars. The Erie directors were not the fortunate men, for their only trophies were great piles of certificates of Erie stock, which had cost them "corner" prices, and for which no demand existed. If Drew's loss was a million and a half, their loss was likely to be nearer to three millions. Who, then, were the recipients of these missing millions? There is an ancient saying, which seems to have been tolerably verified in this case, that when certain persons fall out certain other persons come by their dues. The "corner" was very beautiful in all its details, and most admirably planned; but, unfortunately, those who engineered it had just previously made the volume of stock too large for accurate calculation. For once the outside public had been at hand and Wall Street had been found wanting. A large portion of the vast sum taken from the combatants found its way into the pockets of the agents of English bankers, and a part of it was accounted for by them to their principals; another portion went to relieve anxious holders among the American outside public; the remainder fell to professional operators, probably far more lucky than sagacious. Still, there had been a fall, before there was a rise. The subsequent disaster, perhaps, no more than counterbalanced the earlier victory; at any rate, Messrs. Gould and Fisk did not succumb, but preserved a steady front, and Erie was more upon the street than ever. In fact,

it was wholly there now. The recent operations had proved too outrageous even for the Brokers' Board. A new rule. was passed, that no stock should be called the issues of which were not registered at some respectable banking-house. The Erie directors declined to conform to this rule, and their road was stricken from the list of calls. Nothing daunted by this, these Protean creatures at once organized a new board of their own, and were sufficiently successful in their efforts to have Erie quoted and bought and sold as regularly as ever.

Though the catastrophe had taken place on the 19th, the struggle was not yet over. The interests involved were so enormous, the developments were so astounding, such passions had been aroused, that some safety-valve through which suppressed wrath could work itself off was absolutely necessary, and this the courts of law afforded. The attack was stimulated by various motives. The bona fide holders of the stock, especially the foreign holders, were alarmed for the existence of their property. The Erie ring had now boldly taken the position that their duty was, not to manage the road in the interests of its owners, not to make it a dividend-paying corporation, but to preserve it from consolidation with the Vanderbilt monopoly. This policy was openly proclaimed by Mr. Gould, at a later day, before an investigating committee at Albany. With unspeakable effrontery, an effrontery so great as actually to impose on his audience and a portion of the press, and make them believe that the public ought to wish him success, he described how stock issues at the proper time to any required amount could alone keep him in control of the road, and keep Mr. Vanderbilt out of it; it would be his duty therefore, he argued, to issue as much new stock, at about the time of the annual election, as would suffice to keep a majority of all the stock in existence under his control; and he declared that he meant to do this. The strangest thing of all was, that it never seemed to occur to his audience that the propounder of this comical sophistry was a trustee and guardian for the stockholders, and not a public benefactor; and that the owners of the Erie Road might possibly prefer not to be deprived of their property, in order to secure the blessing of competition. So unique