The Driver

The sky is low and brooding, with an untimely thought of snow. Church bells are ringing. They sound remote and disapproving. Almost nobody is mindful of their call. The soul may...

Wall street proper,--street with a small _s_,--is a thoroughfare. Wall Street in another way of speaking,--street with a big _S_,--is a district, the money district, eight block...

It was true of Galt, as Harbinger said, that he had no friends; it was not therefore true that his world was full of enemies. He had many acquaintances and no intimates. He was...

You may define a mass delusion; you cannot explain it really. It is a malady of the imagination, incurable by reason, that apparently must run its course. If it does not lead pe...

By this time I had become a frequent visitor in the Galt household. A summer had passed since my first appearance there. The second time I came to dinner Vera presented herself,...

Steadily the American giant grew worse in his mind. There were yet lower depths of insolvency. The passion to touch them was like the impulse to collective suicide in the Dark A...

At five o’clock that evening Galt called me on the telephone and asked me to come to his office. I had never been there. It was at 15 Exchange Place, up a long brass-mounted sta...

Well, the United States Treasury did not hang out the bankrupt’s sign. What happened instead was that President Cleveland in his solitary strength met a mad crisis in a great wa...

Life in this financial limbo would have exactly suited the placid temperament of our organization but for the distracting activities of Galt. With Valentine’s permission he took...

His activities were of increasing complexity. A Stock Exchange ticker was installed, for he meant to keep his eye on the stock market; then an automatic printing device on which...

Galt’s overthrow of Valentine was an episode of business which need not have concerned the outside world. But the conditions of the struggle were dramatic and personal and the p...

Vera by this time was in high, romantic quest of that which cannot be found outside oneself. She had a passion to be utterly free. It was a cold, intellectual phantasy, defeated...

The ready explanation of Galt’s rise in a few years to the rôle of Wall Street monarch is that he was a master profit maker. The way of it was phenomenal. His touch was that of...

Meanwhile Galt’s enemies had been drawing together secretly. Hatred, fear and envy resolved all other emotions. Men who had nothing else in common were joined in a conspiracy to...

Then with one swift intention the sun broke through,--and there were the heights!... directly in front of him. The rest of the way was enchanted. All its difficulties were illus...

And now began the last phase of his career. Lying there in that state, unable so much as to raise his hand, with a mind all but disembodied, he intended his thoughts to the pass...

After the funeral the family returned to the Fifth Avenue house. Though I took up a permanent abode elsewhere, my apartment was still there, and I came and went almost as one of...