ten o'clock
The Wall Street mind always has its fill of budding dollars . In consequence , there is never room for those other interests that enter the normal mind . Friday , the 13th of November , drifted over Manhattan Island in a drear drizzle of marrow-chilling haze , which just missed being rain -- one of those New York days that give a hesitating suicide renewed courage to cut the mortal coil . By ten o'clock it had settled down on the Stock Exchange and its surrounding infernos with a clamminess that damped the spirits of the most rampant bulls . No class in the world is so susceptible to atmospheric conditions as stock-gamblers . Many a stout-hearted one has been known to postpone the inauguration of a long-planned coup merely because the air filled his blood with the dank chill of superstition . Because of the expected Sugar pyrotechnics , Stock Exchange members had gathered early ; the brokers ' offices were crowded to overflowing before ten ; the morning papers , not only in New York but in Boston , Philadelphia , and other centres , were filled with stories of the big rise that was to take place in Sugar .