Author: G. Gleason, Word Count: 325
Featured in Midsummer Archaeological Story Moot: Live Stream – Summer 2026
Two young men in starched shirts and vests are shucking Blue Point oysters over bowls of natural ice. One of the men leans in and grins under his mustache to his comrade. Maybe it’s in Polish, the patron thinks. Certainly not Russian. One of the shuckers signals to someone. A fellow who might be an Ottoman, because he sports a fez and an equally impressive lip-broom. Lip-broom! He smiles lightly to himself and turns to his paper as the man in the fez brings his dark beer.
GRANT & WARD SUFFER FATAL TURN — MARKET NERVOUS
“Really, Harry,” says his companion, an older man with a perpetually anxious demeanor. He is wearing a silk-lined bowler. “You’re a sharp man. You ought to look at whether the city will pay its bond dues. It could sink us.”
“The city will pay. The city always pays.”
“But will the city pay right now–”
“If they don’t, they don’t. But it won’t be any of our fault.”
“That may not matter.” the anxious man says. Almost cautiously he took a Blue Point from the bowl. Harry sipped his beer. It seems a little flat.
“At least oysters are good and cheap. We’ll be eating them for the rest of the decade at Hobarth & Hobarth Municipal Finance Company, esteemed collector of government accounts.”
“You are generally a serious man, Harry. Why not today of all days?”
“Because I know the city, Aldous. New York wants its marble-wreathed terminal points. Marble costs money, but so do unfinished buildings.”
But Aldous knows the truth: it isn’t that the city can’t or won’t pay. It’s that they can’t pay fast enough to matter. That the New York Clearing House won’t bail them out, and by the end of the week the fine marble floors of the Hobarth and Hobarth building will be deserted.
Harry pulls a Blue-Point from the bowl, gives it a splash of lemon juice.
WALL STREET, MAY 1884
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