Great Merchants' Shabby Desks

As a rule the head of any large and long-established concern has the shabbiest desk in the room, says Chicago Times-Herald. Business men have a kind of superstition on this point, at least many of them do. They feel like jlinging to the old desk, which has witnessed so many of their flnancial triumphs, and are half inclined to believe, perhaps, that it might break the spell if they should part with these old partners of their joys and sorrows. Henry Clews, in his "Twenty Years in Wall Street," remarks that Jay Gould transacted all his business at a desk "which never ought to have cost over $25," and everybody knows the story of A. T. Stewart, that when he removed from the old store in which he began his career to the new one which he built later on he insisted on taking along the old apple woman who had been carrying on her small mercantile transactions near his door for so many years and . whom he grew to associate with his ■ business success. i