pon, until stores, shops and
booths sprang up in all parts of the city and on all the roads leading
into it from the camps. Gradually--from causes already noted--supplies
became more scarce as money became more plenty. The pinch began to be
felt by many who had never known it before; and almost every one, who
had any surplus portables, was willing to turn them into money. In this
way, those who had anything to sell, for the time, managed to live. But
the unfortunates who had only what they needed absolutely, or who were
forced to live upon a fixed stipend, that did not increase in any ratio
to the decrease of money, suffered terribly.

These were only too ready to take the fever of speculation; and to buy
any small lots of anything whatever that might sell again at a profit.
This was the class from which the main body of amateur speculators was
recruited. One successful venture led to another and gave added means
for it. The clerk, or the soldier, who yesterday cleared his hundred on
a little turn in whisky, to-morrow might hope to double it--then
reinvest his principal and his profits. It was marvelous how values
rose over night. One might buy anything, a lot of flour--a line of
fruits--a hogshead of molasses, or a case of boots to-day, with almost
a certainty of nearly doubling his outlay to-day week.

The ordinary channels of trade became clogged and blocked by its
constant increase. Auction houses became the means of brokerage; and
their number increased to such an extent that half a dozen red flags at
last dotted every block on Main street. And incongruous, indeed, were
the mixtures exposed at these sales, as well as in the windows of the
smallest shops in Richmond. In the latter, bonnets rested on the sturdy
legs of cavalry boots; rolls of ribbon were festooned along the crossed
barrel of a rifle and the dingy cotton umbrella; while cartridges,
loaves of bread, packages of groceries, gloves, letter paper, packs of
cards, prayer-books and canteens, jostled each other in admirable
confusion.

At these auctions there was utter want of system. Hogsheads of prime
rum would be put up after kegs of spikes; a case of organdies would
follow a good cavalry horse; and then might come four second-hand
feather-beds and a hundred boarding cutlasses.

But everything soever found a purchaser; some because they were
absolutely needed and the buyer dreaded waiting the next week's rise;
the majority to sell again in this insane