bers it perfectly
well. It was a capital year on the whole, and put money into many a
pocket. About that time, Bob and I commenced operations. Our available
capital, or negotiable bullion, in the language of my friend, amounted
to about three hundred pounds, which we set aside as a joint fund for
speculation. Bob, in a series of learned discourses, had convinced me
that it was not only folly, but a positive sin, to leave this sum
lying in the bank at a pitiful rate of interest, and otherwise
unemployed, whilst every one else in the kingdom was having a pluck at
the public pigeon. Somehow or other, we were unlucky in our first
attempts. Speculators are like wasps; for when they have once got hold
of a ripening and peach-like project, they keep it rigidly for their
own swarm, and repel the approach of interlopers. Notwithstanding all
our efforts, and very ingenious ones they were, we never, in a single
instance, succeeded in procuring an allocation of original shares; and
though we did now and then make a hit by purchase, we more frequently
bought at a premium, and parted with our scrip at a discount. At the
end of six months, we were not twenty pounds richer than before.

"This will never do," said Bob, as he sat one evening in my rooms
compounding his second tumbler. "I thought we were living in an
enlightened age; but I find I was mistaken. That brutal spirit of
monopoly is still abroad and uncurbed. The principles of free-trade
are utterly forgotten, or misunderstood. Else how comes it that David
Spreul received but yesterday an allocation of two hundred shares in
the Westermidden Junction; whilst your application and mine, for a
thousand each, were overlooked? Is this a state of things to be
tolerated? Why should he, with his fifty thousand pounds, receive a
slapping premium, whilst our three hundred of available capital
remains unrepresented? The fact is monstrous, and demands the
immediate and serious interference of the legislature."

"It is a burning shame," said I, fully alive to the manifold
advantages of a premium.

"I'll tell you what, Dunshunner," rejoined M'Corkindale, "it's no use
going on in this way. We haven't shown half pluck enough. These
fellows consider us as snobs, because we don't take the bull by the
horns. Now's the time for a bold stroke. The public are quite ready to
subscribe for anything--and we'll start a railway for ourselves."

"Start a railway with three hundred pounds of capital!"