shares
were no sooner announced than they were rapidly subscribed for. But what
is the use of my saying anything more about the history of last year?
Every one of us remembers 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, while 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 bit 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, while 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,
while 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 b