ut--and often at good premiums too--under his
auspices; the number of railway journals which he founded, and the
number of academies which he established for the instruction of
youthful engineers--are they not written in the annals of the period?
Jack himself started as an engineer without any previous educational
ceremony whatever. His manner of laying out a 'direct line' was happy
and expeditious. He took a map and a ruler, and drew upon the one, by
the help of the other, a straight stroke in red ink--which looked
professional--from terminus to terminus. Afterwards, he stated
distinctly in writing, so that there could be no mistake about the
matter, that there were no engineering difficulties--that the landed
proprietors along the line were quite enthusiastic in their promotion
of the scheme--and that the probable profits, as deduced from
carefully drawn-up traffic-tables, would be about 35 per cent. At this
time, Happy Jack was quite a minor Hudson. He lived in an atmosphere
of shares, scrip, and prospectuses. Money poured in from every
quarter. A scrap of paper with an application for shares was worth the
bright tissue of the Bank--and Jack lost no time in changing the one
for the other. Amid the mass of railway newspapers, he started _The
Railway Sleeper Awakened_, _The Railway Whistle_, _The Railway
Turntable_, and _The Railway Timetable_; and it was in the first
number of the last famous organ--it lived for three weeks--in which
appeared a letter signed 'A Constant Reader.' After the bursting of
the bubble, Happy Jack appeared to have burst too; for his whereabouts
for a long time was unknown, and there were no traditions of his being
seen. Then he began to be heard of from distant and constantly varying
quarters of the town. Now you had a note from Shepherd's Bush, and
next day from Bermondsey. On Tuesday, Jack dated Little King Street,
Clapham Road; on Thursday, the communication reached you from Little
Queen Street, Victoria Villas, Hackney; and next week perhaps you were
favoured with a note from some of the minor little Inns of Court,
where the writer would be found getting up a company on the fourth
floor in a grimy room, furnished with a high deal-desk, two
three-legged stools, and illimitable foolscap, pens, and ink.

Where Mrs Happy Jack and the young-lady Happy Jacks went to at these
times, the boldest speculator has failed to discover: they vanished,
as it were, into thin air, and were seen no more til