Warming with his dinner and the liquor, Happy Jack got more
and more eloquent and sentimental. He declaimed upon the virtues of
Mrs J., and the beauties of the girls. He proposed all their healths
_seriatim_. He regretted the little incident which had prevented their
appearance at the festive board; but though absent in person, he was
sure that they were present in spirit; and with this impression, he
would beg permission to favour them with a song--a song of the social
affections--a song of hearth and home--a song which had cheered, and
warmed, and softened many a kindly and honest heart: and with this
Happy Jack sang--and exceedingly well too, but with a sort of
dreadfully ludicrous sentiment--the highly appropriate ditty of _My
Ain Fireside_.

Happy Jack was of no particular profession: he was a bit of a
_litterateur_, a bit of a journalist, a bit of a man of business, a
bit of an agent, a bit of a projector, a bit of a City man, and a bit
of a West-end man. His business, he said, was of a general nature. He
was usually to be heard of in connection with apocryphal companies and
misty speculations. He was always great as an agitator. As soon as a
League was formed, Happy Jack flew to its head-quarters as a vulture
to a battle-field. Was it a league for the promotion of
vegetarianism?--or a league for the lowering of the price of meat?--a
league for reforming the national costume?--or a league for repealing
the laws still existing upon the Statute-book against witches?--Happy
Jack was ever in the thickest of the fray, lecturing, expounding,
arguing, getting up extempore meetings of the frequenters of
public-houses, of which he sent reports to the morning papers,
announcing the 'numerous, highly respectable, and influential' nature
of the assembly, and modestly hinting, that Mr Happy Jack, 'who was
received with enthusiastic applause, moved, in a long and
argumentative address, a series of resolutions pledging the meeting
to,' &c. Jack, in fact, fully believed that he had done rather more
for free-trade than Cobden. Not, he said, that he was jealous of the
Manchester champion; circumstances had made the latter better
known--that he admitted; still he could not but know--and knowing,
feel--in his own heart of hearts, his own merits, and his own
exertions.

The railway mania was, as may be judged, a grand time for Happy Jack.
The number of lines of which he was a provisional director, the number
of schemes which came o