The cargoes in the river sold at Mark-lane may be landed at
Leith, or Glasgow, or Liverpool, or even in the distant ports of Cork, or
Belfast, or Dublin. Well may there be a bustle in Mark-lane. At eleven
the market commences, and at the various stands preparations are made for
the business of the day by untying and placing on the stands little bags
containing samples of every conceivable species of grain eatable by man
or beast. At the end of the day the floor is covered with the samples
which the buyer, after rubbing over in his hands and inspecting, has
thrown down. The sweepings are afterwards gathered up and sold, and
realise, I believe, a very handsome sum in the course of the year. At
half-past two a beadle rings a bell, and no more are permitted to enter
the Exchange. Those that are there hastily finish their business, tie up
their samples, swallow a chop, rush off to their respective termini, and
in two or three hours are perhaps more than a hundred miles away.
Mark-lane for the rest of the week is a dull, dirty lane, with but few
passengers, and very dark and dull indeed.

Yet Mark-lane has its romances. Look around you; not a man perhaps but
can tell you of enormous profits and enormous losses. The trade carried
on here is of so speculative a character that but few realise money by it
after all. Come to this stand. It was calculated the other day that the
firm carrying on business here were losing at the rate of a thousand
pounds per hour. Hear this factor: "I once bought some Windsor beans at
an early hour in the morning at 32s. a quarter, and sold them the same
day at 64s." Yet our informant has been compelled to settle with his
creditors. You may point to me a man who has not been reduced to this,
but he is a _rara avis_, and he can tell you how, perhaps, another day or
another hour would have made him a bankrupt. The rule is a crisis and a
crash; not a disgraceful one--for the unlucky ones, many of them, manage
to pay twenty shillings in the pound eventually--but a crisis and a
temporary suspension. In some cases where a man has been in trade many
years, and has accumulated a handsome fortune, one unlucky speculation
scatters it all, and compels him--old, and destitute of the energy of
youth--to begin business again. This is hard, but it cannot be helped.
Men who have been on the Exchange long can tell you funny stories of how
they came at seven in the morning and cleared handsome sums of m