directors of a Prussian railway can not swindle the
shareholders by false accounts, and passing off loans for dividends.
Against the frauds of directors, the English shareholder has only a sham
security. He is invited to leave his home, and come two hundred miles to
the directors' home, and vote in person. He doesn't do it. Why should he?
In Prussia the Government protects the shareholder, and inspects the
accounts severely. So much for the superior system of that country. Now,
take a map. Here is Hamburg, the great port of the Continent, and Berlin,
the great Continental centre; and there is one railway only between the
two. What English railway can compare with this? The shares are at 150.
But they must go to 300 in time unless the Prussian Government allows
another railway, and that is not likely, and, if so, you will have two
years to back out. This is the best permanent investment of its class
that offers on the face of the globe."

Bartley invested timidly, but held for years, and the shares went up over
300 before he sold.

"Do not let your mind live in an island if your body does," was a
favorite saying of William Hope; and we recommend it impartially to
Britons and Bornese.

On one of Hope's visits Bartley complained he had nothing to do. "I can
sit here and speculate. I want to be in something myself; I think I will
take a farm just to occupy me and amuse me."

"It will not amuse you unless you make money by it," suggested Hope.

"And nobody can do that nowadays. Farms don't pay."

"Ploughing and sowing don't pay, but brains and money pay wherever found
together."

"What, on a farm?"

"Why not, sir? You have only to go with the times. Observe the condition
of produce: grain too cheap for a farmer because continents can export
grain with little loss; fruit dear; meat dear, because cattle can not be
driven and sailed without risk of life and loss of weight; agricultural
labor rising, and in winter unproductive, because to farm means to plough
and sow, and reap and mow, and lose money. But meet those conditions.
Breed cattle, sheep, and horses, and make the farm their feeding-ground.
Give fifty acres to fruit; have a little factory on the land for winter
use, and so utilize all your farm hands and the village women, who are
cheaper laborers than town brats, and I think you will make a little
money in the form of money, besides what you make in gratuitous eggs,
poultry, fruit, horses to ride, and cart th